WHY YOGA AND RUNNING?

Yoga is also about much more than breathing and relaxing (though these are also essential!). Yoga can make you stronger, build a better core, and help correct preexisting imbalances in your body. This translates to less injuries and faster, more consistent running. We could keep going, but it might be more helpful to watch Ann's TED talk, "Do Yoga Run Faster," to the right here!:

Yoga provides a useful time-out from the competitiveness required by running as a sport. For the often intense environment of athletics, a yoga practice offers profound benefits: increased body awareness, strength, flexibility, reduced stress, and an ability to coordinate movement with breath. Yoga is all about listening to your body at a particular moment, breathing, doing what is best for you and your body right then. Rather than paying attention to distractions outside yourself, yoga is a chance to direct attention inward during a specific moment. This focus carries over to running itself—letting you actually be more competitive because you’ve taken a moment to let yourself relax, but also because you are generally more attuned to what is going on in your body. This skill can clearly help prevent injuries, in addition to the general increase of flexibility and strength that comes with a yoga practice. 

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Athletes involved in sports built on the efficiency of repetitive movements, such as running, have even more to gain from yoga.  Repetitive motions can reinforce existing imbalances in the body, and make the body tighter and more developed in some areas than others. Many runners find that as their mileage increases, or they run more intense or hillier workouts, they become tighter.  Ann brings efficient yoga and stretching routines to her students in order to allow them to maximize their athletic potential. 

About Ann.

Ann is a Ph.D, elite runner, and yoga teacher whose mission is to show runners how they too can "do yoga run faster." Ann has trained unconventionally for years with a "low mileage, high yoga" plan that has resulted in post-collegiate PRs in every distance from mile to 10k, as well PRs in the half and marathon every year since she's starting running these distances. She believes other runners ought to be able to train free from injuries, and feeling smooth, fluid, and strong as she does through her yoga practice. Every runner deserves a chance to be the very best that they can be; Ann believes she can help everyone get there with a little dedicated yoga time.

Ann is a 200 hour E-RYT with Yoga Alliance, certified at the wonderful Yoga H’Om in Pittsburgh, PA. She is also an elite runner who specialized in the 5k/10k while running for the University of Notre Dame, and has current PRs of 17:26 (5k road, 2019), 35:54 (10k road, 2018), 59:52 (10 mile, 2018), 1:19:31 (half, 2018), and 2:44:45 (marathon, 2019).  Ann earned her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Virginia in 2014.  While in her graduate program, she taught more than 570 yoga classes while continuing to run and race.  She firmly believes her training and background in English literature and writing help her to communicate more effectively as a yoga teacher. Ann has always been detail-oriented--this comes through in her dedication to making her yoga classes as beneficial and efficient as possible.

Ann grew up competing in the endurance sports of running and swimming. During her sophomore year in high school, Ann decided she was tired of being known as the “not flexible one” amongst the girls in her family—both her mom and sister were competitive gymnasts—and started stretching daily. This early stretching-related body awareness paid off later when Ann ran track and cross country for Notre Dame. While running for ND’s competitive Division I program, Ann soon learned that stretching not only helped her stay uninjured and feel much smoother while running, but that it also made her a faster runner. As a walk-on to Notre Dame, Ann went on to earn All Big-East and NCAA All-Region honors in cross country. She typically stretched for at least an hour a day while running collegiately, and enjoyed figuring out stretches that most helped runner-specific tightness. During her senior year, her college coach put her in charge of leading the women’s team stretching for every practice, leading to significantly fewer injuries team-wide. However, Ann has always loved helping her teammates and other runners learn stretches that most targeted and alleviated their particular tightness. As she knows from experience, an uninjured runner is a happy runner!

Ann began practicing yoga in 2005, and became a certified yoga teacher in 2009 with the goal of helping runners and athletes continue in the sports they love and to become injured less often! Since Fall 2009, she has accumulated over 1000 hours of yoga teaching experience, through instructing University of Virginia students, faculty, and staff, and various running groups and camps. 

Ann currently races almost every weekend on the roads, in distances from the mile to marathon! She is currently training with the goal of qualifying for the Olympic Trials Marathon. She is at work on a yoga book for endurance athletes, and teaches yoga in the Kinesiology Department at the University of Virginia, as well as elsewhere around Charlottesville. if you want to take class with Ann, you can do so anytime online here! 

Be sure to follow "runnersloveyoga" on Instagram for yoga and running tips and inspiration!