WHOOP Podcast - Rebecca Hammond, Professional Spartan Racer, discusses the sport of obstacle course racing and how WHOOP has helped her become one of the world's best in such a short time.

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Pro Spartan racer Rebecca Hammond talks about what the sport of OCR is and how she got into it (2:41), how WHOOP has modified her training habits (5:55), what she does to get out of a recovery rut (6:44), her views on napping and nutrition (7:33), how she optimizes her sleep (12:47), taking Ambien and pre-bed supplements (14:19), her pre-race mindset (16:53), the spear throw and other obstacles at the Spartan World Championships (18:21), race strategy and awareness of other competitors (25:25), visualization and turning nervous energy into focus (27:11), her best recovery hack (30:24) and her lowest recovery on WHOOP (32:44).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance, but no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome to the Whoop podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Whoop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. At WOOP, our clients range from the best professional athletes in the world to Navy SEALs to fitness enthusiasts to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives. The common thread among WOOP members is a passion to improve. What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone?

On this podcast, we dig deeper, we interview experts, we interview industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. How can you use data to improve your body? What should you change about your life? My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the Whoop Podcast. Hey, everybody, I'm Kristen Holmes, here to introduce Will's guest, Rebecca Hammond, one of the world's top athletes in the sport of obstacle course racing.

Will spoke with Rebecca just prior to competing in the 2019 Spartan World Championships, an event she finished fourth in. Rebecca has experienced a remarkable ascension into the upper echelon of obstacle course racing, despite taking up the sport only two years ago. On top of that, she's also a recent graduate of Harvard Medical School. Will and Rebecca discuss her mindset before a race and how she tackles obstacles in a way unique only to her, how Woop has modified her approach to training and helped her reach the highest level of her sport, how sleep impacts her performance, as well as the steps she'll take to sleep better and boost her recovery. prior to competition. Here at WOOP, we're trying to promote better sleep by encouraging you to make your own rest solution in the new year. It's a big theme for us this month, and we'll be talking about it a lot on the podcast. Without further ado, here's Rebecca and Will.

Rebecca, welcome to the WOOP podcast. Thanks, Will. So we are live from the Spartan Media Fest, presented by ATP, and I have to say, you have a lot of success with the Spartan World Championships. So you've done this in under two and a half hours. Is that right? Yeah. Although I'd say the time, I don't really know what the time means because it's like a mountain run. The distance varies. There's obstacles, et cetera.

So the most important thing is trying to win the thing. Yeah. Yeah. And how did you get into this? I took a break from running during med school and started rock climbing and did a little bit of crossfit and tried OCR and realized it was the perfect kind of combination of. everything that I like. And describe OCR for our audience. So obstacle racing, um, it's basically like running, but with brakes to do monkey bars and pick up heavy things. It does seem like it

combines a lot of, you know, a lot of your different strengths, endurance, like everything, right? It's really putting it all together into, to one operation. Yeah. No, it's pretty awesome. And there's different, um there's different distances different styles like spartan for example tends to be more of a trail run mountain run with um sort of really like hard you know strong man obstacles like carrying heavy stuff plus some monkey bars whereas um the europeans tend to have a more sort of technical um race obstacle wise with like fancy monkey bars and stuff but um the courses tend to be flatter and yeah it's just a lot of variety you were a uh a fulbright scholar yeah which is pretty epic yeah so what were you studying in school um so at swarthmore college i uh studied different things it was liberal arts

but um i majored in biology and minored in chemistry and and you're always obviously into health and fitness um i don't know it's always uh health and fitness have always felt like sort of a separate part of my life like separate from my academics i guess health although you were you're an all-american in track yeah totally Okay. So don't sell yourself short. Oh, totally. No, no, no. I've always been into fitness. You're right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just not like, I haven't always intellectually been into fitness. Okay. Got it. So more so just as a hobby? A passion.

