DAA Industry Opt Out protect my Achilles Sunday, Gabriela DeBues-Stafford knew she’d kicked hard. After all, she was in second place with 150 meters to go, then she surged decisively in front of Ethiopia’s Mekides Abebe to win by more than two seconds (8:33.92 to Abebe’s 8:36.31).
But she wasn’t sure how swiftly she’d sprinted until she saw her husband, Rowan, afterward. He asked her to guess how fast she’d covered the last 100 meters. She had no idea, so he told her: 13.8 seconds.
“I was like, what?” DeBues-Stafford told Runner’s World by phone this week, drawing out the word in shock. “I feel like 13.8 is approaching my all-out 100-meter flat speed. So to be able to do that after 2900 meters of running is very exciting, especially for February.”
The time adds a seventh Canadian national record to the bright-haired, two-time Olympian’s resume. (At this race, her short crop was dyed an emerald green.) “It’s always special when you break a Canadian record, especially one that’s not already mine,” she said. Afterward, she celebrated I usually follow kind of far back, but then I noticed I was starting to clip non-alcoholic beers How Des Linden Keeps Showing Up.
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Her last two records, a 4:00.80 for the indoor 1,500 meters and 4:19.73 in the indoor mile, came almost exactly two years ago, at the 2020 NYRR Millrose Games. Since then, she left her training group in Glasgow, Scotland; moved halfway around the world to join the Bowerman Track Club; and experienced a relapse of her Graves disease, an autoimmune condition that causes an overactive thyroid.
She wonders if, without that setback, she might have improved on her 3:58.93, fifth-place finish in the 1500 meters at the Tokyo Olympics last summer. But this season opener serves as a sign she’s returned healthy and strong.
She Runs to Reclaim Her Identity After Assault kick, and her goals for the rest of the year, which now include the indoor world championships in March in Serbia as well as the outdoor world championships in Eugene, Oregon, this summer.
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Runner’s World: That finishing kick was impressive, especially so early in the year. Have you been training specifically for that, and if so, how?
Gabriela DeBues-Stafford: Jerry [Schumacher, Bowerman Track Club coach] always loves to say, “Strength is speed.” The biggest thing we’ve been working on is just building that aerobic engine, building up my endurance.
I have focused on getting my mileage a bit higher. Last year, coming off of Graves, I was able to get maybe 70 to 75 Jerry-miles a week [Schumacher counts eight minutes for a mile, regardless of the pace his athletes are running]. Anything higher than that, I was starting to feel like my workouts were suffering. This year, I was able to get some weeks at 80 Jerry-miles—that’s anywhere between 80 to 90 real miles—even at altitude.
We have done some speedier sessions, not too many at this point. Probably the fastest work that we’ve done, we had this one speed session that was like, some 300s with shorter rests, about three minutes. The first one, you’re going pretty close to all-out. The idea is just to try to die as little as possible throughout the work. You get really good at building that lactic [acid] and maintaining it, or trying to maintain your form as best as possible.
Sometimes we do more speed-endurance sessions, where we’ll do several sets of 300s at 1500-meter pace, but with really short jog rest. We approach speed from a variety of angles, because at the end of the day, the best way to work on speed is to throw in a little bit of an aerobic component so that it mimics what you’ll be able to access at the end of a race.
I’ve also been doing some more focused lifting in the gym, building power with heavier lifts. Now, I’ll do deadlifts and squats, instead of just one or the other. I’ve been bumping up the weight, doing fewer reps, and trying to focus on that power component—slow down, quick up, that type of thing.
I’ve started lifting two to three times a week. I won’t lift heavy more than twice, so that third time, I’ll do physio exercises to Track Running Beginners Guide, which I kind of have to nurse a little bit. I think that probably helps as well; I’ve noticed a difference in how my body feels when running.
So yeah, there’s a few things that I think have helped me preserve that turnover at the end of the race, but I think the biggest one is really building that aerobic engine. If you get to 2900 meters and you’re just so fit that it’s not approaching all-out, then you’re going to have a lot more in that last 100 meters.
You made that move with confidence—but you said on Instagram that you were so anxious before the race that you puked. When did you begin to feel like you could win?
The first race of the season, you don’t really know where you’re at. I knew I was fitter than last year, because Jerry had told me I was moving better in my workouts, even when I was running the same times.
And comparing my workouts, which I don’t usually love to do—but we did that just ’cause I was trying to decide if I was ready to do this race or not. I asked Rowan to look for me, because I don’t like to look too much, or I’ll get in my own head. He looked through my training log and was like, yeah, you’re definitely running just as good, if not better, workouts than last year. And I had run 8:38 at this point last year, so I knew I was in better shape than that.
