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Erin Finn

Scholar Stories: Finn Examining Final Year on Track with Scientific Focus

4/17/2019 10:16:00 AM | Women's Track & Field, Features

Continuing the popular series that began in 2016-17, each Wednesday MGoBlue.com will highlight a Michigan student-athlete and their academic pursuits. These are our Scholar-Athlete Stories, presented by Prairie Farms.

By Kyle Terwillegar

With Erin Finn scheduled to toe the start line for a 5,000-meter race this Friday (April 19) at Stanford University's Cardinal Classic track and field meet, the definitive final chapter in what has been a decorated University of Michigan running career -- one that has simultaneously been longer than average yet felt more abbreviated than most -- will begin to unfold.

Though, to be fair, Finn as the author of a story might not be the most fitting of literary analogies, despite her fondness for reading.

Instead, looking at her career under a scientific lens is more appropriate for a graduate student studying epidemiology in the School of Public Health. From this view, Friday will mark the beginning of the final rounds of experimentation in the ongoing scientific case study that is her collegiate running career.

"Recently, I have been treating things like a science experiment," said Finn, the female recipient of the 2018 Big Ten Medal of Honor for Michigan. "Having academic goals really helps me to be more of a scientist in running. I don't have this emotional connection where I am stubbornly doing things. Instead, I'm being smart about how I approach things, changing one variable at a time and seeing how my body responds."

Though her long-term experiment has yielded numerous positive results on the track -- four national runner-up finishes among nine All-America honors, as well as 10 individual Big Ten titles -- not every entry in the logs of her case study has followed her original hypothesis of being the best runner she can be.

Injuries throughout her undergraduate career in Ann Arbor forced her out of enough seasons of competition that the NCAA granted her a medical hardship waiver for a sixth year of indoor eligibility, as well as an additional sixth year of outdoor eligibility due to her redshirting the spring season in 2016 to pursue her Olympic dreams. That, too, ended in injury before she could compete at the Olympic Trials, despite having earned a sufficient qualifying time.

Somewhat ironically, the sixth indoor season she gained back was reclaimed by injury, leaving her now with this final remaining outdoor campaign to adjust the variables and contribute to her team's success. But even as recently as two weeks ago, that, too, seemed in doubt.

"This season certainly gave me exercise in humility," said Finn, who is now working to build up her fitness. "Honestly, there was a point at the season where I thought I would never race for Michigan again. So the fact that I will hopefully be competing at Big Tens, let alone before Big Tens, I haven't even fully let myself believe it. I'm just enjoying every moment where it's a possibility."

Erin Finn

While she is nearing the end of her athletic career at Michigan, her time in this current analytical approach to her running is a more recent development.

"I think that it took me a little bit of time to get here because running is so emotional," Finn said. "I feel like in the journey of my injuries, I've been able to kind of get rid of that emotional tilt and really look at it much more scientifically."

A confluence of events during the 2018 postseason helped her arrive at an outlook on running that much more closely aligned with her academic abilities and pursuits.

Extreme heat and humidity during her victorious 10,000-meter run at the Big Ten Outdoor Championships resulted in her toughest battle coming in the final 100 meters. It wasn't against another runner -- the nearest of which was nearly a full lap behind -- or even the clock, but against her own body to simply stay upright. Uncertainly weaving and staggering between lanes on the final straightaway, she collapsed just past the finish line from sheer exhaustion. An unrelated injury sidelined her for the NCAA East Preliminaries and, by extension, the NCAA Outdoor Championships.

"From Big Tens, I learned to be a little less stubborn," Finn admitted of her overly aggressive race at the conference meet, "but the bigger lesson came from after that with the injury that precluded me from running in prelims. I really needed to make some changes to start helping my body recover better."

Around the same time in her graduate studies she was beginning to work on her capstone project at the School of Public Health, focusing on what is known as the "female athlete triad." Defined by the American College of Sports Medicine in 1992, the triad is a disorder over-represented in female athletes -- especially endurance athletes -- that encompasses menstrual dysfunction, low-energy availability and decreased bone mineral density.

Her capstone research was happening simultaneously with her work on a separate project, under Dr. Ron Zernicke and Dr. Ken Kozloff -- the latter being a former Michigan track and field athlete -- relating to bone density and adaptability to training. That research has since been presented at the Orthopedic Research Society Conference.

Using data from a previous study by Dr. Jennifer Carlson at Stanford University, Finn's capstone focuses on the relationship between iron deficiency -- something with which she has struggled in the past -- and the different components of the triad, particularly energy availability.

"Energy availability is a critical component of the human athlete triad and anything relating to running and performance," Finn said. "With low-energy availability, you aren't recovering right and you're not properly fueling. You might not know this because you might not be losing weight, but background processes in your body shut down. Ultimately that can lead to injury and other issues.

"I think that having low iron as a signal for low-energy availability really could give people the motivation to make a change," Finn said, "and because of that I'm just really, really inspired to help get that knowledge out and show how people can make a change, stay healthy and run more miles."

Erin Finn

Taking cues from her energy availability research, she has applied several concepts to her routine that have changed how she approaches her day-to-day schedule.

"I feel like for so long I would just roll out of bed and eat half a granola bar on my way to class or on my way to practice," Finn said. "I'm definitely sacrificing sleep now so I can wake up earlier and eat a really good breakfast. I've made myself French toast I think almost every morning except for two mornings."

She also is adhering more strictly to the recommendation of refueling within 15-30 minutes of completing her workouts.

"I feel like before, I didn't fully believe that immediate refueling was that important, and so if I was busy, I might just wait until my next meal," she said. "I think not only is it helping just to have another place to add nutrition to my diet, but it's also helping me recover better so I can come back faster."

Recently, a more scrutinous analysis of her training habits helped uncover changes in her footwear that might help avoid injury and streamline her biomechanics -- yet another variable to add to the final step of her personal collegiate running case study.

That research is helping her make one final run at the NCAA title that so far has eluded her over the course of five and a half years while also helping her contribute to the greater scientific understanding of issues related to the female athlete triad. It's also showing her the way to the next phase of her life beyond this year.

One of the two days that Finn did not make herself her habitual French toast breakfast was the morning of a very different Stanford visit than the one she is making this weekend. Her purpose in Palo Alto, California, that day was to interview for medical school, a step forward in her life about which she has long dreamed.

"I have always wanted to be a doctor," she said. "Before I ever wanted to be a runner, I wanted to be a doctor. I've wanted to be lots of things on top of that, but I always wanted to be a doctor."

Erin Finn

Following in the career footsteps of her parents, Lori and Jeff, both of whom are medical doctors, Finn has decided to accept an offer to the University of Michigan Medical School to further her studies.

"I actually just committed a couple days ago, and I couldn't be happier to be staying home. It's just kind of like at the School of Public Health, I really feel that the curriculum at Michigan gives me the ability to make an impact while I'm a student. I'm not just taking resources for myself, but I can really give back to my community and I'm just so excited about that."

But by no means does her pursuit of her M.D. mean her days of running will come to an end. At the direct advice of former Olympic marathoner Bob Kempainen, whose wisdom she sought out personally, and inspired from afar by the story of marathoner Sarah Sellers, quite the opposite will be true.

Kempainen found and Sellers continues to find great success in distance running while maintaining rigorous medical professions, a feat Finn fully intends to duplicate in her post-collegiate running aspirations.

"Medical school is hard," she says of the advice she has received, "but it shouldn't take away the essence of who you are, and if it does, you're doing something wrong. Continuing to run is the essence of who I am, and to give it up would be giving up a part of me that was accepted to medical school."

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