Follow Your Heart, What Else Do you Have?

“There comes a point in an athlete’s life where we wonder if our commitment, discipline, and dedication has become a delusional pursuit of something that was not meant for us. I know that sometimes Steph wonders that about herself, about how many times she can be so close to the dream that she can nearly touch it before she should find a new dream. And yes, even though after each race she debriefs us in a way that leaves us all hopeful and inspired the heart does break with each disappointment.” - Tianna Madison in the Foreword of Follow Your Heart

When I announced 2022 would be my final year of racing, Coach Ben Rosario presented me with an idea. He wanted to chronicle the final 12 weeks of my career—sharing anecdotes from my life inside and outside of running, and giving readers an intimate look into my life, culminating at the NYC Marathon. Goodbye Marathon we called it. Per usual I was hooked. Ben blew me away by his elegant writing style and way with words. We had a vision and a plan. And of course the engine behind us was Jen, editing and copying and doing all the BTS work that no one sees and rarely gets credit for. We met each week for those 10-12 weeks, I would narrate, he would ask the questions, and he would record and transcribe. There would be no editing, no filter. Whatever mood I was in, however many times I said “like in a sentence, that’s in there. It was slightly terrifying and very cathartic to divulge everything going through my mind those last few months of the training cycle. I was nailing workouts, juggling the family’s schedules, but I was on top of all the little things in my running. I loved every minute of practice with my teammates because I was thinking these were my last. There’s so much that took place over those 12 weeks I didn’t know how we could possibly tell the whole story. I think we got pretty dang close.

Then I made the decision I wasn’t done yet. This would not be my final season. I would not be retiring. Did I ruin the entire premise of the book? Did I waste both of our time? After an honest and uncomfortable conversation between Coach Ben and I, which I’ll tell you is a healthy sign of a great relationship and friendship that I believe we have built over the years, we knew we could pivot.

The beautiful part is so much of the story didn’t change. I was playing out those last few months of training and racing as if they were my last. It’s what I had felt in my heart 10 month ago when I announced my retirement. But the thing is, life happens when you’re busy making other plans. It the simplest of explanations I had a change of heart. So fittingly we arrived at a new title, Follow Your Heart. In my best estimation there is no other way to live life. There you have it. The backstory to how Ben Rosario and I collaborated to write our first book together. I hope you find some of yourself in it. I hope you see more of who I am in it. Of how our team trains. Of what makes NAZ Elite a force, our coaching staff, our support. I hope you see the time and effort my coaches invest in me and all of us. I hope you see how I could never do any of this without my family, my support, my believers, my haters (because you gotta have some right), and my unexplained unrivaled belief in myself. As Coach Ben wrote “ I learned that Steph Bruce doesn’t make decisions with her head. She follows her heart. And it’s all worked out pretty damn well so far.”

-Steph Bruce

The Pivot

 Back in November a friend of mine sent me this message: “So I was listening to Serena Williams on a podcast and found the best language for you to describe this year…she talked about having an evolution away from professional tennis instead of retirement…I love the word evolution, I see it kind of like postpartum and not getting back to your body but going into a new one…you are evolving and it is beautiful. And that evolution isn't done yet! Have a great run today and I'm so proud of you…mainly for all the things you're doing in your life outside of running, but the running is pretty sick too…”

Thanks to her message I find myself evolving--without reason, or explanation, or making sense in every way. I sat here one year ago typing out a blog that scripted out my last year, what I believed to be my Grit Finale. See at the end of 2021, I had discovered a heart condition that I’ve had since birth--BAVD. My running felt like it was on a downward spiral. My mother had died, and I found myself re-evaluating everything in life. I lost my dad in 2002, when I was 18, and now my mom in 2021. At 38 I felt very adult and very alone. I tell you this for some context as to perhaps why I was driven to make the decision to retire. I was diagnosed with Bicuspid Aortic Valve Disease and without family history, or my parent’s advice, I thought maybe this whole running thing wasn’t right for me. Yet I had a successful trip to MedStar where my sports cardiologist, Dr. Ankit Shah, reassured me, “Your heart is doing beautifully. If you decide to retire it need not be because of your heart.” But I was still torn. My body hadn’t been serving me well and I thought these were the signs one might be nearing the end of a professional athletic career. In hindsight, perhaps it was simply that grief had not been serving me well. 

