Greer, SC · Spotlight Series
Grace Alexander: training through the season, not around it.
Professional triathlete and triathlon coach, on hip, calf, and shoulder overuse issues in peak season, and working with a doctor who treats her like an athlete, not a diagnosis.
New in town, and racing on a schedule.
Grace found Zone the way a lot of serious athletes find their doctor: through someone else’s trust in it. A friend who’d been active in the Greenville triathlon community for fifteen-plus years pointed her to Dr. Scott Kaylor as soon as Grace mentioned she was moving to the area. Grace started seeing him within her first week in town, and has kept a biweekly appointment ever since.
She came to the sport from a swimming background, with a college career built on low-impact miles in the pool. Triathlon training changed that math. “When I started triathlon training, I found that my body was developing a lot more aches and pains,” she said, “especially when I was picking up my run volume and intensity.” Learning to tell the difference between a pain she could train through and one that needed attention became its own skill, and one she leaned on Scott to help sharpen.
The list of what she’s brought in has been a working athlete’s list: hip pain that carries over into the bike, recurring calf and soleus overuse, hamstring tendinopathy, and shoulder pain from open-water swimming that flares when her pool switches to long course. None of it, on its own, sidelined her. All of it needed a doctor who wasn’t going to just tell her to stop.
“I use a lot of your feedback to help my confidence. If I don’t see that you’re freaking out about something I’m freaking out about, I feel a lot better about it.”Grace Alexander
Modify it. Don’t just rest it.
Peak race season isn’t the time for a big overhaul. It’s the time for small, precise tweaks that don’t undo months of training.
Grace already had a coach handling her programming, so her sessions with Scott run differently than a typical plan. “When you have a coach, I get to be more of a fine-tuned precision person,” he explained, “and just come in and give you a couple of little things to tweak your training.” The goal in-season isn’t a full rebuild. It’s the smallest change that lets training keep moving forward.
That philosophy is the part Grace says stuck with her most. “This is something that I think has almost been ingrained in us for the past few decades, where you’re told when something hurts to rest it, ice it, and recover that way,” she said. “What I like about you is that you don’t make it feel like I need to sit out ever… it’s more about, how can we change a little bit of what we’re doing so that you can still train in a way that moves you forward, it just might be altered a little bit.”
Breathing work turned out to be an unexpected favorite. “I’ve actually found the breathing exercises to be very helpful,” Grace said. “I think breathing is overlooked a lot.” It’s a piece Scott says the clinic was practically built around: “We almost built this clinic around the idea of helping to restore breathing patterns… there’s a huge benefit when we can help somebody learn how to breathe better, to get out of pain and move better.”
Still racing. Still getting faster.
Scott’s read on the results: “You’ve set some PRs in your running performances already at a couple of different distances, and your bike splits have been faster than where they were in some of the same races this year compared to last year.” By his account, Grace was already sitting on multiple top-10 finishes at national and international events early in the season, with more races on the calendar.
None of her overuse issues have needed her to sit a season out. The calf and soleus work, the hamstring tendinopathy, the shoulder pain from open-water swims, all of it has been managed alongside training rather than instead of it. “Yeah, all of it’s been trending better,” Grace said. “And of course, this is always a process. It’s not something that after one visit you’re fixed, as much as we want that. That’s something you learn being an athlete.”
“If you have something bothering you that’s impacting what you love to do, or even just your daily life, this is the one body that you get. If you have an opportunity to get help to make it better, it’s worth the investment… Zone Physical Therapy has helped me deal with mine, so I’m happy to brag about y’all.”Grace Alexander · Professional triathlete, triathlon coach
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