Molly Bookmyer, Elite runner on making big fueling changes, and finding what works for you
Release Date: 04/10/2025
REDs & Running a Marathon: "How much damage will I do if I run anyway?"
Lane 9 Podcast
" Consider why you want to do this. What are the motivating factors for completing the marathon right this second? What are your long-term health and movement goals, and does this get you closer to them or further away?" Lane 9 co-founder, and dietitian, Heather Caplan RDN takes on two more listener questions in this episode. 1) How do clinicians navigate what may be REDs, with an athlete who has an IUD and doesn't get periods? 2) If I'm undertrained and experiencing symptoms of REDs (haven't had a period in about a year), but I want to run marathon, what should I do? As always,...
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Q&A: Overall health, with irregular or absent periods & What if I recover from REDs...and get slower?
Lane 9 Podcast
"You might think, 'On the other side of this, if I'm not even guaranteed better performance, Why would I do it?' That comes down to our values," shares Lane 9 co-founder, and dietitian, Heather Caplan. This Q&A episode tackles two questions: Is it possible to be 'healthy' even with extremely irregular periods or absent periods, if everything else is going well? Will I recover from REDs and get faster? What if I get slower, or get injured? Have your own question to submit to Lane 9 for a future episode or resource? We'd love to hear them! Go to Lane9project.org and contact us. Or...
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Erin McDonald: From Rigidity and Restricting to Running Her Fastest Times, and Getting Her Life Back
Lane 9 Podcast
"I'd rather suck at running and have my life back," Erin McDonald, who just won the 2025 Detroit Free Press International Half Marathon in 1:16. She objectively does not suck at running, but she does have her life back! Erin McDonald recently opened up about her struggles with restrictive and rigid eating in college as a runner at Michigan State University. She was primed and favored to make nationals her senior year—staying "disiplined" with her food, rest, and training routine—but the race went totally awry. With a job lined up after graduation, she was ready for a long break from...
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Nutrition Support for College Athletes with former D1 Athlete Lauren Segal RDN
Lane 9 Podcast
"Athletes aren't immune to that messaging of like, 'carbs are bad, you shouldn't have carbs, and they're the worst thing ever.' But we know that carbs are our body's preferred source of fuel, especially when you're doing these intense bouts of exercise like most athletes are doing," shares sports dietitian Lauren (or Lo) Segal. Segal is a now in private practice, after almost 10 years of working as a collegiate sports dietitian, most recently at the University of Utah. She's part of our Lane 9 Clinicians and Coaches Membership, and listed in the Lane 9 Women's Sport and Health...
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"We Loved to Run" author, Stephanie Reents, on Women's Cross Country teams and their stories
Lane 9 Podcast
" You can't ultimately control what happens in a race. And so you convince yourself you can, right? Or you tell yourself, well, if I control these other things, I might be able to control what happens in the race." Stephanie Reents ran for four years on the Amherst College women's Cross Country team in the early 90s, and is the author of "We Loved to Run" her debut novel. Reents wanted there to be a novel about women's running, stories about the identities athletes hold and how those identities shape and change team dynamics, friendships, and relationships...to themselves, to their...
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Jess Cerra: Former Pro Cyclist & Nutrition Entrepreneur on Body Image, Disordered Eating in Cycling, and Joining Alete Active Nutrition
Lane 9 Podcast
"I've never had a very lean body type. I kept showing up to these triathlons with lean-looking people and second-guessing if I deserved to be there...then smoking them on the bike and in the run, and gaining that confidence," shares Jess Cerra, a former professional cyclist, a sports nutrition entrepreneur, and now VP of Product and Community Development at Alete Active Nutrition. Cerra joins us to talk about her unusual path into high level endurance sports, and then professional cycling, while studying aspects of sports nutrition, and eventually founding a sports nutrition company. She...
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Periods & Nutrition Q&A: How to know if "a lot" is "enough" for energy availability
Lane 9 Podcast
"I've found that athletes vastly underestimate their [energy] needs," shares Heather Caplan RDN, co-founder of Lane 9, in this Q&A-style episode. Listen for this one if you're wondering... How often is it okay to have sweet things/desserts? Is it possible to have REDs without weight loss/changes? Why am I not getting my period back, even though I'm eating a lot more? This one tackles flexibility with food, decades of carb-fearing and how it probably still impacts what most people eat on a daily basis...even in sports, weight stigma in athletics and the variety of REDs symptoms, and...