But I definitely was feeling a bit anxious, and ended up puking before the race, unfortunately. The men’s 3K had just happened, so there were some bins around me; I don’t know if that triggered something. When that happens, it’s really unpleasant. I was worried that my performance would suffer a lot from the fact that I puked, even though I tried to get sugar afterward to try to mitigate the negative effects.
Once we got to a mile and I was still in contact, I hadn’t let a gap form or anything like that, I was starting to feel more confident. I got to that place where I was hurting a little bit, but it didn’t really get any worse. If you’re in that place halfway, that’s a very good sign.
New Balance Indoor Grand Prix Highlights Josette [Norris, who finished third in a personal-best 8:37.91] a couple of times, which is very uncharacteristic of me. So when I noticed that I was like, okay, I’m feeling good.
At 1K to go, that’s when I knew I had a very good shot at winning, given how I was feeling. But both Abebe and Josette are very, very talented, and I did not want to underestimate them by going too early and then getting caught back again. So I just decided to sit on my kick for as late as possible.
On an indoor track, the best time to go, if you’re not doing a long grind—if you’re just going quickly and once—is at 150, because you pass on the straight, and then really go with 100 to go. By about 800 to go, I was pretty confident I could do that. But I definitely didn’t know I was going to have that much left.
Sounds like you’re not a stranger to running-related vomiting. What seems to trigger it, and how do you cope?
The first race of the season is the most vulnerable for me to potentially puke before a race. That’s more anxiety-related, and it’s not great. Getting the heart rate mixed in there doesn’t help. This time I did a hard, longer stride, then I started coughing because it was indoors, and then that kind of triggered a puke.
I try to mitigate it by not having coffee, and trying to do things where my heart rate doesn’t get too excited. I also have a bit of IBS, so that’s also a bit stressful, trying to figure out what foods trigger an upset stomach. I found a gel that sits well, so I usually have one of those as a snack right before I start warming up. After I puked this time, I just grabbed another one of those to keep my blood sugar elevated and reset.
Otherwise, it really just depends on the time of year or type of workout. It often does happen after just a hard effort, when you’re going really lactic, one of those speed sessions I mentioned. Sometimes after a long run, because you’re just breathing really hard for two hours. Altitude, breathing hard, something not sitting well in my stomach and a combination of anxiety—but it really depends.
At the beginning of altitude camp this time, I had a string of puking. We had a hard long run and then one of those speed sessions, and so I had puked for both of those. I was having a period of increased anxiety where I puked before workouts, and that wasn’t fun. But once we were at altitude for a week or so, my anxiety settled and I was able to manage that a bit better, which is nice. I’m hoping that after I got the nervous jitters out for my opening race it won’t happen before a race again.
YPros Prove You Need a Strong Finishing Kick, protect my Achilles. Are you doing workouts together, and what’s that been like?
It’s been really fun. The group usually does most of their training together. When we do specific sessions, Lu will start to do her own thing. I’m trying to focus on building my strength in the 5K and the 3K, whereas Lu is still primarily like a 1500, 800, and—though she doesn’t like it—a 3K runner.
It’s been a while since we’ve been in the same city. I live in Beaverton close to the Nike campus, and she lives downtown in Portland. In the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty close—before that I was living across the Atlantic Ocean in Glasgow, a bit farther than a 20-minute drive to downtown. It’s been good fun to just spend more time with her.
What does the rest of your season look like right now?
As long as I’m recovered enough by then, I’m running a 5K at [the Valentine Invite] at BU on Friday. It’s been a while since I’ve done a 5K, so that’ll be fun. After that—I am really pleased with how that 3K went, so I think that I will do world indoors.
I was very much on the fence about it just because of timing. I only want to go if I’m feeling like I’m in a place where I can contend for a world medal, but I didn’t want to rush anything to be ready for world indoors at the expense of world outdoors, because that’s the ultimate goal. But I think we’re doing just that.
After that, I’ll probably do Prefontaine. The Diamond League season is going to be a little bit hard to navigate given that world champs are on the west coast, and a lot of Diamond Leagues are in Europe. But we’ll figure that out, and hopefully, do some good races pre-worlds. It’s still a work in progress figuring out the plan with capital P, but the ultimate goal is world outdoors, so all eyes are on that.
Cindy is a freelance health and fitness writer, author, and podcaster who’s contributed regularly to Runner’s World since 2013. She’s the coauthor of both Breakthrough Women’s Running: Dream Big and Train Smart and Rebound: Train Your Mind to Bounce Back Stronger from Sports Injuries, a book about the psychology of sports injury from Bloomsbury Sport. Cindy specializes in covering injury prevention and recovery, everyday athletes accomplishing extraordinary things, and the active community in her beloved Chicago, where winter forges deep bonds between those brave enough to train through it.
