The whole point of all this is that it goes beyond just skin damage, especially over the

course of a 24 hour run.

You have to be on top of that or you will be so fatigued.

The sun just sucks it out of you.

To this day, my behind is a slightly different color than the rest of my body.

I'm still working through that. Welcome to the Trailhead of Trail Runner Nation. Every week we go on runs with guests that are going to help us become better runners, healthier athletes, maybe live a little bit longer and be better humans. Today, Scott, we are going to talk about skin and protecting our skin. We're going to hit each one of those things you talked about, better people, better runners, all of that stuff in this conversation with Colleen Miracle. Real tips from Real Runners. This is Clarity on the Trail presented by Tophosi Optics. We're helping you see the path ahead, more with listener submitted gold and Tophosi's world class lens technology. Today's Tophosi clarity on the trail recovery tip came from our text line at 916-235-3928 from Jess in New Jersey. Do yourself a favor and try rolling your foot on a lacrosse ball after a run, particularly a rocky one. It's pure bliss, minimal investment, and a big reward. We'll be sending Jess a pair of the new to Fosioptics, Syncdom SL sunglasses for sharing their knowledge with the tribe. You too can win a pair of the new Syncdom SL glasses by sharing your tip of the trail. And this time we're looking for gear

that you have to have every time you go for a run.

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you can share that on our text line at 916-2539-28.

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trail runner nation, and use the hashtag,

Clarity on the Trail. Each week we'll choose one submission, read it right here on the podcast. And if you don't want to take your chances on when it appears, you can go to our deals page at trailrunnernation.com. You can get 20% off the entire store at tofossil Optics.com. Welcome to another edition of trail runner nation. My name is Don Freeman. And I'm Scott War. Here's a question for you, Don. What if the biggest threats to your long-term running performance isn't your training plan, your shoes or even injury, but the sun? Huh, huh? Yeah, well, you better explain that, Mr. War. As. As ultra runners, we could spend hundreds of hours each year under the intense UV exposure. Often we're at altitude, where those radiation levels can increase dramatically. And while we often obsess about hydration, fueling, heart rate zones, many of us are quietly accumulating damage that can impact recovery, aging, and even our ability to stay in the sport. So today we're going to talk about sun exposure. And we've invited writer, ultra-runner coach, Colleen Miracle. She's the author of the Ultra Sign Up article, Why Ultra Hunters Face a Higher risk of skin cancer and decreased running performance.

Yep, you heard that last part right, and that's what I wanted to talk to her about. Colleen, thanks for coming back and sharing a little bit more, a little more color, a little more detail from the article that you published at Ultra Running Magazine. Yeah, thanks for having me on, guys. I'm excited to dig into it. You know, Scott, I think this is an important topic because if it was a multiple choice test and we're all at the trailhead and we passed out the papers, we'd probably all get this one right. Number one, because it was a true false. Should we take care of our skin when we're out there in the sun? And we'd all say, yes, true. We should. But there's something that we overlook. I can speak for myself. Sometimes I overlook. In fact, I have sunscreen in my car and I don't use it. So I hope to change my ways after this conversation. Colleen, we actually talked about this on a run yesterday. I said, hey, Don, do you use sunscreen? And he goes, yeah, you sunscreen. I said, did you put it on this morning? He goes, no, but it's in my car. And I thought, you know, I don't use sunscreen. Now I have a beard, which is, I think, does a pretty good job. Maybe it doesn't. I think it does. But here's the thing that I learned from the article that those UV sun damage, it doesn't just increase our risk of cancer or accelerated aging. but it can also reduce our performance. So my first question to you, Colleen, is how does being out in the sun reduce our performance? Yeah. And I just want to start off by saying, I did speak with my dermatologist. They are professionals and experts on this. And so I actually just interviewed them kind of out of curiosity

because I

After five years of running

Ultras, you know on my own. I was putting sunscreen everywhere but my lip and

You know you forget to kind of put SPF on your lips, but an SPF 30 chopstick is actually recommended because I ended up getting

