Strong Core Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Rachel Simson (@buffalodietitian) is a registered dietitian, endurance athlete, and mom whose relationship with food, her body, and endurance sport has changed dramatically over the years. As a teenager, Rachel struggled with an eating disorder and excessive exercise. Learning how to fuel herself so she could keep competing eventually shaped her career in nutrition and, over time, a healthier relationship with food and her body. Years later, after having children, Rachel lost...

Send us Fan Mail Noa Cafri (@noa_cafri) is a four-time Ironman finisher, triathlon coach, product manager in cybersecurity and AI at Microsoft, former F-15I navigator, and a mom. With that résumé, you might expect her philosophy to be about pushing harder and demanding 100% from herself. It isn't. Noa believes that sometimes 80% is enough. In this episode, we talk about what that looks like when life is full. After becoming a mother, Noa stopped expecting training to look the way it once did....

Send us Fan Mail What if the strength you build in training is also rebuilding you? Lacey Taylor (@laceytaylorcpt) is a single mom of three and a certified personal trainer, fourteen weeks out from Ironman California, her first full Ironman. Fitness first gave Lacey energy, time for herself, and a way through postpartum depression. Over time it became something more. As she grew physically stronger, she began to feel stronger mentally and emotionally, carrying that strength through divo...

Send us Fan Mail What happens when the athlete you worked so hard to become keeps getting interrupted by injury, illness, surgery, work, and motherhood? Lauren LeBlanc (@laurenelizabeth.tri) entered triathlon at 39 with one bucket-list goal: complete a 70.3 before turning 40. Five years later, the cardiology physician assistant and mother of two is a multiple-time 70.3 World Championship finisher, a 2025 Ironman World Championship finisher at Kona, and a fourth-year member of Team Octagon Eli...

Send us Fan Mail Mile 45 of her first 70.3, in hail and headwind, Chris Ijiomah is one of the last riders on the course. A voice keeps calling out: “Athlete. Athlete, pull on over. Athlete, you can’t proceed.” She keeps looking around to see who they mean. Then it lands. They mean her. She is being pulled from the course in front of everyone, and she is being called an athlete in the moment she feels least like one. Chris is a registered nurse at a Level 1 trauma center, a mother of four, and...