What’s in it for me? Learn about Lauren Fleshman’s struggles as a female athlete in the running world.
A middle-school sports star suddenly drops out of the competition.
A runner wins big races but looks thin and sickly.
A stadium is full of athletes, but only half of their games make it to TV.
These are just a few of the issues plaguing women in the sports industry.
And these are exactly the same concerns elite runner Lauren Fleshman wants to tackle head-on.
In this Blink to her memoir, Good for a Girl, we'll follow Lauren as she pursues her professional athletic dreams and navigates the harsh reality of health problems and gender biases.
Puberty and sports
Lauren grew up believing that boys and girls were pretty much alike, except for a few little differences in their physiques.
If a boy could do something, she was certain she could do it too – and even do it better!
This drive of hers was ignited by the fact that women around her were rising up and becoming the firsts in their fields – from Sandra Day O'Connor being the first female member of the Supreme Court to Joan Benoit becoming the first female runner to win the women's Olympic marathon.
Seeing women break barriers like that inspired Lauren to show the world what she was made of.
And that's exactly what she did.
She consistently beat her male playmates in tetherball and often outran everyone in her middle-school PE class.
Having discovered her inner athlete, Lauren was feeling quite good about herself – until a fateful PE class when a boy surpassed her race time out of the blue.
That was when she was hit with the hard truth: boys and girls aren't the same after all, and puberty is to blame.
Yes, girls aged 12 and below can keep up just fine with the boys when it comes to sports.
But when those hormones start kicking in, things can really start to diverge.
Suddenly, boys and girls are developing in completely different ways.
Changes in female bodies start affecting their movement, and sometimes prevent them from participating in sports altogether.
A 2016 study of over 2,000 British schoolgirls revealed that 76 percent feel self-conscious about their breasts during sports or exercise.
Nearly half said it directly impacted how active they were.
In the US, there’s also an alarmingly high rate of attrition among female sports participants around the age of 14.
Luckily for Lauren, she was a late bloomer and didn’t develop breasts as fast as her peers did.
This meant she could keep playing sports and chasing her athletic dreams without worrying too much about the changes that come with puberty.
When she finally got to high school, being late to the puberty game turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
She was a rising track star, making her way to the Foot Locker Cross Country Nationals twice and winning the California Cross Country State Championships.
Soon enough, universities were lining up at her door to make their offers.
Navigating college and the natural female performance dip
A ton of letters from colleges across the country flooded Lauren’s mailbox – but in the end, she went with Stanford.
She was drawn to their female coach's energy, and she wanted to prove herself to Vin Lananna, the university's cross-country and track and field director.
So even though Vin didn't provide her with any scholarship funding in her first year, Lauren was determined to make it work.
And make it work she did.
At Stanford, her life as an athlete was all about weekly training and races.
Every weekend, the team would hit up a different town and run their hearts out.
It was a great practice for Lauren, and her freshman season ended up being nothing short of epic.
She placed fifth in her very first NCAA championships, became an All-American in some events, and even made it to the Olympic Trials for the 5,000-meter run.
But then, things took a turn when Lauren entered her sophomore year.
Her body went through some noticeable changes – and she realized she wasn't performing as well on the lane as she did the year before.
She still tried pushing herself in the early-season races to deliver outstanding results.
But when she landed a disappointing place at the Pre-Nationals, it became clear that something was really happening to her body.
It wasn't just Lauren who was suffering; the rest of her team also felt the effects of the unknown force.
While their male counterparts brought home the outdoor NCAA track and field title, the women’s team only came in fifth in the NCAA cross-country championships.
Naturally, Vin wasn’t pleased.
Everyone on Lauren's team felt they were doing everything right – and they were still falling short.
But the reason behind this "underperformance" wasn't poor training habits or Vin's coaching skills.
It was biology.
Men's testosterone levels tend to peak from ages 18 to 22, making that time of life ideal for athletic pursuits.
Women's bodies, on the other hand, are busy preparing for potential pregnancy – so it’s natural for their performance to drop while their bodies adjust to these new changes.
Unfortunately, Vin, along with many other coaches, wasn't aware of female physiology.
So instead of getting the appropriate support, the women athletes were shamed and told to do better.
