Brave Enough to Be Real: Honest Talk About Menopause, Midlife, and Athletics with Christine D'Ercole

Hit Play Not Pause

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.9 • 696 Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Feisty favorite Peloton Instructor Christine D’Ercole is back on the show this week for a candid conversation about how she’s managing a high profile athletic career while also in the throes of perimenopause. Through her ups–winning three more National titles since we last spoke–and her downs–peeing herself in the gym as she struggles with pelvic floor dysfunction–Christine is simply open, honest, and real about navigating the emotional terrain of being a midlife, menopausal athlete. We dive into it all including her new Sprint Interval Training (SIT) Collection at Peloton, which is designed especially to help midlife women maintain their power.

Christine D’Ercole is a speaker, writer, decorated competitive cyclist and an original Peloton Cycling Instructor who inspires thousands daily with her work on and off the bike. She is also the founder of Wordshop: a workshop in self-talk, providing practical tools for navigating our negative self-talk towards more productive narratives. For over a decade she has provided Wordshops for private events and for major corporations. When she is not writing or speaking, Christine is racing her bike at Velodromes across the country. She is a Masters World Champion, holds 18 National titles, and is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. Christine is currently working on a new book, Talking to Myself, a practical guidebook to help you rework your inner dialogue to transform your life. For more information go to christinedercole.com and @iamicaniwillido on instagram. Check out her CDE Menopause Playlist here on Spotify

Resources

I Am I Can I Will I Do in Menopause with Christine D’Ercole (Episode 159)

World Championships 2024

National Championships 2024

Feisty Menopause: @feistymenopause

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to Hit Play, Not Pause, a feisty menopause podcast for active performance-minded women.
0:14.6	I am your host, Celine Yeager. Each week, I bring you advice from athletes, scientists, researchers,
0:19.7	and other experts to help you feel and perform you best, no matter what your hormones are doing.
0:25.0	This show is a production of Live Feisty Media.
0:30.9	Hello, strong feisty women.
0:33.1	I hope you all are well.
0:35.1	So this week, I have a real treat for you.
0:39.7	Back on the show, we have decorated track cyclist, high-profile peloton instructor, and bisty fan favorite, Christine
0:46.2	Dierkel. She is back and is open and real and inspiring as ever. And I want to have her back
0:52.8	on because since we last talked, Christine, who is now 53,
0:57.1	has been crushing it, racing on the track, winning a whole mix of medals, including a few
1:03.5	golds at the U.S. Masters Track National and World Championships last year. She also recently launched a dedicated sprint interval training
1:13.7	collection at Peloton. And that collection focuses on short bursts of those really, really hard
1:19.6	efforts, followed by longer recoveries designed to target those fast-twitch muscles and neuromuscular
1:26.3	power. Those workouts are especially potent for us in midlife and menopause when both of those
1:32.1	can decline.
1:33.9	And this is just a really fun, pretty loose conversation.
1:37.4	We sat down on a Friday evening when she just got back from getting her hair all freshened
1:42.0	up and it looks fabulous.
1:43.8	You should actually check this one out on our YouTube channel to see it for yourself.
1:47.8	And it was just great.
1:49.1	We catch up on everything from racing on the track to navigating hormone therapy, to pelvic floor dysfunction, or peeing yourself in the gym, which has been a painful reality for Christine for 26 years,
	...

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