I launched into 2022 optimistic and relishing every opportunity to train, to be on a starting line. My workouts were consistent and many times I was knocking them out of the park. I ran a road mile PR at altitude of 4:47 in practice. At age 38? Each race I shared with my community of followers, and meet and greet runs, and friends and family came out to watch. What was this success I was having? Was it magic because I said it was my last everything? Or was this simply the athlete I still was and the cloud of grief from the year prior was lifting?

The rest of the year was action-packed, with a coaching shift from Ben to Alan and Jenna, a 12th-place finish at the Boston Marathon, 100-mile weeks, a 10k road pr, a trip to Australia for the Gold Coast Marathon, a NACAC 10,000m victory--followed by an epic dance party in the Bahamas like I was 24 again. It was filled with a National Title at the 10k road champs in Cow Harbor, beautiful articles, and videos, and stories written about me--highlighting my career. I capped off what felt like an amazing fall by finishing 13th-place at the NYC Marathon. Not the race of my dreams from a performance standpoint but so much love surrounding it. So I began to question. I began to feel guilty that maybe I had changed my mind. That I wasn’t sure I was ready to retire. But can I do that? I mean Coach Ben was writing a book on “my last marathon at NYC,” this would surely derail his work and vision? (But actually he pivoted beautifully and we’re really excited to release this book for a more intimate look into last year).

To those people and races, and agents and teammates and friends and competitors and family  -- I do owe, a genuine thank you for letting me play out 2022 as if it was my last,- and also for accepting that  -- after a period of deep reflection -- now I have had a change of heart. I am not ready to hang up my racing shoes.

 When you get to where I’m at in my career, the moments and victories are no longer just for you. They are for everyone in your corner. Yet my corner had just celebrated me. They had put a lot of emotional investment into me this last year.  But I feel that the fire was still lit. When I spoke of retiring from the sport in early 2022, a big factor I missed was wanting to leave this sport when the fire is out. Not necessarily when it makes sense in life, or to others, or even to myself. But when I don’t want to head out the door and train in 25 degree temps and freezing snow/sleet like my 16-miler last weekend. Or when I don’t want to feel sore from lifting 125 lb deadlifts that make my tendons and ligaments stronger and able to kick like crazy at the end of races. Or when I get to the last mile of our 3 x 3 mile workout and don’t think in my head, “Oh you wanna go right now? Let’s go!” So what does this mean?

It means I’m not going anywhere yet. With HOKAs still on my feet, NAZ Elite teammates by my side, and my family behind me, we’re gonna keep it rolling. My family has been everything in this process. We even sat at the dinner table a few weeks ago asking everyone’s opinion on changing course. How it affects Ben’s training, pacing, his goals in life, juggling household duties, traveling for the boys’ youth sports, growing our family, my heart, and much more.

I can’t say for certain what my goals or racing schedule will look like beyond my next race, which I’m thrilled to say is the USATF Cross Country Champs on January 19th. I wanna choose wisely in this pivot part of my career. It’s not he Grit Finale (P.S. if anyone who bought a Grit Finale sweatshirt wants a refund please reach out and I’ll gladly send one over:). I can say that I will continue writing the next chapter of my story. And I will continue to share my heart on my sleeve for those interested.

