Sara Hall Shares her Secrets to Peak Performance

Sara Hall, the fastest U.S. women's marathoner of 2020 became the first American to make the podium at the London Marathon in nearly fifteen years with a thrilling 2nd place finish. Sara joins Olympian Carrie Tollefson for an exclusive interview about the facets of her training, nutrition, and lifestyle that led her to toe the line at the London Marathon and finish the race with strength, power, and a personal best.

Watch the full video below or scroll down to read Sara’s key tips!

Balanced Nutrition

While Sara is dedicated to eating as healthy as possible, she doesn’t let the stress of perfect nutrition take over her life. However, she makes sure to eat a well-balanced diet with enough protein. Additionally, Sara limits the amount of sugar she eats and drinks on a daily basis. Sugar is inflammatory -- when you’re running and training hard, unnecessary inflammation is detrimental to your body. That’s why Sara loves UCAN LIVSTEADY! It gives her the energy she needs to go from a hard run session to the gym for her strength routine without the sugar of other sports drinks.

Proper Recovery

We all know training is important, but what you do outside of the training affects how your body responds to it. No one advocates for proper recovery more than Sara Hall - she says that focusing on her recovery has made a major impact on her career and has kept her improving to this day. Even if you were doing everything you could to get faster, if you neglected vital aspects of recovery and got injured, all your hard work would go to waste. Sara frequently goes to a trainer for proper physical therapy and insists on recharging her body like a “human battery” with optimized sleep and healthy nutrition.

Keep Running Interesting

In the past year, there have not been many in-person races, but Sara encourages runners to find unique and fun ways to challenge themselves. While Sara says that races are great tools to motivate training and that it is important to take risks, she warns against putting so much pressure on a single challenge. If that pressure holds you back, whether it manifests as self-doubt or external criticism, focus on your love of running instead.

Surround yourself with people who support you, and push you to be better every day. Sara recalls a trip to Norway, where she got the chance to go dog sledding. Sara says that she tries to emulate those dogs - chomping at the bit to run, so excited and eager. If you can foster that excitement every day, maybe you’ll start feeling like those dogs, as if you were born to run.

About Sara Hall

Sara Hall is one of the top marathoners in the world and the 6th fastest U.S. marathoner all-time. In 2020, she became the first American to podium at the London Marathon since 2006, placing 2nd and setting a new marathon personal best of 2:22:01. She is the 2017 U.S. Marathon Champion, 2018 Ottawa Marathon Champion, and has placed in the top 10 several times at major marathons. Sara is the world record holder for the treadmill half marathon with a time of 1:09:03, a 3-time US 10 Mile Champion, and 2-time 20k National Champion. Hall is married to former running great Ryan Hall and mother to four sisters from Ethiopia.