the wildkind story
savannah’s story
I was a collegiate runner long before I was a coach; and long before I understood what my body actually needed. I struggled with fueling, my cycles went irregular, and my performance dropped. At the time, I didn't have the language for any of it. I just thought I had to push harder.
Then I got pregnant, and I was met with a whole new kind of uncertainty. Nobody was telling me what was actually safe, what was actually good, just conflicting advice and a lot of fear. My delivery ended in an emergency c-section, and afterward, returning to running and strength training felt like starting over from nothing. I didn't know how. I didn't know if I even could.
I searched and searched until I found the right pelvic floor PT. Thankfully I found someone who finally helped me return to running and lifting with a real sense of confidence. That experience changed the course of my life. I went all in: mentorship, training, continuing education, anything I could find to understand women's health more deeply, so I could help other women get back to the movement they loved.
Since then, I've treated hundreds of women, and I keep seeing the same thing: it's rarely whether to train, but how. Women are falling into the same gaps I fell into, not because they aren't strong or capable, but because the training doesn't match the season of life they're actually in.
That's why I’m in a coaching role. I want to help women — especially those returning to exercise postpartum — train in a way that's informed, whole-body, and built around their real life, not a generic plan, and to give them the support I wish I'd had from the very beginning.
ben’s story
I grew up running. I ran kids races, I played soccer, I played basketball, I was constantly active. But to be quite honest, I didn’t love running at an early age. I can remember in 5th grade hearing an announcement about cross country and being confused why it was announced in the fall. Cross country happened on snow, right? Wrong (sort of).
Middle and high school cross country were formative years in my running journey. I found a love for covering distances by foot, especially in the crisp, fall air with the crunch of a gravel trail under my feet. I can still close my eyes and remember it. I wasn’t a talented runner, but I loved it. That led me to keep running through my college years on my own chasing half marathon goals.
I kept running through PT school and signed up for my first marathon the fall of our third year with some classmates. For my first marathon, I had ambitious — but not unrealistic — goals. However, I couldn’t let go of my ambition when life became hectic. We moved to a new state, started new rotations, and I got sick all in the span of about two weeks. I kept training as much as I could and that proved to be a mistake. Long story short, I never ran that marathon. In fact, I tried to drop to the half marathon and scratched that, too. To say I learned a lot of valuable lessons in that season of life is an understatement.
I’ve shared this with many of the folks I’ve worked with as a way to show there’s no shame in adjusting to life. You can’t just keep pushing when life is dictating you to slow down and that’s why I love helping athletes chase big goals. I know what the cost of not respecting your life circumstances are and hope my wisdom keeps my athletes running and chasing finish lines, distances, or whatever they want from their running journey.
why wildkind, together
We both work at an endurance specialty clinic, treating athletes side by side, day in and day out. Over time, the more we worked together, the more we realized how much we still had to learn from each other, and how much further we could take an athlete's training when we combined what we each knew.
We saw it clearly: the more specific the training, the higher their likelihood of success. Generic plans only get you so far, but when you work in the right strength work, the right run programming, built around an athlete's actual goals, distances, paces, terrain, and elevation, that’s what carries you across the finish line.
wildkind became the natural next step. Now we get to do this work together, helping athletes from anywhere train in a way that's truly built for them.