profile

Hi! I'm Alison.

Founder of Miles To Go Athletics + CEO of Fit Bottomed Girls

At Miles To Go Athletics our mission is to help you ditch the aches, pains, injuries, and those feelings of being weak, fragile, and old that are holding you back from being active, athletic, and durable thru midlife and beyond. Our simple and effective strength, conditioning, and nutrition coaching is designed to help you go “all in” for yourself, unapologetically pursue your goals, and get the most out of your life. We’re here to support you whether you’re a total newbie or an already active adult looking to train smarter as you age because we believe that athleticism is the key to better quality of life at any age. We offer services that will increase your strength and confidence, allow you to be independent and active for longer, encourage chasing bucket list goals, and promote feeling badass at any age.⁠ We strive to empower people to recognize that they have a say in the quality of the miles, the experiences, and the years they have left in their lives. For whatever literal or figurative miles or mountains you traverse and climb in your life, our programs are here to support you. Because we all have many miles to go before we sleep, let’s make them awesome.⁠ Check out the content, support, and resources I offer by adding your email to my list.

PostsLinks
Featured Post

Before you become someone who used to run

Think about the last time you were so absorbed in a run that you lost track of time. Legs burning, lungs working hard, nowhere else you'd rather be. No phones, no emails, no to-do list, no distractions. Just you, your effort, and your values — aligned. Now think about last Tuesday. You worked hard. Juggled responsibilities. Put out fires. And at the end of the day, you collapse on the coach trying to figure out what exactly you accomplished in all that busyness. You couldn't name one thing...

2 days ago • 2 min read

I surveyed runners recently and one response stopped me: “Why isn’t there enough info out there about women and being strong and fit into old age?” That question stuck with me, partly because it’s personal. I’m 46, I run ultras, and I've got no intention of stopping anytime soon. So I went back through the last five years of results from a local trail 25K and 50K recently. I wanted to see who's still out there in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. Women show up in force in their 30s and 40s. In the...

4 days ago • 1 min read

Hi -- this is Samson (my baby boy who just beat cancer 🎉). He wants you to know that we still need at least 26 more runners to complete our market research survey. If you are dealing with or have recently dealt with injuries or pain that limited your running, it would be such a huge favor to us if you would complete this 10-minute survey.Not an injured runner? Please forward this email and survey with someone who is. Samson, Duke, and I will be randomly selecting winners from the submissions...

8 days ago • 1 min read

Yesterday, I ran my first race of the fall season: a 25k on trails, in the pouring rain. Don’t feel too bad for me. Rain is my favorite race weather. And it showed, because I finished 5th. People always ask me how, at 46, I’m still running long distances without getting hurt and still landing on the podium. It isn’t more miles and it isn’t stretching. It’s heavy lifting and power training. Those are my secret weapons for durability and performance. Here’s what that looked like out there. In...

11 days ago • 1 min read

Here's the pattern I see over and over with runners. You did the PT: the clamshells, the band walks, the bridges, the whole sheet. You got cleared. You built back up. Then somewhere around mile four or five, your knee started talking again. So you do the logical thing. Break out the ice the knee and ibuprofen. Pull out those old PT exercises. Back off the mileage a little, then a little more. Your squats get shallower. You death-grip the handrail on the stairs. The weekly run with your...

22 days ago • 1 min read

Hello, my name is Alison and I'm a complete nerd. Seriously, the favorite part of my job is tinkering around with different moves to find (and film) just the right ones for a client with "tight hips" and knee pain. Ones that don't involve doing a bazillion clamshells or the same boring stretches over and over. Here's the problem with most rehab moves. You have to do them consistently to feel better. And then you have to keep doing them if you don't want the pain to come back. B O R I N G 😴...

29 days ago • 1 min read

AI-generated fitness programs are popping up everywhere on the cheap. As a result, AI will make fitness programming more accessible. It will also make it lower quality and more generic. Because that's all AI can do — compare you to patterns of what it believes other people trying to get fit should be doing based solely on what other people trying to get fit are doing. Now, if you’re the average person — someone who doesn’t lift or do cardio regularly and is primarily motivated by weight loss...

about 1 month ago • 2 min read

Two recent studies looked at whether AI can reliably answer your health questions. The first (PMID: 41980854) audited 5 chatbots - including ChatGPT and Gemini - across 250 health questions. Nearly half (49.6%) of the responses were problematic. 1 in 5 were highly problematic. Here’s the kicker: The 2 worst performing categories were athletic performance and nutrition. My wheelhouse. he second (PMID: 41663592) looked at 1,298 people with real medical scenarios. The AI working alone identified...

about 2 months ago • 1 min read

Between 44 and 46, I took two and a half minutes off my 10K. Not by training more. By training different things. At 44, I was running four days a week and lifting four days a week. If you'd shown me that schedule on someone else's spreadsheet, I'd have called it a strong program. Consistent, balanced, sustainable. It was also incomplete. There are nine trainable AGE ATHLETICALLY™ skills and they sort into three groups: THE ENGINE — the foundation that powers youEndurance: your engine over the...

2 months ago • 1 min read

Pre-pandemic, I was doing box jumps constantly. CrossFit, 5-6 days per week, never thought about it. Fast forward to 2024: my coach programmed box jumps and I was humbled by the 16" box. S i x t e e n inches. I could barely put together more than one. Lost some shin skin on those bad boys too. Ouch. I could have rationalized it. Plenty of people would have given me a pass — I was in my mid-forties, this is what happens, be realistic, Alison. But I knew better, because I can count. It had been...

2 months ago • 2 min read