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. This is the final installment of the series if you missed parts one, two, or three give them a read.

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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.

For the final interview in our series, I spoke with Megan Roche. Megan is recognized by many for her trail/ultra running coaching expertise, which comes from her ability to build relationships with athletes, but also her science and research background as a double doctor with both an M.D. and a PhD. Beyond coaching some of the best athletes in the sport with the Some Work, All Play (SWAP) team, Megan is a parent; an elite runner; a podcaster (with husband David Roche she hosts the SWAP podcast); and co-founder of the Huzzah Hub, designed to empower female endurance athletes. Megan’s life is very full of incredible things. Behind it all is love. 

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. 

Megan Roche:  My background is in medicine and science, specifically studying bone stress injuries, Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), and female athlete performance. I started coaching my third year of med school with Some Work All Play (SWAP), started by my husband David. A few years later, we started a SWAP podcast and we enjoy talking about performance science and life anecdotes on Tuesdays. I also started a platform called Huzzah that shares performance science and health information for female endurance athletes.

Now with coaching, I preferentially take on female athletes just because it’s my area of research and interest [70% of Megan’s athletes are female]. I coach mostly for trail and ultras though I have experience with obstacle course racing, small amounts of triathlon and skimo, and some road and track as well. It’s fun to think about physiology across sports and just how similar endurance sports are. I love getting to connect with and learn from athletes of all backgrounds. I often wake up in the mornings and reflect on how much of a gift it is to get to interact with athletes who are striving in sport and also so many different areas of life. I’m constantly learning.  

I’ve been competing in ultras and sub-ultras since 2012. I started running and then trail running after I finished playing college field hockey. I’ve had two kids so I feel like it’s been a journey being in the sport and going through different seasons of life myself and that has informed how I coach athletes. I coach a lot of athletes that are coming back postpartum or who are thinking about fertility. It has been helpful to have that experience myself so I can learn how to best guide athletes.

Gallagher: What led you to coaching other people?

Roche: I think it came from the medicine piece. I loved thinking about human physiology, but in medicine so often you study what happens when physiology goes wrong, and it was fun to think what happens when that physiology excels? When I was in my first year of med school, I watched David coach and watched how passionate he was about getting to support athletes and getting to see their whole life journey. Honestly, it reminded me a lot of medicine and getting to work with an engaged patient population. So I started coaching my third year of med school and enjoyed connecting with athletes of all backgrounds and loved seeing athletes embrace training.

Gallagher: How did you get involved in running?

Roche: Growing up I always loved running. I dabbled a little in high school track so whenever they needed someone for a 4×4 or 4×8 [4x400m or 4x800m relay] I would hop into races as field hockey training. I met David my junior year of college [at Duke University]. He was training for a marathon at the time so I started hopping into his runs. We both fell in love with the hidden gems of the North Carolina trails together. Ultimately, I walked onto the track and cross-country team after playing field hockey. It was a jarring experience for my body because I went from being a power sport athlete to an endurance athlete within a few weeks. I learned a lot in that process about physiology and principles of building up as a runner—it was a fun shift. 

Gallagher: What are your guiding philosophies as a coach?

Roche: I want athletes to dream big and believe in themselves more than they could’ve ever imagined. It’s something that I think holds athletes back, especially female athletes, and I have  a lot of conversations surrounding what that looks like and how we can provide the training, structure, and support to help athletes reach those goals. Many athletes are afraid to state their big dreams and state what they want deep down inside. The process of bringing out those dreams is fun to see evolve. 

Right alongside that, the best way to achieve big goals is through health. I try to have open conversations because of my background in research and the prevalence of RED-S and fueling challenges in sport. I have open conversations about the health needed to support big goals and help athletes get to places where they are able to train consistently and feel empowered in their bodies. Sometimes athletes think they have to sacrifice health to get to their big goals, but the best way to hit a big goal is to prioritize health. 

The last point is getting curious alongside athletes about what works best for them. As a coach, I’m constantly trying to learn. It’s much more of a collaborative process than people think it is of getting feedback from an athlete. It’s so individual and nuanced in that collaboration of curiosity.

I think coaching is an art and a science at the same time. You need to come in with the scientific principles to understand training philosophy. Having that baseline understanding of the science is helpful and it’s a delicate art to talk to an athlete and understand what they feel works best for them, what they’re motivated to do, and what they’re looking for in terms of goals. I feel like my role as a coach is constantly asking questions and being curious about athletes and what they enjoy, but also always having that scientific and informed approach throughout that whole process.

Gallagher: What are some of the challenges that female athletes face that you have to be equipped to handle as a coach?

Roche: The biggest one is fueling. The prevalence of RED-S and low energy availability in sport is high. I would say that among the athletes I coach, maybe 50% have dealt with it at some point in time. We have open and honest conversations that this is normal and let’s work together to address this and get a team of experts on board. For female athletes, it’s understanding training load and rest. Like all athletes, there’s so much hype and enthusiasm for training and I want to make sure that it’s sustainable and that we can keep those health and performance goals in tandem. It’s about recognizing the power of big training and also big adaptation right alongside training. That way we’re thinking about being the best athlete in three months and also in three years and not causing risk of burnout. 

Gallagher: Can you talk about the lack of research on female athletes and what you’re doing with the Huzzah Hub?

Roche: Huzzah has been fun because I feel like there’s not only a lack of research on female athletes but also a lack of translation of research studies out there. The number of articles that just get buried in a journal and don’t make it out into the world are high. We want to take that research that is available and make it accessible and interesting. For me, reading a scientific paper is interesting but that’s not the case for a lot of people. A lot of people learn when things are broken down into concrete, easy-to-understand points. When it’s fun and engaging, it’s gonna stick so much better in the brain. We try to have a lot of fun with our science and how we present it because I think it’s the best way to teach and get those messages out there. 

