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Welcome to the Smart Athlete Podcast. I’m your host, Jesse Funk. My guest today has her Ph.D. in Astrophysics. Consequently, which makes sense, she’s an Astrophysicist at the Space Science Telescope Institute at Johns Hopkins.

One of the questions I see asked the most about running is "Should it hurt?". On the face of it, it seems like a really simple question, right? Should it hurt? Yes or No. But does there’s actually a lot more to it then simply Yes or No.

So, you've been running for a little while, and you are not seeing the improvement you want in those five key times, those 10K times, whatever it is your benchmark is you feel like I'm just not getting faster. Why am I not getting any faster? Well, I'm Jesse Funk, and on...

And I think that’s just like runner community to like I, I’m very fond of the runners I’ve met I think you know of course there’s so much 00:13 and it grow but I would say this are people who aren’t put not the whole life of make up they’re going out and their working ha...

You may be out with your friends on a long run, and you know that you and your friend are going to race at a similar speed. Once you go and do your 5K, do your 10K, whatever it is you're going to do, you know your race is similar speeds. But on that long run, it just see...

Summer is starting to heat up and if you live in a place like me here in Kansas City in the Midwest, along with that heat comes a lot of humidity. So, you may be wondering to yourself when going out for a run, how much does heat and humidity actually affect my running? Read more

So, I went to LaFree University to study fine art. But LaFree University is primarily known for its sports and it tends to be a sports uni, but it’s very good for its art as well. So, I kind of picked that triathlon for a bit of fun in their tri club to keep fit, really ...

Maybe you're stuck on the treadmill because like me, today, it is six degrees outside and it's just not fit for speed work. Or maybe something else has waylaid you and forced you onto that treadmill much to your own chagrin. Whatever the reason, whatever thing it is it's...

No matter how long you've been running, that first five minutes sucks. It's just terrible. It's just terrible. Why is it so terrible? Well, I’m Jessie Funk and on today's episode of Runner's High, I'm going to demystify why that first five minutes of running sucks no mat...

When I was a swimmer at the University of Colorado in the early 70s, we shared the locker room with a cross country ski team. And at that point, I’d been swimming since childhood. And as I mentioned, I was on a scholarship to swim for the university.