A Note From Freetrail: For The Love of Coaching is a four-part series from nonfiction writer Lindsey Gallagher. Just like sports broadly, coaching has long been a male-dominated industry, but as the author notes this is changing – and we are here for it. Over the next several months this series will highlight women leading women in coaching, mentoring, and encouraging athletes to find their place on the trail. If you missed part one or part two in the series find those here: one & two.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen a growth in the attention on female sports—female athletes, female coaches, female fans. Trail and ultra running has been no exception. In our sport, some of the biggest names are female. As an avid runner, I’ve taken note of just how many female athletes are finding success with female coaches. I quickly began to wonder about the experiences of these women guiding, mentoring, and encouraging athletes in a sport that remains male-dominated. So I’ve spoken to just a few of these female coaches to answer my questions. Over the next few months, I’ll share a conversation with each one I interviewed to bring their wisdom and energy to others.
This month I spoke with Hannah Allgood. After a childhood of avoiding the mile run in gym class, Hannah found the sport in college as a way to manage stress. Thanks to her husband, Hannah soon stepped into trail running. Slowly but surely Hannah made big improvements chasing Strava segments and the fastest woman in her town. After a breakout year in 2022, running became more than just a hobby. Now a coach for Freetrail, she brings her unique perspective as a physical therapist to her work with athletes.
Lindsey Gallagher: To start, I hoped you could offer a brief introduction to your professional life, personal pursuits as a runner, and all of the things that you do.
Hannah Allgood: I’ve been running ultras since 2019. That is when I first really started getting into running. Growing up, I played soccer and basketball. I never did cross-country. I hated running. I was one of those kids in gym class that would go home “sick” when it was the mile run. Now it’s ironic that this is what I love to do more than anything. 2022 was the big year for me that made me realize I could be good at this sport. That’s when I won Gorge [Gorge Waterfalls 100K in Oregon] and did my first international race, CCC [Courmayeur/Champex/Chamonix 100K part of UTMB], and that was a huge eye-opening experience of how much I still had to learn and grow. I’ve been running professionally since then. Distance wise, I like to do longer stuff. This year has been a mix of short stuff for fun but I’ve really focused on the long distances.
On top of running, I’m a physical therapist so I work for a children’s hospital in their sports medicine department. I focus on college and high school athletes to help them get back to everything they want to do. Physical therapy [PT] is where my love has always been. Coaching just followed suit. I started that in 2023 through Freetrail. It was one of those things a friend and I were coaching friends and said maybe we’ll open something together and it worked out with Freetrail starting their coaching at the same time.
It took me a while to want to start coaching. I feel like I have all the knowledge, but, as a product, I wanted to have something that people enjoyed and something that I felt would contribute something different to the space [of running coaches]. Within the space, we have a lot of great coaches so it was really important for me to feel ready to give something back and provide something that’s slightly different than a lot of coaches, given my PT background. That has helped me gain confidence. Now I do part-time coaching, part-time PT, and part-time running. Had you told me three years ago that this is where I’d be, I’d laugh in your face and say no way. I think that’s the beauty of this sport, you can get these gains no matter what your PR [personal record]. You can really put time down, lay those bricks, and see that play out. It’s been fun and unique and a lot of having its own challenges with balancing those three parts. It’s been very rewarding and I’m so happy with how my life has evolved and changed in the last two and a half years.
Gallagher: What led you to want to coach other people?
Allgood: I was doing it casually for my husband and a couple of friends. But in my career as a PT, I see a lot of high school runners so we also have a program at the hospital called TRAC, The Running Athlete Clinic. With that, we see a lot of injured runners, whether that’s stress fractures or hip pain or something else. So I started with my patients, essentially programming their entire return to cross-country or return to track. I was like doing that for years and years helping these kids get back. Being in a science field there’s constant information and research and I wanted to see and learn what’s going on. I was already reading the research and being like ‘I think this is potentially something that I could tweak in my own training’ and we’d [Hannah and her coach] kind of test it on me. It already felt natural because I was already doing something pretty similar. But I felt like at the time I didn’t have the platform. There was also imposter syndrome—can I really do this? I know I have the knowledge but it was more me questioning would people want me to coach them or would they trust me in this situation? So it became more me reminding, or almost convincing, myself I have this education, I have this knowledge, I have these certifications, and I’m constantly trying to perform my best. It was almost like convincing myself that I could do it.
One of the biggest things that I’ve seen with talking to athletes and talking about their training and seeing injuries is that a lot of these things could be managed if someone was looking at it with a slightly different eye or took into consideration the whole athlete versus just miles or intensity. It got to this point where I felt like I could offer something to athletes across the ages that was unique. So I talked to Ryan Thrower and he wanted me to coach him. Then I wanted to start my own business and it kind of just fell in that perfect time when I was starting to do that myself. I talked to Dbo [Dylan Bowman] and everyone and they wanted me to be part of their [Freetrail] team and it kind of all came together at the right time. I have been so happy with Freetrail and everything that they are doing.
Gallagher: What are your guiding philosophies as a coach?
Allgood: One of my biggest underlying things is making sure the training fits the individual and not making the individual fit to the training. That becomes important especially when I’m looking at these athletes and providing them with a strength program or rehab program or just returning to running. I think a coaching relationship is about being open and honest with each other. My biggest things are creating a trusting and authentic relationship with my athletes, making sure that the training fits them and not just trying to put them to a set program. And being authentic in the sense of sometimes I don’t know the answer and being okay with not knowing that answer but also knowing we can find it together. Being aware of the fact that there’s things I don’t know and there’s things that potentially I could be missing. Having that understanding with each other making sure I’m in their corner trying to find the solution with them. It turns into this partnership focused around the athlete. That’s part of why I have a small number [of athletes]; I want them to make sure that they feel that I care about them and that they feel their program is individual to them. I think it’s really impactful in those relationships to feel really valued by your coach, and that’s really really high on my list: that every single athlete knows I care and knows I’m always in their corner no matter what.
Gallagher: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced as a female coach?
Allgood: I’m probably kind of ignorant in this space cause I feel like I’ve had such great support. I feel like I always equip myself with certifications and extra things to be able to say “let me list out the things I have” because sometimes I feel that I have to show extra things and show that I have this knowledge. I think one of the biggest things I’ve dealt with is trying to always make sure people know that I know what I’m talking about and being able to educate them that way. I think it’s kind of unique because a lot of times athletes are seeking me out. So I’m probably a little less aware to the people that are already weeding me out because I’m a female. I almost have to arm myself with all of my education to say these are all of the things that I have and kind of almost overeducate at times to really hit home that this is all of the knowledge I have. I try to do that with my social media of “this is what I’m doing and these are the reasons why.” I’m really grateful that people have been receptive to that and seeking me out as far as I’ve had a lot of other professional fellow athletes that are reaching out with “hey I’ve got this thing, can you help me with my knee?” When I do that kind of opening up and educating people are more apt to ask you questions or come to you. I think sometimes it just takes a little bit longer for that initial step and conversation.
Gallagher: What are some of the challenges that female athletes face that you have to be equipped to handle as a coach?
Allgood: I have quite a few athletes that are in perimenopause, pre-menopause, even in menopause, and that completely changes how you have to view the athlete. Even if I look at the younger female athletes, including patients at the hospital and not just runners, they have a surgery and it’s really hard. At that stage when you’re treating a 16-year-old female and a 16-year-old male, they are drastically different. When we get a little bit older even when we get to the menstrual cycle itself and the different phases, there are different effects that happen every single month for female athletes.
On top of that, every single female athlete is different so even if we’re all in the same phase, everybody’s gonna be affected by that differently. I think it’s coming to that trusting relationship and being open and honest with that. “If we’re in the luteal phase and we’re feeling completely terrible right now? Okay, we need to back off the intensity and we need to hone into that.” When we get into that perimenopause, pre-menopause, even menopause, that is a changing factor where those athletes are also having a crazy dump of hormones all of the time. And that changes what we are doing with intensity and strength. It’s been shown that for women having heavier sets and reps of weights is gonna be more beneficial to strengthen normalizing hormones.
Some of the bigger challenges really comes down to so much communication with my female athletes. Cause everybody is just so different. Everybody is female but we’re all experiencing these things differently, and on top of that, month to month is different. One month you may feel fine, next month it can be all over [the place]. That’s where it gets tricky to find that balance and that’s where I think for me trying to have that open communication with my athletes. So it’s an ever-evolving door with female athletes.