My hope is to always carve my own path, leave behind an imprint on this sport, where I made a meaningful difference and maybe gave people permission to chase the impossible, to shake things up, to not be afraid to pivot. I believe my desire to share myself authentically will always open me up to vulnerability, but I don’t know any other way to live. I guess I am just foolish enough, but maybe brave enough, to take you along with my dreams and goals, even if I don’t know how they may play out. So thank you for being here and listening. Here’s to the next chapter of my professional running career, and pivoting.

Steph Bruce

My Gritty Heart

I’m just going to cut to the chase and drop the punch line. I am retiring. This year. But not until the end of the year. How do you write the beginning of the end of something? A journey that has lasted the better part of my life, and changed my life, saved my life, brought meaning to my life, and allowed me to truly live my dream. There’s a bit of a story to this if you’d like to keep reading.

As I slipped on a hospital gown a million feelings rushed through my head. The echo tech placed a few patches on my chest, squeezed cool gel on the tool, and began my echocardiogram. He jokingly said my heart was so clear and beautiful he loved taking pictures of it. About 20 minutes in he asked, “Does your dad get echos?” I told him my father died 20 years ago so I have no idea if he did. In my head I was wondering why on earth did he ask that. So naturally the last half of my echocardiogram I felt a lump in my throat of, “What was he seeing on his screen?” This was a long 20 minutes to wait for the test to be concluded. Long coming from someone who runs marathons for a living.

I showed up to practice the next day doing my best to keep moving forward. Waiting for news. Coach Ben and I walked around the lush green sports fields after our usual drills and strides meet up and he could sense I was about to break. I had been carrying this news for a mere 24 hours, and my running career flashed through my eyes, my future, the boy’s future, my past, my potential. All of it. I kept waiting. I am thankful to coach Ben in that moment, along with all the moments we have worked together for the past 8 years. In that moment he just put his arm around me as if to say we will be fine.

About 5 days earlier I had just finished 15 x a mile with 1 minute rest with Kellyn where we averaged 5:32s with our 4th, 8th, and 12th repeat at 5:28, 5:22, 5:17. I needed this workout. The NYC Marathon was 4 1/2 weeks away and to be honest the past few months had been pretty crappy. I failed to make another Olympic Team and my mom passed away. Typically I am not the type of person who looks at events in their life and dwells on the low points. From a very young age, I’d guess 18 when my dad died I had two choices on how I could react to what life threw at me. Because there is power in positivity and perspective and seeing all the good that you do have in life. So when I went to see a cardiologist on October 6 in Flagstaff and he said, “We found on your echo that you have a congenital heart condition,” I thought, “Well that's something I wasn’t expecting to hear.” And my glass half full went out the window. I walked out of that appointment and I had no parents to call. So many questions and no one to answer them. It felt very scary. Like I had just discovered something new about my life and did not know what the ramifications would be. Receiving news that is unknown and scary about your health affects everyone differently. It’s important to respect that family, friends and strangers will all hear a diagnosis and have a hundred different opinions.. But all that truly matters is how you feel and how you sit with something that is your life.

So here’s the deal: I was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition called Bicuspid Aortic Valve disease (BAVD). It’s the most common congenital heart disease that affects people. I had no idea until two months ago, at age 37 that I had it. I feel very grateful that a series of things this year led me to go to the doctor, see Dr. Sarah Wyard, and ultimately have an ECHO recommended and that’s how I was diagnosed. None of the symptoms I was having had any correlation to BAVD, and that’s the confusing but also amazing part. I thought I was having physical manifestations of grief and trauma but nothing was showing up medically. The likelihood that some of how I felt in 2021 was stress induced from grief is pretty high in my estimation. But the gut punch was finding out about my heart.

