You are listening to Hit Play, Not Pause, a feisty menopause podcast for active performance-minded women.

I am your host, Celine Yeager. Each week, I bring you advice from athletes, scientists, researchers,

and other experts to help

you feel and perform you best, no matter what your hormones are doing.

This show is a production of Live Feisty Media.

Hello, strong, feisty women.

So, before we get to it this week, I have to tell you a few things about my weekend last week.

I was up in Ascutney, Vermont for the Vermont Overland, which for those who don't know about the event is a really big gravel race.

And really gravel in this context is just a big umbrella term that includes ancient, unmaintained roads that are

really just rocky, steep suggestions of roads with huge potholes and large rocks and drop-offs

and sandy roads and muddy roads, all kinds of roads. Gravel really just doesn't do this one justice.

It's also 54 miles long and packs a whopping 7,000 plus feet of climbing. I mean, it's Vermont. It's not flat. As a special

treat this year, it dumped buckets of rain on us the night before. And though it looked like it was going to be a nice day,

just as the gun went off, it started pouring on us again. And that lasted for about an hour or two

at the start of the event, turning those unmaintained suggestions of roads into a carnival ride of mud, slop, sand, and slippery sensations.

It was pretty fun.

But my point here is, as is the case with many of these events, the field was about 20 to 25

percent women, which is often what you get.

And I know promoters are working on bringing more ladies into the game.

But what I found really super cool was how many in the feisty demographic there were. As I was riding, so many

women wrote up to me to say hello and thank you for the podcast and I love what you're doing.

Hell, there were men who came up to me and said, my wife loves your podcast.

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