Passion. Yeah. And then really in what, the past few years, it's become something that you're really dedicating more of your time to? Yeah. I mean, I feel like I've always sort of thrown myself into things. And that includes athletics. So in high school, it was horseback riding, then college track. And now it's OCR. But I guess, yes, this is a first time where I'm not doing other things at the moment. So let's walk through a day in your life. You wake up in the morning. What's the first thing you do? I wake up in the morning. The first thing I do is I sit up so that I don't lie back down and then I get out of my bed and make my beds that I feel more awake. Nice. And then I put on my running clothes because if I don't get completely ready to go out

and work out after eating breakfast, I become lazy. I like that. Yeah. Okay. So now you've got your running clothes on, will you drink coffee, meditate, write anything down? What's your routine? So running clothes on, wash my face, brush my teeth, make coffee, make toast, eat those things, and then like either digest or drive to the place where I'm going to do my workout and then work out. And how long do you like to exercise for? It depends on the day. It's anywhere from zero minutes to like two and a half hours for a single session and then sometimes I'll have a second session that's like in the afternoon yeah 45 minutes now I see you're wearing a whoop strap yeah oh is awesome how have you used whoop to think about different exercises that you're doing yeah so

whoop was super helpful for me especially last year my first season in oCR I use the recovery score every day to dictate my workout basically um so I had like you know a list of work that I was supposed to get done in a week, and then I would distribute them based on what my recovery was was in that day. And sometimes if my recovery was too low for a bunch of days, I would have to change that week's schedule. But basically it dictated when I had my long, hard cardio workouts. I love that because that's so much of the inspiration behind the product is being able to modulate how much strain you put on your body based on how recovered you are. Totally. And so it sounds like you'll use it to even think about training plans over the course of a week or two weeks.

totally and what have you noticed when your body's run down for two or three days in a row maybe you're in the red or the yellow what have you noticed are things that you can do to get out of that is it just exercising less or are there other things that you'll do um it's sleep like if i get lots of regular sleep one good night's sleep isn't enough necessarily but um if i uh sleep at the same time and for long enough for multiple nights in a row that tends to help increase my Harvey variability. Also, actually, doing some short intervals tends to increase my recovery the next day. Interesting. So you'll work out for a short period of time, but high intensity. Yeah. Yeah, like multiple high intensity bursts, but short overall.

Okay, so let's go back. You've now done your workout. You're going to have lunch? Yeah. Yeah, I have lunch. What's your point of view on nutrition? Whole foods, I guess. I'm not into, like, restricting anything. anything really, except I try to eat a lot of vegetables, keep my grains whole, and eat lean meats. I do eat animal stuff. And so you'll have a nice meal. Then you're kind of easing into the afternoon. Do you take a nap or anything? Sometimes. Earlier in the year, I was taking lots of naps. Lately, I've been getting enough sleep pretty regularly, so I haven't needed to. But I just relax, try and read or do something relaxing. Maybe rock climb, because that's...

I tend to not climb too hard these days. Rock climbing, I would think, would be great for obstacle course racing. Yeah, it's not perfect, but it gets at your grip strength. And if you do more dynamic moves, it also gets your sort of coordination. But, yeah, but it's good. As the day winds on, so you now maybe will do a second workout later in the day? Yeah, and that'll either be a small strength session. lately I haven't been doing too much heavy lifting or it'll be like PT exercises for my I

injured my Achilles this year and so I'm doing a bunch of like hip stability and ankle stability exercises that take a couple minutes eccentric heel drops take for freaking ever right yeah those are tough yeah and do you think about what you do in the morning and what you do in the afternoon I would imagine you'll change your afternoon workout based on your morning workout? So I have a coach, Kim Nadeau, and she gives me a schedule that I follow, and that makes it a lot easier for me. Last year, when I was more self-coached, yes, but this year I get to just follow. And do you share your whoop data with Kim at all? I do. So we just started working together a couple months ago, and so I would sometimes say, like, hey, like, my recovery's really

good today. Can I do my hard workout today? And just be like, yeah, go for it. In the past couple weeks leading up to this, we've kind of like decided to just focus more on the schedule because I was sort of overthinking things. But my whoop, my whoop data has actually been playing along nicely. Oh, good. Yeah. That's great. So, okay, so you've, you've done a couple workouts now. We're talking, we're kind of getting to the end of the day. What are sorts of things you do to wind down? How do you think about dinner versus your other meals? I don't think about it too much differently. I mean, lately I've been eating pretty much the same thing for lunch and dinner because I've just been meal prepping.

