If you’ve trained as an athlete, you know there is more than one element for success. Natural ability is only part — you also need strength, skill, endurance, and one more thing that helps your body reach its potential — flexibility. It is the element most often forgotten as we carve out time in the weight room and our running routes, but it’s important to keep our bodies healthy and keep injuries at bay.

We’ve got just the person on today’s Running Around Charlotte podcast to help you stay fit, flexible, and balanced in your athletic life – welcome Kara Vincent to the podcast!

When you run, is Dog your co-pilot? Many, many of us wouldn’t consider stepping out for a jog without our best four-legged friend — even if it’s just for a couple of miles while warming up. But is that good for your canine companion? How much is too much?

Our guest today on Running Around Charlotte can answer those questions. Dr. Tom Watson is a former Army combat officer during Desert Storm and now serves Charlotte as veterinary orthopedic and soft tissue specialist, and owner and founder of Carolinas Veterinary Medical Hospital. To his credit, he doesn’t see bears, but does serve lions and tigers and dogs — oh my!

Before you can move thousands of runners through 26.2 miles of Charlotte’s streets, you have to move thousands of pounds of food, equipment, supplies, and even water to strategic spots along the route between the start and finish line.

It’s a big job, and one we’re glad to have good partners for. Gentle Giant Moving Company does the “heavy lifting” – so to speak – for race set-up and tear-down. It’s a LOT of work, as you can imagine, which is why we’re excited to have Bob Farnum and Michael Valle from Gentle Giant to tell us how it’s done.

We can boast about a lot of firsts in Charlotte, but this one makes us proud in the running community — a program most runners, and so many others, have heard of by now called Girls on the Run. It’s a popular afterschool program that allows girls to learn about inner strength, confidence, and their own health and fitness, by using running to teach skills of character, care, and self-reliance.

Girls on the Run started more than 20 years ago in Charlotte, and now counts nearly 4,000 girls locally in Mecklenburg and Cabarrus counties.. and even more nationwide, now counting more than a MILLION girls who have participated in all 50 states! Just hearing that makes all of runners here in Charlotte stand up a little taller and maybe even, run a little harder? Joining us today on Running Around Charlotte is the local director for Girls on the Run, Maghan Knight.

We know that training never stops, not even in winter — but sometimes we itch for someplace new and different to stretch our legs. If you haven’t been to the trails at the U.S. National Whitewater Center, then that is the place you’re looking for.

In addition to its whitewater course and rock climbing walls, the Whitewater Center has a multitude of trails down by the Catawba River that are a great place to run and explore. Today on Running Around Charlotte, we have the Whitewater Center’s director of brand experience, Cooper Lambla, to tell us about the trails… and also about the center’s role in keep the great outdoors and important part of a growing Charlotte.

If you live in Charlotte, and especially if you have a daughter in our elementary schools, you’ve probably heard of Girls on the Run – a program that started here, and encourages girls of all athletic abilities to run for fun and fitness. But did you know there is a similar program for boys? There is — and it is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year! Congratulations to “Let Me Run,” a non-profit program to encourage boys in 4th through 8th grade to be healthy, build relationships, and live active lifestyles.

Let Me Run also started here in Charlotte, the brainchild of a Girls on the Run coach with two sons. It now has more than 50 chapters and has registered more than 30-thousand boys since 2009. The Greater Charlotte Regional Director Jay Seago joins us on Running Around Charlotte to celebrate this big milestone for the program.

Once the new year hits, many of us think about ways we can improve. Can we be better friends, better runners, better people… you name it. No matter how “good” we do things, there’s one area that most of us can probably find room for improvement— and that’s how we feed and fuel our bodies.

Exercise, sleep, and diet are arguably the three legs of the table that help us stay in balance. And you can pretty much feel it when they get out of whack. Our next guest knows a little bit about that, too. Matt Dengler of RxRD Nutrition is a registered dietician, a self-professed CrossFit addict, a former college football player, and a whole lot more. Now, he’s in the profession of making sure folks of all sorts are making the most of what they put in the tank.

Well this next one sounds fun… a race called, “Strip It to Give It.”  Okay, I’ll let you visualize that for a moment……. then tell you, it’s probably not what you’re imagining right now (unless you’ve already heard of this race).

This race, like most, involves runners stripping off articles of clothing as they go about the course… but then the clothes are collected, washed, and donated to our homeless neighbors in the Queen City. Now THERE’S an idea! And the creator of this good idea is Katie Gregory – someone who has worked with our homeless neighbors since she was a teenager.

If you search about any road race in Charlotte, one of the first listings that pops up is the one for Run Sign Up. That’s because is one of the most popular online platforms for signing up for races and race-day tracking and scoring. The company has managed more than 20-thousand races and supported more than 8-thousand non-profits in doing so — and is growing every year. Justin Ratike is here to tell us all about that they do!

Run a marathon, drink a beer? Sure! Why not!

Okay, maybe you ought to hydrate first with water, some fruit, or even your favorite sports drink. Then maybe go home and take a shower — and THEN join your friends for a beer.

NoDa Brewing is one of Charlotte’s first breweries and still one of the biggest – and also happens to be a sponsor of the Novant Health Charlotte Marathon. We’ve invited Suzie Ford, NoDa’s co-founder and co-owner, to join us today on Running Around Charlotte — to inspire and motivate us with her story, and the story of how NoDa Brewing came to be.