Run Fast, Eat Slow: Elyse Kopecky On How Real Food And Cooking Can Transform Your Running
THE RUNNING EFFECT PODCAST
Dominic Schlueter
4.9 • 822 Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
She built a real-food revolution. Now, she’s taking it global.
Elyse Kopecky is back: writing, running, and leading a movement bigger than ever.
She is the three-time New York Times bestselling co-author with Shalane Flanagan of Run Fast. Eat Slow., Run Fast. Cook Fast. Eat Slow., and Rise & Run.
She is also a chef, speaker, and nutrition coach who studied at the Natural Gourmet Institute (a health-supportive culinary school).
Elyse is a former UNC distance runner, turned lifelong runner and trail retreat leader. She created the Run Fast. Eat Slow. brand which includes cookbooks, online classes, and women’s trail running & culinary retreats.
She previously landed a dream job in Nike Running marketing, while her college teammate Shalane Flanagan turned pro with Nike. From the outside, it was the perfect running-adjacent career.
Elyse is here not just to reflect on a decade of bestselling books; she’s charting a powerful new path for runners everywhere. From her expanded role as a coach and educator to her trail retreats in Bend, Chamonix, and Zermatt, she’s proving that performance and joy can grow with time, not fade.
Tap into the Elyse Kopecky Special.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Yeah, learning to cook and jumping in the kitchen and spending time cooking is the single |
| 0:04.6 | greatest thing you can do for your athleticism now, but also your longevity and long-term |
| 0:09.4 | health and just a blink of the eye and you're going from that 20-year-old college student |
| 0:14.1 | to the mid-40 mom like me, which I can't believe. I still feel like I'm in my 20s sometimes, |
| 0:19.9 | but it's going to change your life. |
| 0:22.4 | Cooking, real food that you love, make sure it's something you enjoy and taste delicious, |
| 0:27.7 | is going to improve your energy, it's going to improve your sleep. A lot of like the wellness, |
| 0:32.3 | there's all these wellness hacks that are like, do this to improve your sleep, do this to |
| 0:36.3 | improve your muscle mass, do this to improve your sleep, do this to improve your muscle mass, do this to |
| 0:38.5 | improve your mental health state. But if you honestly, if you're not cooking real food from |
| 0:44.4 | scratch and eating nutrient-dense foods, you're not going to be able to improve any of the other |
| 0:48.5 | hacks. |
| 0:52.8 | Ladies and gentlemen, that was Elise Kopecki today on the Running Effect podcast. She has long been a dream |
| 0:57.8 | guest of mine. And so this is a very full circle moment to sit down with her because I read her |
| 1:02.2 | first ever cookbook that went on to become a New York Times bestseller in sixth grade, I want to |
| 1:06.9 | say. And it profoundly had an impact on how I view nutrition, and it also helped me |
| 1:11.3 | to get in the kitchen and learn how to cook, which has been transformational, not just in my |
| 1:15.4 | athletics, but also in my life. And so we sit down with Elise and break down the last 10 to 11 |
| 1:20.4 | years of writing, of cooking, of creating products, of creating information that allows her |
| 1:26.2 | followers and you listeners here today to take |
| 1:29.0 | your running in your life to the next level through food and how we view and how we eat it. |
| 1:32.7 | I love this conversation. |
... |
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