In this episode, I talk with NC State Women’s Head Coach Laurie Henes. We discuss her recent team success winning the NCAA Division 1 Cross Country Championships for the first time ever! While running is an individual sport, Coach Henes emphasizes the importance of team support, something we believe in with our clients at Rise Up Nutrition. Laurie shares some of her personal experiences running for NC State herself, winning an NCAA title before going on to run post-collegiately. We talk about how she uses her own running experiences alongside her female perspective to better understand and guide her student-athletes. Coach Henes gives us insight into the care she has for her runners, the culture and set up at NC State. Discussing the nutrition support available: sports dieticians, fuelling stations and athlete dining services, Coach Henes ensures that her student-athletes fuel well throughout the day and prevent periods of energy deficits. We speak on the importance of fueling around different practice and race times -early morning, afternoon and evening training-, avoiding fasted workouts, and using training to try new nutrition strategies to set athletes up to perform their best on race day. Laurie and I talk about intuitive eating for athletes and where that can go wrong. We discuss the role of intention and education around nutrition for peak performance, while avoiding food obsession and rigidity. Laurie explains how she helps her athletes foster healthy nutrition relationships and stay away from calorie counting and weight tracking. At NC State, Laurie focuses on function over form, reminding her athletes to look beyond the mirror and recognize the incredible things their bodies can do. From experience, Coach Henes underscores the importance of professional help and specialist treatment for those struggling with eating disorders. Great athletes come in all different shapes and sizes, and we emphasize how embracing your body at the size and shape it feels strongest at will ultimately lead to your best performances over the long-term. We touch on Laurie’s time coaching her daughter, Elly Henes, to her own NCAA title and how she helped steer Elly away from the disordered eating culture so prevalent in elite sports.  Follow the NC State Wolfpack on Instagram @Wolfpack_tf_xc and Twitter @packxc Laurie Henes’ Official Bio: Coach Laurie Henes is the head women’s track and field and cross country coach at NC State University. Laurie Henes enters her 4th year at the helm of the NC State women's track and field program and her 30th year as a member of the NC State Track & Field staff in the 2020-21 season. Henes began her coaching career as an Assistant Coach for the Pack, before changing roles in the fall of 2016, and then in the winter of 2019, she was promoted from Associate Head Coach to Head Coach of the women's team.  An NC State graduate, Henes was an NCAA champion, a six-time All-American and a three-time All-ACC performer in track & field. Laurie represented the U.S. at the World Track & Field Championships in Sweden in 1995 after placing second in the 10,000m at the USATF National Championships, and she was a finalist at the 1996 U.S. Olympic Trials in the 10,000m. Since joining the Wolfpack coaching staff in 1992, Henes has guided NC State's female distance runners to more than 37 All-America certificates and 30 ACC titles on the track. This past cross country season, Coach Henes coached her team to win ACC’s for the 6th year in a row and NCAA’s for the first time in NC State program history. In that one race, the NCAA Division 1 Cross Country Championships, NC State had 5 All Americans and Coach Henes was named both the ACC and NCAA Division 1 Coach of the Year. Learn more about Lindsey's Services and the Team at Rise Up Nutrition: www.RiseUpNutritionRUN.com Worried that you have RED-S? Curious to know how we could help or how you can recover fast?! Download the RED-S Recovery Race & see how you place for more support: