Alexa Efraimson: From pro runner at 17 to Registered Dietitian helping athletes fuel without restriction
Release Date: 04/17/2025
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"For so long, every conversation, every day, was like, 'what is your weight?' So really like reinforcing confidence and performance all around the number on the scale."
Alexa Efraimson signed a professional running contract with Nike when she was just 17 years old. She hadn't gone through puberty yet, and while did shortly after that, her cycles were "super inconsistent" for the next six+ years. She navigated challenges with weight, body image, and fueling for performance. She got a college degree while running professionally, and had some success during her eight years as a pro. But in 2022, after enduring an emotional time with her partner and their families, she began to reevaluate her relationship to running and sport. She retired, and started pursuing an additional degree to eventually become a registered dietitian.
This episode covers the following topics and more:
- Efraimson's current running and a big goal she has
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the Dietetic internship (she's graduating in May 2025)
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Navigating racing professionally, weight, body image, fueling, and harmful nutrition advice
- Going through puberty as a professional runner
- How she felt about the Mary Cain story when it came out and she was also competing as a pro runner for Nike
- What happened during the last year of her professional running career
- The nutrition book that totally shifted her perspective on eating and health
Follow Alexa Efraimson as she becomes a registered dietitian this year (2025) and begins supporting fellow athletes: @alexa.efraimson.
Looking for a clinician to support you through REDs, fueling for performance, or navigating mental health in sports? Go to Lane9Project.org/Directory to connect with a Lane 9 provider.
Follow Lane 9 on Instagram @lane9Project and Substack: lane9project.substack.com.