And what do you eat? It'll be a carb, either quinoa, brown rice, sweet potato, or whole wheat bread, and protein, which is either like lean steak, chicken, salmon, tuna, or the other day I had eggs and cheese because I really felt like eggs. And then for a vet, like some kind of baked roast vegetable, broccoli, Brussels, sprouts, peppers, et cetera. I guess I wonder, I don't know as much about. OCR, are you thinking to yourself you want to gain weight, you want to put on muscle? Are you

thinking yourself you want to lose weight because you want to be able to move faster? Like, how do you think about that? Yeah. So this style of OCR, Spartan racing, the ones that I do, so like the race on Sunday is going to be a 13 and a half mile mountain run. So it's going to be like hiking, running downhill. So you do want to be pretty light. On the male side, the weights tend to be heavier. So you really have to make sure that you're strong enough on the female side the weights really aren't too bad so it pretty much is an endurance athlete sport so you want to be pretty light um i have never had to worry too much about um upper body strength like even if i get pretty light i don't really like i i tend to keep it um so for me it's mostly like taking off a little bit of weight in season

uh and then sort of maintaining through the end now in the past few weeks, what have you been doing to prepare for today for the coming weekend? Ooh, tapering. Well, so I've only, my taper has been kind of short because I was out this season for an Achilles injury. So I started back up really. Isn't that, by the most annoying injury? It's so annoying.

Yeah. I recently had Achilles tendonitis, and so now I've come to appreciate what a pain in the ass it is. Such a pain. And it's like, oh, you're fine. Like, you're not going to, like, kill yourself, but it freaking hurts. And I was like, I don't want to deal with this. And I grew up it.

The problem is you can push through it for a long time. Exactly. But then it just lingers. Yeah. So how did you get that better? So I had to shut it down for a month. Yeah. That must have been super frustrating.

I was so frustrating. Were you all antsy and like, would you do upper body stuff? What would you do? Or nothing? So I did like climbing. I did some rowing as soon as that I could tolerate that. But at first that even that bothered it. It was tough.

I was, you know, with some dark places. Sometimes you just have to heal. Totally, totally. Okay, so short taper, let's go back to the day in the life. You've now had dinner. And how do you think about sleep? Any tips, tricks for our audience in terms of how to optimize sleep? I'm not always perfect about this, but when I get my best sleep, I shut down the phone,

or I like put down the phone, stop going on social media, et cetera, like over an hour before. Totally. And lately I've been using a car buffer to, um, like massage myself, I guess, and that, and I just do that before bed, and that's like a good sort of, like, no media in front of me time when I'm just relaxing, and then I'll read for probably about an hour before going to bed. What do you like to read? So I like novels.

Right now I'm reading The Overstory by Richard Powers, this book about trees. It's about trees? Yeah. Oh, cool. It's great. It has a bunch of different characters. The character development is not that great, but the story is really great. It's a page turner and it has a lot of really interesting facts about trees.

I would recommend it. And do you read anything that's like sports focused or motivational or self-help? I pretty much only read fiction, which is interesting. That is interesting, although I know a lot of people who are the same way. Yeah. It's like a way to kind of take your mind. Exactly. I get too amped with nonfiction.

Like I start thinking about stuff and I want to write stuff down, take notes. Yeah, right. No, that's true. When I read about like really interesting entrepreneurs or executives or these sort of like personal journeys on building something, it totally gets my mind raising. So I can sympathize with that. Okay. So then you'll read and do you take any supplements or anything before bed? Yeah.

So I take a supplement by Endur Elite called Sleep Elite. It has zinc, magnesium, melatonin, a couple. It's a little melody of stuff. Yeah, a couple amino acids and a few other things. it makes me feel nice. I feel nice thinking about that. Yeah, totally. Totally.

And I've also taken, especially when competitions approach, I do take a couple different sleeping meds. So this month I've taken Ambien. Oh, wow. Yeah, totally. Like not every night, but some nights. And that helps me because sometimes I just like. Because Ambien's intense.

And we've seen, I mean, we've seen different results with Ambien on whoop. Some people, it's okay. Yeah. How have you noticed the difference between when you take Ambien, for example, versus when you take the other supplement that you just mentioned? So I'll always take the other supplement. So you always take the other one, but sometimes you'll take Ambien. Sometimes you take an antihistamine, like whatever's in ZEquil, whatever it's called.