Some coaches would even go so far as to impose highly restrictive diets, monitoring the athletes’ weight closely and squeezing their tummies and inner thighs to check for unwanted fat.
This led to disordered eating, which in turn caused a slew of problems like menstrual dysfunction, a decline in bone health, and organ damage.
This scenario highlights the need for systemic change.
Coaches should receive education in female physiology – and the NCAA should implement policies around eating disorders the same way they have for concussions.
Women’s lives are at risk.
The sprint to the elusive race weight
Despite the health issues she and her team faced, Lauren went on to finish college with a handful of wins under her belt.
This made her an attractive asset in the professional field – but unfortunately, pro track and field is nothing like football or basketball where clubs recruit and pay players.
To earn your way as a pro runner, you need to sign with a major sports brand instead.
This became a hurdle for Lauren at first, but she ultimately landed a deal with Nike for $60,000 per year.
After she accepted the offer, her first order of business was to train to get into the 2004 Olympics, which was only a year away.
Pro runners make the Olympic team by finishing in the top three at the Olympic Trials.
And to even qualify for the Trials, they need to hit a certain time standard during the season.
As part of her preparation, Lauren went back to Stanford as a graduate student, so she could train with her teammates at the university’s facility.
She also asked Vin, who’d recently moved to Oberlin, Ohio, to be her coach.
Training at Stanford proved to be fruitful for Lauren.
She established a detailed regimen, got sufficient sleep, and maintained a strict calorie count.
She felt fit and healthy, and things seemed to be going according to plan.
When Lauren headed to Oberlin to train with Vin, she found herself moving in with an 83-year-old roommate.
Dori Sturges was a delight to have around – but the older woman cooked for both of them, and it was a lot less food than what Lauren was used to.
This led to a dramatic weight loss, but it didn't raise any alarm bells for her at all.
In fact, Lauren wanted to achieve pro runner Paula Radcliffe’s race weight, so she stuck with that diet for weeks.
What Lauren didn’t know was that this decision, coupled with her perfectionist regimen at Stanford, would soon work against her.
When she returned to Ohio after an unsatisfactory performance at the Payton Jordan Invitation, she learned she had a foot injury on her second metatarsal bone.
Lauren was devastated, of course, but Vin had a plan.
She would cross-train in the pool while they waited for the bone to heal.
She also started eating more, realizing that her diet might have caused the injury.
Unfortunately, after all those efforts, she still wasn't healthy enough to compete in the Olympic Trials.
Lauren later came to understand that she was unknowingly suffering from Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport, or RED-S.
This disorder decreases bone strength and negatively impacts immunity, menstrual function, and even the heart.
Its cause?
Not eating enough to meet the body’s demand for energy.
Preventing RED-S from harming more female athletes requires educating coaches about the condition and its consequences.
Additionally, there should be less focus on reaching and maintaining a race weight to prevent athletes from obsessing over it.
This is one of the pillars of a sustainable and healthy coach-athlete relationship.
The objectification of women in sports
It took Lauren another 12 weeks to recover and get back on the lane – but when she did, she was on fire.
She secured a bronze medal for the USA team in the World Cross-Country Championships in France, got second place in the 2005 USATF Outdoor Championships, and won the same race the following year – which qualified her for the World Cup in Athens.
Her season went so well that Nike offered her a six-year contract for $125,000 per year.
Come 2007, the popularity of women's activewear was on the rise, and Lauren found herself browsing Nike's newly released catalog.
She was happy about the advancement of women’s sports, but she was disappointed at how the catalog featured zero actual female athletes – instead, it was full of models who clearly didn’t do sports.
What frustrated her even more was the fact that there were already a lot of attractive women on Nike’s payroll.
After all, Nike, and many other brands, only gave offers to women who were either easy on the eyes or really, really good in their fields.
Lauren wanted to change the game.
So with all the courage she could muster, she sent an email to Nike CEO Mark Parker, expressing her concern.
Fortunately, Mark listened to her suggestions and invited her and a few other female athletes to a photo shoot for the next catalog.
When those photos ended up on Nike store windows, Lauren felt proud that she’d gotten her message across – that athletic women are beautiful too.