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Leah Avery DPT with Coaching Advice to Avoid Overtraining
Lane 9 Podcast
"Once I started to really add fueling into the long runs...I realized how much that was helping the next run," shares Dr. Leah Avery DPT. Leah Avery DPT was a D1 collegiate swimmer, who qualified for NCAA championships and the Olympic Trials (2008). On paper, her athletic story reads as inspiring and exciting for a young athlete. In reality, it was a pressure-filled struggle to keep up with expectations, training, and results. She was ready to be done. When she graduated and started her DPT program, she couldn't have been happier to stop swimming, and start running. "It wasn't all...
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Maddie Alm RDN on REDs Without Disordered Eating and Body Changes After Pro Running
Lane 9 Podcast
"I weighed more as a professional runner than I did in college, and I ran faster as a professional runner," shares sports dietitian Maddie Alm MS RDN. You might know Maddie Alm from her Instagram account and podcat, Fueling Forward. She started her journey to becoming a registered dietitian after meeting with a sports RDN in college, as a collegiate athlete. In college, she was feeling exhausted between workouts and training sessions, but as she shares on this episode, "didn't even realize that fueling was important." That all changed with a pretty simple suggestion from the dietitian:...
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Jenny Grimshaw on how Understanding ARFID, Food Intolerances, and Anxiety Changed her Running
Lane 9 Podcast
" When I eventually figured out my food intolerances and a better relationship with fueling, I brought [my marathon PR] down to 2:44 within a little under a year." Jenny Grimshaw, VP of marketing at EQUIP*, and now a 2:36 marathoner, joins us on the Lane 9 podcast. Jenny is also a mom of 2, and navigating prophylactic surgeries to reduce her risk of breast and ovarian cancers (with the BRCA-1 gene). Her postpartum running experiences have been full of PRs, as she has figured out her own fueling needs, how to balance her identity as a runner with all the other things she does, and has worked...
info_outline"{Houston} was a really great season opener and showed me again that I could fuel like I even fuel in the half marathon now, it's I'm able to take fuel. It's, and sustain my training and feel healthy and finishing strong in my races," shares Molly Bookmyer.
Bookmyer is an elite distance runner based in Columbus OH. She walked onto the Ohio State XC/Track and FIeld teams, but left the sport before graduating because of some frustrating injuries and health issues. She wasn’t getting regular periods, which actually led to her healthcare team discovering a small brain tumor.
After some time away from the sport she got back into distance running and eventually qualified for both the 2020 and 2024 Marathon Olympic Trials. While her marathon and half-marathon times have improved over the years—she ran a PR and won the 2024 Twin Cities Marathon in 2:28, and ran a half-marathon PR at the 2025 Houston Marathon with a 1:09—she has also navigated some intense challenges with gut health and fueling.
We recorded this right before she traveled to DC where she ran the Cherry Blossom 10-miler, which she finished in 52:42, 8th overall female and 7th american. As she shared on Instagram, she “Ran over a minute PR in the 10 mile race and snagged a 10k PR of 32:11 in the process”. Next up is London, so we’ll be virtually cheering for her in a few weeks!
This episode covers a lot! We discuss:
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Her 14th place finish at the Half marathon championships in March 2025
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Why she’s planning to do more races this year
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How she walked onto the XC/TF team at Ohio State in college, her experience as a collegiate athlete, and why she quit after a few years
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How she found out she had a small brain tumor,which may have been related to her experience with amenorrhea
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Why and how she got back into high level/elite running, which only a few years later landed her in 3rd place at the 2019 US 25K Championship
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How her fueling has evolved, especially after two stress fractures in/around 2020, and then a very unpleasant experience during the 2022 Houston Marathon
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Her gluten-free fueling strategies and what's working well for her now
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Her water bottle secret for elites
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And her post-race journaling prompts!
Follow Molly on Instagram to cheer her on, @MollyBookie.
Follow Lane 9 @Lane9Project.
Connect with a women's health and sport clinician to get support with YOUR fueling, mental health, and/or period health by going to Lane9Project.org/directory.