Benadryl. Benadryl. Yeah, sometimes I'll take Benadryl because that makes me really sleepy. And that makes me sleep for like 14 hours. I get so tired. And how's the quality of the sleep? Like, do you look at the REM and the slow wave? Yeah, so that seems sort of...

Seems fine. Seems fine, yeah, because for me, it's really sleep initiation that's affected. My recovery, I can't tell how it's affected. Okay. And there's, yeah, there's not yet a way to, like, say, which sleep med I've taken. Yeah, we're working on that, by the way, which is going to be cool. Yeah. You're going to be able to effectively A-B test all of these different things.

Totally, totally. Because there's actually, like, for example, there's histamine receptors on your heart. So when you're, or receptors that will bind an antihistamine on your heart. So it probably affects something about your heart rate variability, taking Benadro. also. Oh, I'm sure all these things affect your body. And by the way, affect different people's bodies differently. Totally, totally. Like, it's not a one size fits all. Totally. Which is what's so cool about collecting data like this. Yeah. So, okay, so then you go to bed and you wake up and the whole thing goes again. If you think about the mindset of a Spartan race, so it's 13 miles, right? The only

analog I have in my head is running a marathon where going into the marathon, you look at the, you You know, you look at the course and you've got different strategies on the uphill or the downhill, you know, and you're thinking about, okay, for this section of the marathon, I want my pace to be like this. For this section of the marathon, I want my pace to be like that. Okay, this is the area where I need to survive. These are the different periods where I'm going to be taking goose or I'm going to taking energy gels or whatever. So walk me through your mindset going into a Spartan race and how you think about just outlining in your head winning. this thing. Right. So first, they don't release the course until a couple days before, usually. Wow. I didn't even know that. That's cool. Yeah. Sometimes it's the day before, but this time we had a couple days. So you've now seen it? Yeah, now I've seen it. Oh, great. So let's talk about it. What do we know is on the course? So there's a big long ascent and descent and then a medium-sized ascent and descent. So basically up a big mountain, down a big mountain, up a medium mountain, down a medium mountain. There's a total of like 4,000 feet of elevation gain or something. Wild.

And yeah, so it's basically like we start right up the mountain. So my strategy for that is don't burn yourself out because I tend to be a pretty good descender. And there's just as much downhill as there is uphill. So if you, if I save something on the uphill, I can make it up in the downhill. So I just don't want to, I don't want to get my muscles like down to a, you know, oxygenation of zero and then just crash. I have to make. sure that I'm like warm you know kind of warming up into it and letting them achieve a sort of a good steady state okay so so the first step is making sure you don't burn out too early you don't overdo it too early now do you know what some of the obstacles are now throughout the whole race

yes so now we know the obstacles so let's talk about those um so all of the obstacles are pretty much are pretty similar to what we've seen on other courses like from early in the year some of the obstacles like the beater it's like this monkey bar thing that kind of rotates a little bit like an egg beater turned on its side

they switch up the configuration a little bit so sometimes there's like a different you know distance that you have to reach sometimes a different height difference so you have to like think about how you're going to approach that specific obstacle and this year it's going to be really cold so if your hands are really cold you might want to

take a different approach, like put your whole arm around it instead of your hand. But then when you put your whole arm around it, maybe you don't have as much of a reach. So you have to really think about all that stuff. And then where, and that obstacle, for example, is at the bottom of the course. So it'll be slightly warmer down there. So this is, you'll have gone up high and then down. And this will be the first obstacle? No, this is like one of the last obstacles.

But this is one of the ones you're nervous about or you're thinking about. I'm thinking about it, yeah. Nervous isn't the right word. This is one that you want to overpower. Exactly. And, yeah, so you think about where the obstacle. is in the course if they're if like especially when the weather conditions are as they will be because um at the top of the mountain there's another grip obstacle there's a multi rig where you have like

rings and like little ropes and you grab this you traverse this pipe thing um and that's at the top of the mountain where there's me a lot of wind um i don't think it's right after a water obstacle they might cancel the water obstacles you see because it's so cold yeah i kind of think they will because the dunk wall for example will be frozen yeah right yeah but the swim um that thing doesn't freeze so they could still have that now cold are you you like cold doesn't bother you not looking forward to it but like the my um my hands if my hands get too cold it's one of those things where you you finish your run and you can't like untie your shoes because your hands are just like you know in slow mo um so i have to think about that so i'm going to wear some neoprene mittens

and try and keep those warm how much gear are you allowed or not allowed to bring with you You can bring as much gear as you want, as long as you carry it the whole time. You can't drop anything on course. So if you had a backpack on your back, that's fine. Do people do that? Yeah, they do. What do you do? So last year I just like wore a sports bra in shorts and just was like, okay.