For those curious on this congenital heart condition, let me explain BAVD in a nutshell:

The aortic valve separates the left lower heart chamber (left ventricle) and the body's main artery (aorta). Flaps of tissue (cusps) on the valve open and close with each heartbeat and make sure blood flows in the right direction. Usually the aortic valve has three cusps. A bicuspid valve has only two cusps. A bicuspid aortic valve may cause heart problems, including:

Backward flow of blood (aortic valve regurgitation). Sometimes, the bicuspid aortic valve doesn't close tightly, causing blood to flow backward. This is what I have going on. My ECHO said there are varying levels- mild, moderate, and severe. I have moderate aortic regurgitation. This is ultimately what my doctors will keep an eye on.
Going forward I will have an echo done every 6 months-1 year for the remainder of my life. This will monitor the valve and the regurgitation going on. When it gets to severe I will have to have heart surgery to repair my valve.

A few weeks ago I took a trip out to Washington DC and Baltimore to meet with an amazing team of doctors at MedStar Health. My agent and friend Josh Cox whom I am forever bound to for all his support and help guiding my career, introduced me to Sean Huffman, Vice President of MedStar Sports Medicine. Sean and Tashera helped plan and coordinate my visit to see Sports Cardiologist Dr. Ankit Shah, Dr. Matt Sedgley, and Dr. Josh Billings. I decided to make this as much of a meaningful trip as possible so I brought Hudson, my 6 year old with me and we toured Washington DC seeing all the sights before my friend/mentor Larry ( who works with Josh and Carrie of Boom Management) picked us up in DC. I then began the emotional but thorough 48 hours of testing. Larry watched and hung out with Hudson while I had a 75 minute heart MRI with contrast, an EKG, a cardiac pulmonary stress test, an appointment with Dr. Shah, a gait analysis with Dr. Josh Billings and Dr. Matt Sedgely, and a bio patch stuck on my chest for a two week heart monitoring. After meeting with Dr. Ankit Shah and Dr. Matt Sedgely who reviewed all of my scans, my MRI, my EKGs, my Eco, and the cardiac treadmill stress test the doctors felt 100% certain there are no imminent dangers or risk to me continuing to train and race at the highest level and do what I do for a living at this moment and in the near future. What a gift they gave me. Reassurance and ease. This team of doctors I will forever be indebted to.

Dr. Matt Sedgley and Dr. Josh Billings of MedStar

All this being said, my plan is for 2022 to be my last competitive year as a professional runner with my biggest supporters--HOKA NAZ Elite. I will be retiring at the end of 2022. I feel right about this decision as discovering this about my heart enabled me to gain a deeper perspective on my life and what I want from it.  I had envisioned making it to 1 more Olympic cycle and trying for 2024 but life happens when you're busy making other plans. I think the most difficult part of this announcement as professional athlete is that I am finally giving up on my dream of making an Olympic Team. Do I think I would have a shot in 2024, absolutely. Would many believe not a chance, absolutely. Our family wants to grow and I am creeping towards my forties and the possibility of more children and a heart surgery one day in my life pushed me towards this decision.

I would however like to go out with a bang. So 2022 will be called The Grit Finale, a year of training and racing all of my LAST races. My LAST National Championships, my LAST track races, my LAST marathons. In typical Steph fashion I plan to bring the sport and fans along with me. The creative team of Rabbit Wolf Creative, Ryan Sterner and Stephen Kersh will be following me and documenting the year. We plan to release videos on my youtube channel along the way. We are looking to coordinate pre-race group runs at many of my races and host post-race get-togethers. Because so many professional runners just fade out, have an injury, hang out and just quietly leave the sport we don’t get to celebrate what they did...what they poured themselves into...the impact they had. Think about many of the NFL or MLB players who you hear about their retirement and maybe wish you could have seen them play one last time. Well that’s what I’m hoping to do here. If you’ve followed my career in any capacity and feel like I somehow made a difference or impact, try to come to my last races. Join our pre race runs or post race celebrations. Be part of this Grit Finale with me. This is a sport I’ve given 15 years to so I’d like to give back and go out with a bang.

Because let’s celebrate being here and being together and for me personally, leaving this sport better than when I got here. 