Stage one skin cancer on

my lip and had to get that removed by my dermatologist and I got to thinking like, hmm, do other ultra-reners know about this? You know? So I wanted to interview them just out of curiosity and then pitched it to ultra sign up. But yeah, it turns out that it does just go beyond to answer your question to go beyond You know getting those UV ray damage and all of that I actually found out that it can decrease your performance So so over the course of a day. Let's say you're running just even a 50-mile or you're doing like a nine hour day even something like that or a couple hours If you haven't adequately protected your skin, the sun actually does make you more tired and it can decrease your performance. And think about over 24 hours what that would do and think about the effects that that would have and how that could slow you down and dehydrate you and all of that. So yes, the answer is yes, it does cause additional damage to your body. You know what? I think I buy into that already because on hot days where maybe I haven't neglected my skin and not even out there running. Just something when you're outdoors doing just recreational casual stuff. At the end of the day, you can feel a bit zonked from this sun when your skin is red. It feels

like it takes a little bit extra out of you. So I think just even doing nothing we can say, yeah, I've seen that happen even without the hills and the climbs that we have to do out there. Yeah. Well, and I think you mentioned and what made sense to me is that if your sun is getting damaged your body, the amazing vehicle and amazing machine it is, it starts diverting energy to cooling your skin and to repairing that damaged skin. So rather than focusing all of it, it's attention on getting one foot in front of the other, getting your cardiovascular system working properly and more efficiently, it's now doing another additional thing. And so that's the thing that I went, you know what, that makes complete sense. Yeah, it is pretty cool how the body does that. Our bodies are so amazing to your point. But yeah, essentially what's happening is when you get a blistered skin or even just a little bit of damage to your skin, your body does go into that immediate action and starts trying to repair it and heal it. And so, oh, there's always something that goes wrong on a long day of trail running as you guys know. And that's the last thing that you should be worrying about, right? Like just protect your skin. let that be the last thing that your body is going to be using energy for. You have your body's working hard enough to be out there doing all that. As you stated that, Scott, I was thinking you only have so much blood in your body. Some blood has to go to the stomach if you're doing digestion. Some blood no doubt needs to go to the lungs and the exchange carbon dioxide for the oxygen, the rest to the muscles to help supply them. And now we're diverting it for another item to the skin. So that's the largest organ in the body, the skin needs some service too. And the body will not sacrifice your run before it sacrifices its skin. So I do the math. Figure it out. Which do you think see what happens?

One's a voluntary response. The other one is, no, you need skin to live. Yeah. It's very important to take care of it. Colleen, I'm interested when you went and sat down with your dermatologist to interview them, I'm sure you asked what's the best way to protect our skin. it using a large bucket hat or a UV resistant long sleeve shirt? Is it using sunscreen? What were their answers? What's the best way to do it? Yeah, so there's actually a lot of... Everybody has their own preference on how to care for their body. Like some people prefer to wear EPF clothing. Maybe they're they're like, I just don't really like the way sunscreen feels on my skin. Hey, there's a ton of you guys know and in the industry, a ton of amazing new U-PF clothing that is lightweight, that's easy to just pop on like arm sleeves over your t-shirt, you know, like some people prefer that. And so I think when you think about what's easiest or what's best, There's not always a right answer, but one thing that you do want and one thing that they made sure to hit home was that whatever it is needs to be either SPF or UPF over 30, 30 or above. So usually UPF clothing has 50 or above, you'll see that. But if you're doing sunscreen, whether it's mineral or just regular sunscreen, SPF 30 or above, and that goes for your chapstick too. So a lot of chapsticks will just have like SPF 15, they were saying, my dermatologist, but you want to look for that SPF 30. So usually you can find it at the target or just like your local grocery, but you just have to look a little bit harder. So two big questions just popped in my head. One, you mentioned mineral or regular. What I don't know whether I know what mineral sunscreen is. Yeah, mineral sunscreen is the same amount of protection as like a regular SPF sunscreen. But what my dermatologist was saying is that it usually uses zinc as like a primary ingredient rather than some of the other ingredients you might find in sunscreen. Again, it's up to the person of what they want to put on their body. Like everybody has a different preference. If you prefer to avoid chemical sunscreens, the zinc or mineral one is incredible at protecting your skin. But I don't know if you guys have seen folks with the mineral sunscreen. Sometimes it has like a white cast.

So they did start coming out with sunscreen. My dermatologist was saying that don't have the white cast anymore. So if you do a little bit of digging, you can find a good mineral sunscreen. It's free of that white cast. I did like the lifeguard look though. I mean, they put that white nose on you. You know they're legit. They could probably rescue you, Scott, if they've got that.

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