Just going to wing it. Yeah, I just wing it. And this year I don't think I'm going to bring a backpack. Yeah, I think I'm just going to wear a long sleeve and shorts again. But I do bring a little pouch to put energy gels in. Well, last year you got second place in the Spartan World Championship. So it's not like you did much wrong. Yeah, I guess not.

What are the other obstacles you're thinking about or that you know about? I mean, spear throw is always one of those crapshoot things. Like, no matter, I don't know, it's always possible and never surprised that somebody misses a spear, you know? And how does the spear throw work? You throw this ray candle with a nail in one end that's tied to this little, like, fence thing. You throw it into a hay, or not a hay bale. Now it's like a foam bale. That's 25 to 30 feet away.

And do you have to keep doing it until you do it successfully? You only have one shot. And if you fail, you do 30 burpees. Oh, interesting. Yeah. 30 burpees. That's kind of a bummer. Totally.

Because you make it, it's a freebie. You know, you fail. It sucks. When you got second, did you make it? Yeah. Okay. It was a really crappy throw, but I made it. And what percentage of the time would you say you make it?

When I first started last year, it was 0%. Now, this year it's been all but one, but I haven't raised that much. So probably. 80%? Okay. 70%? I don't know. Something like that.

And is there someone there to like observe your burpees? Yeah. They have to make sure you do 30 and that they're like high quality. Exactly. Okay. They record them and then later they review too. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, because the whole thing's videotaped, right?

The whole course? Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Okay. So there's the, is there anything else like that where if you don't do it well, you have to do a punishment? Yeah. All of the obstacles.

All of the obstacles except for some of the, longer ones like the bucket carry and the sandbag carry which you have to complete all the other ones if you fail them you have to do 30 burpees so over the course of this thing you could end up doing 100 burpees or something yep when I first started out that's what I was doing what are what are some of the other challenging ones I mean it just depends on your strengths like for me one of the easiest ones is this one called Olympus where it's like a sideways rock climbing traverse thing but that for some people is one of the most challenging ones so so you have to climb this wall sideways yeah you like traverse across it and there's

different holds and if you fall at any point you do the purpose if you fall before you hit the bell help me understand how much someone wins this by like when you got second how far behind lindsay who got first were you i think i was two and a half minutes maybe two and a half minutes so it's pretty i mean that's pretty tight right yeah but it's not tight on the level of like you know if you're nervous about doing the sideways rock climbing you might not even attempt it you might just go straight to the burpees because you want to save the time or something so sometimes it is that close um in one of the previous years i don't remember if it was for this race or some other race but um somebody like some woman um went on this really long rig the rig the rig was extra long at the end and she failed it and

everybody was failing it and so somebody like some some of the racers just opted to touch the first thing and then start the burpees and do a race burpee race and can you do that with some of the cold stuff like say I didn't want to get ice dunked I think those are mandatory completion I'm not sure I'm not sure it's interesting because I was just talking to Robert Killian and he was saying that some of those things

you can do burpees instead yeah you might be able to I was thinking about the strategy behind that like say you're someone who doesn't like being cold yeah maybe you would take an opt out and do 30 burpees totally that's a thought yeah although it's probably a lot faster

to jump in the water yeah I'm lazy I wouldn't do that I mean I guess if it were so cold that it would actually really slow you down to be that cold. I mean, it always slows you down a little bit when you get out of an ice cold thing and it's cold out, but... Are you sweating at that point? Like, I would think you'd be sweating a lot by the time you get in the cold thing.

So last year... Is there any chance it's refreshing, or is it always just somewhat painful? So in this race, the cold things tend to be on top of the mountain when it's really windy, and so you're cold. So not refreshing. Yeah, but other races, it's totally fine. Like West Virginia race this year, the wild. water was just mild and fine, neutral bath water.