If I’m being honest this news sat with Ben and I very hard and strangely over the past few months trying to figure out what it really means for us. It doesn't feel like I have an illness at all so we don't like to think of it that way and so we are not living with worry or fear. In fact we are just trying to live our lives to the fullest. Ben I am so beyond thankful for you in my life and for Riley and Hudson to witness what we share. Walking and running through this crazy life with you makes it all worth it. Finally, thank you to all my support crew, family, the Rothsteins, the Bruces, friends Claire, Steph, Anna, Nicole and Jeff, fan girls and boys (ha), HOKA, NAZ Elite teammates, Coach Ben and Jen, Jenna, Josh and Carrie, Larry, Mike and Theresa, Wes and AJ, JB, Shea and Olivia, Pro Compression, Picky Bars, Picky Crew (Lauren, Jesse, Sarah, Julia) Laird, Rudy Project, Final Surge, our Running with the Bruces athletes, my G& G leaders, our Grit and Growth community, and the entire running community. I would not have come this far without all of you in my corner. But we’re not done yet, we have this whole Gritty Year!

Love Steph Bruce

How I got rid of Plantar Fasciitis... kinda of

Each morning for the last 13 weeks I have woken up, unstrapped my plantar boot, while attempting to not awaken Ben with the screeching sound of Velcro coming undone, stretch my toes, pull my heel down from my arch, and swing my legs out of bed, into my Hoka slides and taken my first step. Just getting out of bed has been a whole process for the last 3 months. The crappy days were the ones where I just kept the night boot on and crawled (yes crawled) to the bathroom so as not to put any pressure on my heal without it being warmed up. Big ups to Ben for taking all of the middle of the night wake ups that my kids had because as I alluded to above I couldn’t just pop out of bed and walk into the boys’ room to check on them.

Plantar fasciitis is painful. An injury I wish no one had to experience and one I really struggled to see the finish line. It literally feels like knives in the bottom of your feet every-time you put pressure on it. You want to rub out your arches and heel but at the same time don’t even think about touching my arch. 

It’s a condition that doesn’t make a lot of sense but I am going to attempt to make sense out of it for those struggling with it and who have been following my path.

Back in December I raced the marathon project in Phoenix Arizona. Well I tried to race it. My plantar had flared up for the first time in my career about three weeks earlier. I started to notice a slight stiffness and almost sharp nodule in my heel after some runs. I thought just typical wear ands tear from how hard I was training. So I lined up for the 10,000m at the sunset tour on December 5th. We were aiming to run the Olympic standard of 31:25 in the thick of heavy marathon training. With about eight laps to go I felt a change in my stride and an intense sensation in my heel. I grinded the last 2 miles hoping I could hold it together. In typical dramatic fashion (ask Ben, Ben, and Josh) I ran 31:24, just half a second under the Olympic standard. But then I could not walk. I tried to hobble a cool down but knew something was definitely wrong. The next morning I woke up and when I took my first step out of bed it felt a dagger in my foot. I ended up taking the next three days off and do everything possible to keep the momentum going and be ready to race the marathon in 12 days. It improved slightly with rest and every time I had treatment on my lower leg calf and ankle I had a tiny bit of relief in the heel. Ok we’re still on!

I made it 17 miles in the marathon before I began unraveling. I think my body was trying to compensate and not land on my heel so then up the chain my hip and glute stopped firing and became painful. I look back and believe not finishing that marathon was one of the best decisions I’ve made in my career. And I hate dropping out of races. It’s only the second one I’ve ever started and not finished. 

So what did I do?

• Rest

I began with rest because anytime you sustain any type of injury that should be your first course of action. Because I had trained through a marathon cycle, even though I didn’t finish the race, we committed to our typica] 2 weeks off. No running, no cross training, no core work, just OFF. I was still in immense pain after 2 weeks off, so I took another.. and another.. and another. I didn’t run for close to 5 weeks. And guess what it still wasn’t better. I was pissed and confused. The rest principle I prided myself on was not working.