Gallagher: Why do you think representation of female coaches and athletes is important? 

Roche: We have so much work to do in the representation piece. Female athletes as a whole are underrepresented and when you dive into different sectors and identities within being a female athlete, like being a black female athlete or being a transgender female athlete, there’s such a lack of representation. There’s good efforts but I think there’s still so much more to be done. The trail community is great because we’re all out together on trails and it feels like more of a welcoming community than other spaces within sport. Still, there’s work to be done with access and representation. It’s something we’ve been thinking about with Huzzah with scholarships—how do we support this access and build awareness of how amazing trails are?

I feel powerless sometimes as a coach because there’s so much I want to do on this front. My focus is on putting as much love out into the universe as possible for my athletes and hopefully they’ll go on and magnify it. After the election, I was really sad the next day and poured love into my athletes’ logs because it was the least I could do. As a coach, I feel like you get to pour love into people and it feels like an act that at least makes a difference. 

Gallagher: How do you hope the sport will evolve with continued attention on the female presence?

Roche: We need more female coaches. We need a lot of different ways to support female coaches. We always need to lift up and support female coaches because they are more of a rarity within sport. When we see a female coach in sport we need to celebrate that coach and uplift her and make sure she feels comfortable and welcome. Mentorship and seeing a female coach is so powerful for other yet-to-be female coaches out there. 

We need programs for education and funding female coaches. There’s so much to be done. But having a higher percentage of female coaches itself will support a growing body of female athletes and female athletes who are staying in sport because they feel comfortable talking to a female coach about something that’s unique to being a female athlete. I hope they go hand-in-hand in terms of more female coaches, more female athletes or even more female coaches demanding more female coaches. It’s a bidirectional arrow in terms of let’s get both on board. I’m constantly brainstorming in this area.

Gallagher: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced as a female coach?

Roche: Probably the biggest challenge for me is I combine coaching with a number of other different things in life, like my own training, being a mom, Huzzah, and podcasting. It’s about finding how that fits into a lot of different things. I see a lot of female athletes doing something similar where coaching is not the only thing they are focusing on. My life is a constant balance of figuring out time. I try to show up for my athletes for calls and daily check-ins and being there for them. 

Connection is also a challenge. I work with my husband David and I love working with him and I’m part of the The Coaches Collective and the Women’s Running Coaches Collective and various groups, but I do think sometimes I feel like I’m within a silo that feels unique. I would love to have more connection with other coaches.

Gallagher: What is the most joyful part of coaching? 

Roche: The daily interactions with my athletes. The process of getting to pour love into people and I feel it come right on back. I have such amazing conversations with athletes on a daily basis. I’m constantly learning from their lives and even from their physiology from a science perspective. It’s a gift to be let into an athlete’s life for the things that they share with me. I’ve had eight-year coaching relationships with a lot of my athletes at this point—that’s a long time. You see athletes go through things like pregnancy and marriage and job changes and getting to show up with them right alongside of running is like getting to live vicariously through other peoples’ lives.

Gallagher: What has coaching taught you?

Roche: It gets back to the power of dreaming. As an athlete, I was always scared to put myself out into things that didn’t feel at least 75% certain. I have seen athletes do things beyond their wildest dreams and sometimes even beyond my wildest dreams, and I think it’s the power of showing up. I’ve learned so much courage from my athletes. I feel it as an athlete because I feel all the same things standing on a starting line, like nervousness and fear and what’s coming ahead. I’ve become more resilient as a result of coaching because I carry their experiences with me on a starting line. It makes me feel more empowered and so much more ready to be courageous out there.

Gallagher: What advice do you have for female athletes or women who want to become coaches?

For the longest time, I was afraid to take on coaching. I see this a lot with female athletes that there’s a level of hesitancy with coaching and it took me a while to want to take on my first professional or elite athlete. Now I’ve built that confidence over time that I want to coach world champions or a future Olympic champion. The biggest thing is put yourself out there before you feel you’re ready. Especially as a female, I think that’s often not our nature. You are ready and I was ready long before I started coaching professional and elite female athletes. I’m really grateful that I’ve had that experience. I hope other coaches feel comfortable coaching all sorts of levels and building up to that experience because it’s been really transformative.

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This interview concludes our series on female coaches. I hope you’ve gleaned wisdom and inspiration from these incredible women—Lindsey, Carolina, Hannah, and Megan. I count myself lucky to have been in conversation with them. To close, I want to share with you some of the wisdom I gleaned—the things that came up again and again from each one of them about female athletes and coaches in trail/ultra running:

• The sport needs more diversity. Trail and ultra running is still overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. We need more athletes, coaches, race organizers, media people etc. who are BIPOC, female, and LGBTQIA+. We need more people who have different body types, who are neurodiverse, who represent varied cultural backgrounds, who are parents, who have different socioeconomic statuses. We also need more research for and investment in athletes who are marginalized. The sport will be best when everyone has a chance to be part of it. Making it more accessible to diverse groups should be a priority.

• A person-forward approach to coaching—that is, working individually with each of your athletes and making training work with their life often leads to the most fulfillment for the athlete. Female athletes often require a more adaptable training plan because of all the life things they juggle on top of unique health needs—cookie-cutter approaches just don’t work. Ultimately, coming from a place of joy and love as a coach makes this happen. 

• To all the female athletes and female coaches (or coaches to be): Go for it. Don’t be afraid to jump in and try. Even if you think you’re not ready, you’ve likely been ready and haven’t fully acknowledged your strength and capabilities. Do the thing that scares you. You may be surprised by what you can achieve. Dream big.