Cool. Yeah. Okay. Are there any other sort of strategic things to think about in this race? Like when you got second, for example, were you kind of like in first or second most of the time or did you have like, did you come back from being behind? Second half of the race, I was in second or third the whole time. And I actually thought I was in third as I was finishing.

and then I realized that at some point I'd pass the second place girl. And, okay, so that's another thing. For our audience and me, who aren't as familiar with the race, can you, like, see everyone out there or is there, are there areas where it's really wide or, like...

So there's times in the course when you might see people. Like, sometimes the course doubles back on itself. Sometimes there's an obstacle it takes a long time, so as you're finishing it, you see the other person coming in, and that's always kind of like,

ah, then you know, like, how far behind they are. Then sometimes you just have no idea, and you're in no man's land. it's kind of interesting right totally so it sounds like it's mostly a race against yourself yeah although um sometimes like the north american championships this year between nicole merrickle and lindsay webster was like a they were running together the whole time but that doesn't happen that often but yeah often it's a race so you just got to keep your cool if when you're running by yourself how does how would you say this baron race compares to like tough mutter or some of the other have you ever even done that i did one tough mutter once um and it's I mean it's competitive like you have to race tough mutter you it's all like teamwork and stuff tough mutter is more like rah-rah team yeah so I'll hold hands exactly this is like I want to annihilate everyone exactly and do you have like for you at this point in your career do you have a vision for how long you want to do this for or what like what's the end goal is it if you win

one you're kind of satisfied is it like you want to win a bunch how do you think about that process um so now that i've graduated med school i don't really know what i'm doing next i'm figuring that out as i go and so i'm not sure i'm really not sure i don't know where this is going to take me well i read that your mantra is i can only do my best yeah right so that seems to kind of apply itself to focusing on the moment yeah it's something i have trouble with so that's why it's my mantra how how does uh visualization play a role in your life or in preparation for this race So, visualizing myself, going through the obstacles smoothly and gracefully and quickly and not dwelling on them, that can help to calm me down when I'm feeling nervous. And is that nervous during the race or before the race?

Before the race. Mostly before. Yeah. The day of the race, it's like there's no use thinking about it, you know? Yeah, you're kind of already there just show up. Unless it's like, okay, it's colder, so I'm going to like do something different, make a decision. But if there's no decision tree point that needs to be made the day of, then I don't think about it. If you think about the visualization piece of it for a second, how do you like to do that?

Is that something that you'll just do passively when you notice yourself getting a little nervous thinking about it? Or is it something where you actively block out time to do visualization work? It's more passive. And it kind of turns my nervous energy into like a focused and like pumped energy. you know that's such a good point because I think when you have these important moments in your life coming up or like these events or and for people listening it could be just as simple as I have to give a big

presentation or I have to you know show up in this given moment right I think that the the nervousness that you feel before that is actually a good thing totally yeah and I at least for me personally I've found that the key is just figuring out how to channel it Is that similar to what you're describing? Totally. So, yes, channeling it, exactly. And also, if it's something that's unavoidable, if it's going to happen anyway, then you might

as well think of it as a good thing because that'll make it a better thing than if you didn't think of it as a good thing. It also makes you alert and it makes you present, right? True, yes. When you're nervous, it's hard to think about other things. Yeah. And people, I think, take that for granted. It's actually a great thing that you're focused on this specific thing.

now you just have to figure out how to focus on it. Totally. Totally. Yeah, that really does. It does bring you back to the present when you kind of like channel that nervous energy into being pumped. Because when you're pumped, that's like a positive feeling. And when a feeling is positive, it helps you like feel it and be back in your body. Totally.

Yeah. How much during the race do you actually feel pain or tired or like part of me imagines you're exhausted when you cross the finish line? Part of me imagines that it's like. you know some combination of of tired and and sort of like exhilarated almost like just coming out of an ice bath or something in that moment where you're like euphoric in a weird way yeah oh my god there's nothing like finishing one of these races you're so euphoric but yeah tired too um yeah will you be sore like muscular like will your upper body be sore or is it more like your legs or just like mental exhaustion yeah sometimes i'm not sore at all sometimes i feel like a tractor ran over me um It depends on the course. Like sometimes I'm really beating my body up because I'm running through, you know, brambles or like I take a fall or something going downhill.

