Lifestyle

Kristin Ihle Helledy Shares Advice for Up-and-Coming Runners

Published

4 years ago

September 8, 2022

When you visit with Kristin Ihle Helledy, her passion quickly becomes apparent. Like the joy of crossing the finish line first, her love for the sport of running is second to none. The Ph.D. in multicultural psychology is a six-time All-American runner who competed professionally as a Nike athlete. She pushed her mind and body to limits she didn’t even know existed.

She wants young runners to control the controllables and not let doubt and other thoughts creep in. “Here’s what I can control: my calm, my focus, and execute the plan that has been established,” she says.

Kristin Ihle Helledy was very young when she heard the crack of her first starting pistol. She was living in Florida when she heard an announcement about a mile-and-a-half fun run at her junior high school. She didn’t even know how to measure that distance, but she was intrigued. The school was giving out Coca-Cola products to the winner. Come in first place, leave with T-shirts and various goodies. She was sold.

She’d never run a lap in her life. She didn’t even have running shoes. She wore canvas sneakers with rubber bottoms and did not even know how far 1.5 miles actually was. That didn’t stop her; she was motivated.

“And so I thought, yeah, I want that Coke T-shirt,” she recalls.

The first-time runner went out, ran the race — and won it. She beat all the other competitors, both girls and boys. And that was her introduction to running. The coach recruited her for cross-country and the rest is history. She calls it, “a pure freak accident that just happened.” If Coca-Cola weren’t offered as a prize, we wouldn’t be here right now.

Hitting Her Stride

Today, Kristin Ihle Helledy uses her athletic and educational experience to strengthen others. She started a management consulting firm, Avant, to consult for NCAA teams and individual athletes. Her firm, Avant, works with businesses and leaders from all industries to accelerate performance, evelbate leader effectiveness and advance team capabilities. She also consults with a wide range of NCAA athletes and programs to enable performance and growth.

The nostalgia of the sport she loves keeps her vested in the successes of others. Whether it’s fans or beginning runners, she wants everyone to enjoy the experience. She believes fans are getting a chance to watch the best athletes in the world.

Experienced runners are already hitting their stride when it comes to training and exercise. They have their routines down. Kristin Ihle Helledy would advise up-and-coming runners to slow down in order to climb the ranks.

“I think if they’re very young, under the age of 18 or 19, I think: Be patient. Be focused and have a select person or persons to whom you listen. Everybody’s going to have an opinion. When you’re talented at a young age everybody wants a piece of you. So I would say find that one trusted person, listen to him or her, work to keep things simple and avoid overtraining,” says Kristin Ihle Helledy.

‘More Is Not Better’

Imagine advising a runner to slow down. But the thought behind that advice is that young athletes try to do too much at once.

“There’s this general sentiment, in life, that ‘more is better’. If a little is good then more must be better. And physiologically it doesn’t work that way, more is not better,” she says.

Just because you feel like you can get more miles in, it doesn’t mean you should. Maybe recovery would help you better achieve your goals. You’re not trying to slow down your running times; you’re trying to train more effectively. So she advises applying what’s called stress adaptation – load your body with heavy duty training and then give it time to repair.

“Go ahead and load your body real hard, do a hard training day, whatever that is, and then make sure that you recover and understand that more is not better. What that means is you do not need to do back to back hard workout days. The body must recover so you can hit it hard again,” says the seasoned veteran, whose favorite event is the women’s 400-meter hurdles.

Kristin Ihle Helledy appreciates the speed, speed endurance, and technique all wrapped into that one event (400m hurdles). Anything from considering how many steps to take between hurdles to the speed of the foot race itself. It’s not a flat-out sprint, like the open 400. It’s an extremely taxing event — and her favorite.

Her days of competitive running at an elite level are over, but she knows what it takes for today’s runners to be successful. She still gets energized watching others compete. And she always cheers for Nike athletes.

“I’m still Nike — Nike’s the only thing I wear for footwear,” she says. “Being a fan is intense and exciting and it brings goosebumps, and you want to go out there to help push somebody along to a new personal best.”

Lifestyle

Why Toba Ogunremi Believes High-Performing Teams Start with Belonging, Not Pressure

Published

7 hours ago

July 23, 2026

Michelle Langton

Most teams don’t fall apart all at once. It happens slowly, missed conversations, quiet disengagement, people doing what’s required but nothing more.

Toba Ogunremi has spent years working inside care environments where that kind of shift is easy to miss until it starts affecting everything. Leading operations at Samorem Care in the UK, he has seen how systems can appear stable on the surface while teams underneath struggle to stay connected to their work.

One experience early in his career changed how he looks at leadership entirely.

He had taken over a team that wasn’t in crisis, but it wasn’t working well either. The people receiving care were safe, but they weren’t thriving. The same was true for the staff. There was no urgency, no energy, just routine.

The usual solution would have been to tighten control by setting new targets, increasing supervision, and creating performance plans. He didn’t do any of that.

“I started with conversations,” he says. “Real ones. Not rushed, not formal.”

One by one, he spoke to each team member. What came out wasn’t frustration with the job itself, but something quieter and harder to spot.

“They weren’t disengaged because they didn’t care,” he explains. “They were disengaged because they felt unseen.”

No one had asked what they thought. No one had taken the time to understand how they were coping. Over time, that absence had turned into distance. That moment stayed with him. It shaped how he leads today.

His approach is simple, but not always easy to apply: people perform better when they feel they belong.

He believes high performance usually comes when people feel like they genuinely belong and know that what they do actually matters.

In healthcare, where pressure is constant and expectations are high, this idea can sound secondary. The focus is often on outcomes, compliance, and efficiency. Toba doesn’t dismiss those things, but he questions what happens when they become the only focus.

Even when all the processes are in place, if the people delivering the care feel disconnected, it eventually reflects in the quality of the work.

At Samorem Care, this thinking shows up in small but consistent ways. Recruitment is not just about experience. It’s about how someone responds to people, how they handle pressure, and how they communicate. Once they are in, the focus shifts to keeping teams stable and supported, rather than constantly rotating staff or reacting only when something goes wrong. He also pays attention to how leaders show up day to day.

According to him, leadership is not just about giving direction; it’s about being present enough to understand what your team actually needs.

That presence matters more in care than in most industries. The work is demanding, often emotional, and not always recognised for what it takes. When teams feel stretched or overlooked, it affects how they interact with the people they support.

For Toba, resilience is less about constant pressure and more about creating a work environment where people can do their jobs well without burning out. In his view, strong teams are not just coping; they are supported enough to stay clear-headed and consistent in their work.

His background outside healthcare still shapes how he leads. Having worked in sales and communications, he understands how important it is to read people and build trust. In healthcare, though, the impact is far more direct, as decisions affect someone’s everyday life, not just an outcome on paper.

That shift makes leadership more personal. Teams need more than instructions; they need stability, clarity, and a sense that they are understood. What defines Toba Ogunremi’s approach is its simplicity. He focuses on being consistent, listening carefully, and addressing issues early rather than reacting late.

In the end, his belief is straightforward: teams perform better not because they are pushed harder, but because they feel valued and part of something that works.