Then what

• Treatment, strengthen, rehab

My first run was 2 miles. And it was awful. My heel hurt the entire time. I came home defeated and started doing that thing where you spiral with negative thoughts, projecting in the future, and basically write your own running obituary. Let me share with you a little secret. That never helps. So I told myself to get over it, stop with the pessimism, and start with action. I had chiropractic treatments with Dr. Wes Gregg of Hypo2 in Flagstaff, 3 times a week and John Ball, my chiro in Phoenix. They worked on loosening up my calf, unlocking my ankle, and up the chain to my adductor and hamstring. I was prescribed the following exercises:

• Ankle mobs (band around your talus joint, see picture below) and drive the knee forward creating a stretch in the front of your ankle

• Peroneal strengthening- using a band to resist you, point your foot down (dorsiflex) and out. You should feel your peroneals ( group of muscles that originate from fibula (lower leg bone) and for this reason, these are also known as fibularis muscles. All these muscles insert into the bones of the mid foot called tarsals and metatarsals, which are present between bones of the ankle and the toes) engage. Perform 2-3 sets of 8.

• Post tib eccentric band exercises. Google this!

• Glute med holds- lying on your side, raise your top leg and push it behind you until you feel you glute med ( butt muscle) turn on. Hold for 20-30 seconds. Repeat 3-5 times

• Calf wall stretches - these were really painful in the beginning and I barely had any range of motion.

• Toe presses into the ground with rolled towel- roll up a towel, place under your toes and with your heel on the ground, press your toe knuckles into the ground for 5 seconds and let go. Repeat 6-8 times.

• THE Toe Pro: a company started by Tom Michaud, recommended to me by John Ball and a tool I believe will help many suffering from PF. I bought one for $50, use it everyday. There’s a whole routine on their website with videos and articles to assist you. They are the experts not me! And Tom was kind enough to give any of my readers a 20% off code, just use STEPH at checkout.

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And the find the cause

Plantar is all about managing stress and load and discovering what went wrong in the first place to get you in this position. For me, I believe the quick transition from flats to spikes for my track 10k did me no favors. But there was also an underlying gait issue that my body was very efficient at going around and compensating for. I wasn’t using my toes as I should, wasn't pushing off with my big toe, and so my lower leg (calf, peroneal, post tib) got lazy and stopped working for me. Now I don’t expect everyone to dive this deep into their movement patterns and get nerdy scientific but you should feel what may not be working and try to target those weaknesses in your rehab routine.

And give it Time

This is the easiest advice to give and the hardest to take. I don’t mean time as in just time off. That was only 5 weeks for me. But since those 5 weeks, it has been another 7 weeks of patience. After my first run of 2 miles, I took 2 days off, then ran another 2 miles. I tried to run 6 miles a week later and couldn't. I had many 2 steps forward, 1 step back moments. That seems to be the cycle of PF. But I committed to the rehab, to wearing the night boot, to cold/heat contrast baths after runs, to putting on the blinders of what others were running and comparing. I stopped throwing pity parties for myself and channeled a better attitude. I controlled what I could. My sleep, my nutrition, my rehab, my stress, my mindset.

My plantar isn’t gone. But it’s trending in the right direction. Each week with more volume and intensity it’s less sore. How I felt after a 3 mile run 2 months ago is how I feel now after a 14 mile run. Now’s not the time to get complacent. Now’s the time to double down on all the right things and keep the momentum going. There’s no quick fix. No gimmicks. If you’re finding yourself in the cycle of PF, try some of the above. Rest until it’s tolerable to stress it with rehab, stress it with running very gradually, stress it with strengthening exercises for your calves, your toes, your glutes, wear shoes always until the pain is gone, heat it up when you wake up, take a short walk before you run, and give it time and patience. I got this, you got this, we got this.

Dream Big

Steph Bruce