But other times you just feel fine. I don't know. What are some other tools you use around recovery? So if you've just finished a race, like, you know, will you foam roll, will you presumably stretch? Like, you know, there's all these different tools out there. What do you like? Um, I do a teeny bit of foam rolling. Um, roll on a tennis ball, like roll up my hips on a tennis ball. That's, um, at the recommendation of my other coach, Pisseth Sam. Um, and then I car buffer. Say that again? I use the car buffer. What is a car buffer? It's a thing that buffers your car to like make it shiny, but you can just use it as a massage tool. And the equivalent that's made for humans is like $280, but the car buffer is $80. Oh yeah. Now I'm visualizing what you're

Yeah, it's like a spinny, vibratey thing. And if you push down, it stops spinning, and it just does intense vibration. So it's like a hack on a hyperhease or a therogon. Exactly, exactly. Oh, cool. It's a fraction of cost. Oh, that's a good tip for people listening. I'm going to list some things.

You tell me if you like them or not, or if you've tried them. Cryotherapy? Yeah, that's fine. You're okay with it. Don't swear by it. Active release therapy. That was huge for me. in college when I did track for my shin splints.

Acupuncture? That's helped me too. I feel like it's a shortcut massage. You like massage therapy? Yeah. Well, it depends. It's all about the therapist. Totally.

Yeah. Okay. That's the right answer. Contrast therapy? So like hot, cold, things like that? I did a little bit of it for my Achilles, but it's fine. Right. Okay.

Sona. Yeah, it's fine. Steam. It helps you warm up. cupping? It's another sort of like short cut massage thing. So my massage therapist, Seth, who's also one of my coaches, uses it sometimes. How often will you do massage work or the types of stuff we're talking about? It's like an everyday thing? Right. So car buffering every day. Rolling most days. I love it. I'm going to get car buffered. Rolling, okay.

And when I'm in Boston where Peseth is, where my massage therapist is, I will get a massage. like every other week or something. Oh, wow. Or if it's, if I'm really bad, like, every week sometimes. All right. What was the lowest recovery you ever got on Woop and why? I got a, I think I've gotten an 18% a couple times. That's a high low.

Yeah? Yeah. Most people are in the single digits. Really? When they say their lowest ever? Yeah. Good for you. I guess.

You strike me as someone who doesn't get sick very often. I guess I don't. So some people, their lowest recovery is like they'll get the flu. or, you know, something like that. You also don't strike me to someone who drinks a lot of alcohol. Yeah, so my alcohol dehydrogenase function is not that great. I'm half-Chinese, and it's okay, so I can drink and have fun, but I feel a little bit crappier than other people.

Because you don't metabolize alcohol. Exactly. Exactly. So I get the flush, and that's kind of uncomfortable. I can prevent it with an antacid, but it keeps me from, like, drinking now that I'm not 18 anymore, you know? or 21. So the other reason I brought that up is some people's lowest recovery will come like after they went to a wedding or some like big weekend, right?

Yeah. So when I do drink, which I do still occasionally, yeah, I'll have a pretty low recovery. Yeah, but not lower than 18%. No. That's good. Okay. What is the most relaxing vacation you've ever been on? That's funny because the most, like from the outside, the most, like from the outside, the

relaxing vacation I've been on is like a cruise in the Galapagos, but I get such cabin fever and I need to be moving that the actual most relaxing vacation I've ever taken was the hiking the Tour de Mont Blanc. So like, oh cool. Backpacking in the Swiss Alps. Oh, nice. And you do it alone? I did it with my best friend Helen. And she is not an athlete, but has incredible endurance capacity and could keep up. So it was like the first time I'd ever backpacked with somebody who could go at my pace. And so that just made it so relaxing and fun. That sounds great.

When you hear the expression optimal performance, who comes to mind? Like athletes, I guess, like Lindsay Webster. In OCR, Lindsay Webster, she tends to be very consistent. So she wins these races. Yeah, yeah, and she doesn't overtrain, it seems. Huh, good for her. Where can people find you if people are hoping to learn more about Rebecca? I guess my Instagram. I'm going to make a website at some point, but I don't have one yet.

And what's your Instagram? Beckham, B-E-C-C-H-A-M-M. Awesome. Well, this has been so much fun. It's been awesome having you on the WooP podcast. I have a good feeling about this weekend for you. I think you're going to do very well. You look very fit and focused. And again, thrilled to have you on Whoop. Thanks so much for having me. If you're not already a Whoop member, you can join our community for as low as $30 to begin.

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