But that wasn’t Lauren’s last brush with Nike’s marketing efforts.
Next, they asked her to promote their very first woman-specific running shoe.
But there was a catch: she had to do the ad naked.
This made Lauren question how the sports world kept objectifying women, from creating barely-there uniforms meant to draw men to the benches to now posing naked to get people to buy a shoe.
She didn’t want young girls to get the idea that becoming a successful female athlete required removing their clothes.
So she came up with an idea for a new campaign – one in which she could keep her clothes on, and make a statement.
Her “Objectify Me” ad stuck and became widely known, partly because of the shoe but also because it empowered women.
A woman’s voice in a male-dominated industry
Following her successful Nike campaign, Lauren set her eyes on the 2008 Olympic Trials.
This time, she was confident she could land a spot in the Games.
After all, she had a string of victories going – the 2007 London Diamond League and the 2008 New York Diamond League were her biggest wins yet.
Unfortunately, the Olympics would remain elusive for Lauren.
Immediately after she won the 2008 Diamond League, she suffered from yet another foot injury.
It was a tiny line on her navicular bone, which meant she had to pause training for a while and then cross-train in the pool again.
Lauren wasn't sure how her injury would play out, but she stuck to the plan.
And a week before the Olympic Trials, she happily bounced back pain-free.
Despite giving it her all, though, she finished fifth in her race.
She felt discouraged about losing her chance at the Trials yet again – but she had more pressing matters at hand.
Her navicular hadn’t fully healed on its own, which prompted her to get surgery and put her out of racing for a year.
Inactivity was unknown territory for a runner like Lauren, but she eventually found something more fulfilling to fill her time: her website, "asklaurenfleshman.
com.
It became her very own platform to share stories and answer fans’ questions.
Before creating her website, Lauren – like many other female athletes – had to be content with the little coverage she got in the media.
That was how it had always been in the sports world.
Even now, the percentage of coverage allotted to women generally stays in the single digits, even though there are more and more female athletes rising in the ranks.
But thanks to the internet, Lauren finally had a voice without having to wait for reporters to look her way.
She was able to share her firsthand knowledge with aspiring female runners, and could tell them to watch out for eating disorders and keep their health in tip-top shape.
She was finally making changes within a bigger community outside of professional running.
Changing the sports world, one race at a time
When Lauren returned to running under new coach Mark Rowland, she was once again at the top of her game.
She won the Nationals and went to South Korea for the Worlds, where she finished seventh – an American record at the time.
After her South Korea trip, she competed in the New York City Marathon, where misfortune struck again; she was left with another injury just months before the 2012 Olympic Trials.
Lauren knew that joining the race would only lead to humiliation – she wasn't in the right shape yet.
But she also felt that it would be her last Trials, and she wanted to get on those lanes one more time.
On the day of the race, she didn't do well – just as she’d expected.
In fact, she finished last.
But to her surprise, a warm round of applause greeted her at the finish line.
People congratulated her, even though she hadn’t won.
One of those people was Sarah Lesko of the Seattle-based women's apparel brand Oiselle.
Just like Lauren, Oiselle wanted to change the female sports industry for the better.
Lauren had found her people – and she soon signed a contract with them.
Working with Oiselle gave her numerous ways to champion female athletes' rights.
She continued writing on her blog, as well as in other outlets, and regularly joined Sarah and Oiselle CEO Sally Bergesen in their advocacy efforts against athlete exploitation.
Their biggest move was creating Littlewing Athletics, which was made up of women runners and coached by Lauren herself.
Through Littlewing, she was able to implement a coaching style that focused more on women's health and less on the medals.
While it wasn’t 100 percent perfect, it was a revolution she hoped would get replicated by other teams.
Ultimately, the responsibility for change doesn’t just lie with coaches.
There’s still a lot to be accomplished, and the sports community needs to rally together to get better policies, guidelines, and training in place – ASAP.
Lauren Fleshman's journey in the running world, from amateur to professional, highlights the challenges faced by a lot of women runners.
Her experiences offer insights into the improvements that can be made in the sports system to prioritize the physical and mental health of female athletes.
With her story, she hopes to begin changing the industry, one step at a time.
Final Summary