Another bigger challenge is with my moms. They do so many things and having them find balance has been a really unique conversation. Typically, but not in every situation, they’re working a full-time job and running and helping with the kids. And trying to find that balance comes down to communication. I think a lot of my female athletes have a coach because it’s so hard to juggle all of those roles. Having that understanding from a female coach to another female, but also having someone to help guide you in these moments when it’s just so hard to balance this with everything else in your life on top of when you can’t sleep or not feeling well.
Gallagher: Why do you think representation of female coaches and athletes is important? How do you think the sport might evolve with continued attention on the female presence?
Allgood: Having more female athletes and female coaches in the space it shows younger generations what is possible, it gives them this role model, rather than seeing someone new that doesn’t look like them or talk like them. It gives you a wider view of how many avenues there are for this. Even for people in my generation, it really shows what’s possible. It’s so important that females continue to push a little bit more because we are different. It brings different perspective into the space. I do think that there are a lot of amazing male coaches, but if you haven’t actually truly felt what it is to be a female, I think you can only understand to a point. And that’s what really gives us [female coaches] the momentum.
Now there’s such a big shift and a lot of women are more comfortable and confident speaking out and talking about these things. It’s strength in numbers; I have a female coach and I’m a female coach and we’re all continually lifting each other up. Even me coaching Dbo. He put all his faith in me and that is a huge step that someone of his caliber is saying they trust me, and I’m his first ever female coach. He’s very open with that and that’s also what it takes as far as people speaking out of who their coach is and why they’re choosing their coach.
Even within the FASTR [Female Athlete Science and Translational Research] Program with Stanford, it’s all female researchers. It takes time but that’s where females are really starting to put themselves out there. They are saying “I have this knowledge, I am smart, and I’m gonna share it with the world.” That empowers those younger generations to pursue what they want and not be as nervous or scared or thinking that what they want to do is weird or even that they can’t do it. I think it’s really about continuing to talk about that in an open forum.
Gallagher: What is the most joyful part of coaching?
Allgood: One of my biggest joys is seeing my athletes grow and seeing what they’ve done, and it doesn’t even need to be in a race format. One of the biggest joys that I’ve had is athletes come to me that are injured and now they’ve been running for months injury free. That’s really rewarding for me because that’s one of my biggest goals; I’m trying to keep everybody healthy and getting better and stronger. One of my other big joys is I’ve had someone come to me with a pretty traumatic injury and they weren’t even running. Now, a year later, they’re doing a 50k and that’s so cool to see when we literally came from walking.
More so than race results is seeing these people reach their goals and even the feedback from them of “I ran that faster” or “I hiked less,” it’s all these small things. Also the relationships I’ve formed with these athletes. They’re very close to me and they mean a lot to me. It’s rewarding to create a safe space for them and to continue to build this relationship with someone that trusts you and you’re giving your all to them.
Gallagher: What has coaching taught you?
Allgood: Honestly, too much. Within the space of ultra running, it has taught me to be more gracious to myself. All these athletes have reached their different goals and maybe their goals are different than mine but realizing how lucky we are to be able to do this. I forget that, I get lost in the weeds. These athletes have taught me how to be grateful for these moments and shown me how many wonderful people there are in the world. People have been so gracious to me. And we say how much ultras are like life and life is kinda like ultras. There’s ups and downs in life, like training, and we all continue to come back and pursue these things. I think that has taught me about giving grace to everything. At ultras I put so much pressure on myself and sometimes a race doesn’t go well, well sometimes it just doesn’t go well. That’s how ultras are and we need to learn to have grace in that moment and find the reason why we love to do this.
Gallagher: What advice do you have for female athletes or women who want to become coaches?
Allgood: Write down your goals and why you want to do them. Finding the why behind what you want to do is that building block to those next steps. On top of that, even as cheesy as this sounds, is believe in yourself. There’s always gonna be something that you don’t know and there is always gonna be time to gain knowledge, learn more, grow more. But trust your gut instinct that this is something you want to pursue and put yourself out there. It will take time to grow, but if you just never do it cause you’re nervous, then you’ll never know. Take the chance on yourself. Believe in yourself and keep pushing forward.
