“I Sacrificed Years of Performance by Not Eating Enough”—How Lydia O’Donnell Broke Every PB (#34)

John Paton (0:00)

I'm here today with Lydia O'Donnell. Now, Lydia is a fantastic runner. She's a national champion in the 10K. She's also had fantastic results in all distances up to the marathon, including a 20th place finish at the New York City Marathon. She's the founder of Femmi. Femmi is the fastest growing running app designed especially for women. Lydia, welcome to the show.

Lydia O'Donnell (0:24)

Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.

John Paton (0:27)

So, Lydia, many training plans are essentially one size fits all, and I'm curious, why are generic programs often so poorly suited for the female athlete?

Lydia O'Donnell (0:39)

Well, I think when we look at the research and the programs that have been built for people in general today, it's all been generalized off the male physiology. And so, less than 6% of sport science research studies have historically been done on women, specifically on women. So when we take that into account, when we look at pretty much all training across all sports, it's all been developed off the male body. And when I grew up, I didn't have any understanding that there was any difference between female and male physiology. But when I learned that, it just completely made no sense as to why we as women with totally different physiology, different hormones and fluctuating hormones, why we would be following a program that wasn't before those changes in our body, not just in a cycle, but even across a lifetime. And so we really wanted to develop something that was actually personalized for women based on those changes and how those changes impact us both in training and in recovery as well.

John Paton (1:37)

When did you first develop your interest in running? Where did that come from, Lydia?

Lydia O'Donnell (1:42)

Yeah, I mean, I have been running pretty much all my life. I started athletics around the age of seven back home in Tauranga, New Zealand.

I really was a competitive kid who just loved to move and loved sport, and I really did a lot of different sports growing up, but it wasn't until I was about 11 or 12 where I was kind of heading into my high school years. I met a woman called Rosemary Wright, and I know that you had Craig Kirkwood on the podcast recently, and Craig coaches Sam Ruth, and so Rose is Sam Ruth's grandmother.

John Paton (2:15)

No way.

Lydia O'Donnell (2:15)

Now this is my claim to fame. Yeah, yeah. But Rose coached me from the age, I want to say of 11, probably up until about 17 years old. And so Rose, I mean, you can see it in Sam, he genuinely loves the sport, and Rose gave that passion to me as well. She taught me how to just go out and have fun with it, use it as very much like a social connection, hang out with your friends. We had this beautiful group of high school girls. We would go on trips together. We'd train together, but it was never about the running. It was about how can we all build each other up, and running is just our way to connect. And so I loved running through high school. I ran cross country was kind of like health key focus, but I was a good runner and I would win school champs and maybe into schools. But it was only until my last year at school that I won a national medal, which I got third, I think it was in the road champs. And yeah, I kind of took all of those values and everything Rose taught me as a high schooler, which is genuinely what we live by at Femminel, which is so funny, but also I just feel so, so lucky that I had her and she really took me on. And then because of her holding me back, she always told me, you have to be patient with your body, wait till you're a little bit older. Nobody remembers a young athlete, so just give yourself the time. So I didn't really start training seriously until I was about 18 or 19

And that's where I won my first national title, which was the 5,000 meters.

And I think from there, I was like, okay, I think I can be quite good at this. I really love it. I want to see how far I can go. And pretty quickly after that, I got picked up by Nike. So I've been with the brand now for about 16 years, and I really am so grateful for the opportunities the brand has also given me, because it's really like showed me what sport can do for you. You know, it can give you a career, and I've built my career around it. So I do feel very grateful for that. Those were the very early days, and then there I really got pushed into the high performance sport kind of world in New Zealand, under Athletics New Zealand. I had multiple male coaches, and I went through about, I want to say, eight to ten years of pretty challenging times as a female athlete. But because I'm so competitive and determined, I kind of wasn't aware of the challenges I was facing until my late 20s.