Keely Henninger

The stoke was real, even with my legs feeling toasty 🔥

I got exactly what I needed- some tough climbing and descending on my legs. With school, this is not something I get enough of with school and while that’s totally fine with me, I needed a good downhill stimulus.

👩‍🔬 The Repeated Bout Effect: The cool thing about the body is that it adapts, and it can adapt pretty quickly. Research shows that just one downhill run can help reduce muscle damage in future workouts. This is called the repeated bout effect 💫, and it can lessen fatigue and damage to your legs during similar downhill runs for up to 5 weeks after. Aka- crush a downhill effort and you may be more resilient for the next one! 💪🏽

If you’re prepping for a race with lots of elevation but don’t have the time or terrain to run a lot of vert, try adding a few downhill-focused workouts before race day. They could help reduce muscle soreness and damage when the big day comes.

Anyone have some serious DOMS (delayed onset muscle fatigue) lately from doing something epic? Tell me what you’re training for! 🤗

Papers:
PMIDs: 38921863, 33139834, 33037592, 35225166

👋 all! Been a bit busy over here, but absolutely loving medical school! Running looks and feels a little bit different than it did the summer of 2023, but it also has a lot of similarities.

Some new changes and priorities:
🌕 A lot of my runs take place before 6am
🏔️ I don’t make it out to the mountains very often
🍭 I have to plan out my meals and snacks so I pack enough for the day! Goodbye random snacking!
⏰ I don’t have much flexibility with my run time slot, so if I wake up super tired, I take an off day or cut it short.
🧠 I use my brain power during my studies as a gauge for recovery and energy availability (brain fog and inability to focus plague me if I’m a bit low on calories post longer run)
🏃‍♀️ focusing on consistency in training by capping my long runs to 3 hours (1x week) and most other runs are

OHSU MD Class of 2028! 👩‍⚕️

Huge thanks to all of my friends and family who have gotten me here, I literally couldn’t have done it without you. From J encouraging me 3 years ago to pursue this daunting dream, my parents always believing in me, my sister being my biggest fan, stylist, and hooking me up with the cutest medical equipment (hello pink stethoscope!), and countless friends serving as mentors, I’m so grateful for you all.

I’m sure I’ll be posting a similar post in 4 years thanking everyone for supporting me during this challenging but so rewarding journey, it takes a village!

Let’s do this 💫