Ep. #401: How to Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Run

Welcome to the Not Your Average Runner podcast. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running coach, and your running BFF here to help you start running. Feel confident and love the journey no matter your size. Now, if you’ve ever felt like you just weren’t meant to be a runner, think again. I believe that running is for all bodies, even yours.

This podcast is your warmup buddy, giving you tips, motivation, and the support you need to lace up and get moving. I’ve helped thousands of women become runners, and now I wanna help you. Let’s go.

Hey there runner, and welcome back to the show. Have you ever gone for a run hoping it would clear your head, but instead you spent the entire time mentally spiraling like your body is moving, but your brain is stuck on repeat. You’re overthinking your pace, you’re replaying awkward conversations. You’re running through your to-do list.

You’re wondering if people are judging you. It’s just on and on and on, and you don’t come out of the run feeling any better. In fact, maybe you feel even worse, at least mentally. Now, if that sounds familiar, you’re not alone and you’re not doing it wrong. You’re just stuck in your head. So today we’re gonna talk about how to get out of your head and back into your run so you can give your brain a much needed break.

Stop over analyzing and actually enjoy the movement, the moment and the magic of running. All right, let’s go. So what does it really mean to be in your head? And most people think like being in your head just means thinking negative thoughts about yourself or your body or your pace. And yeah, that’s definitely part of it, but it’s also so much more than that.

It, it looks like replaying a frustrating conversation from last week or worrying about something that might happen, even if it never does, especially if you can’t control it. Um, it’s stressing over all the things you should be doing instead of running. And of course it is also the data obsession, right?

Constantly checking your pace, your splits, or, you know, judging yourself for not being where you think you’re gonna do, or doing the math. Like, oh, if I just hustled through this last interval, maybe I can, you know, set a PR or whatever. And I actually, I wanna pause on that last one for a second because it does kind of feel productive to constantly be checking your data while you’re running, but it can also disconnect you from your body just as much as any self-critical thought or other kind of thing that we’re focusing on.

And often, in my opinion, focusing on the data is just a surrogate for other stress. Like you get a break from obsessing over something else in your life by obsessing over your running data, and you still feel awful. Right? It’s like checking your pace every 30 seconds and worrying that your run walk intervals aren’t enough and feeling bad that your mile was 1601 instead of 1559.

Right? So if that sounds familiar, and you are like, yeah, I’m constantly analyzing my run in real time, you know what, what is happening to you is it becomes less about the experience of running and more about chasing per perfection and. Again, you’re not in your run, you’re in your head. You’re critiquing yourself from the sidelines.

So your permission slip here is that you don’t need to optimize every run. Okay? You can actually just go out and run and have fun. Alright? Enough about that. I got off on a little side note, but you might be thinking right now. Well, Jill, if I’m in my head while I’m running, it’s ’cause I’m trying to work something out.

And I totally get that. But there is a big difference between using your run to creatively problem solve and using it to beat yourself up or spiral over things you can’t control. One leaves you feeling energized and maybe have a solution to an issue and the other leaves you feeling drained. So. How do you get out of your head and into your run?

Well, as always, I have a list, so let’s do it. Number one is to get present with your body. Now your body is actually always in the present. But our minds are not, right? So if your brain is in a drama spiral, and it’s either in the past or the future, and what I mean by that is you’re spiraling over something that happened last week, or you’re fretting and worrying about something that may or may not happen in the future.

You can bring your brain right back into the present by anchoring it into your senses. All right, so feel your feet on the ground left, right, left, right, left, right. Tune into your breath. Is it shallow? Is it deep? Is it fast? Is it slow? What does it feel like to be breathing right now? What can you smell?

What can you hear? What can you see? All right. This is a way of exiting the thought tornado and stepping into the actual run. What is happening in your body right here, right now. Now, step two is to give yourself permission to let go, my friends. You know this as well as I do, but midlife brains, especially for women, are like browsers with 83 tabs open.

You don’t have to close them all, okay? I’m not saying you wanna empty your brain, but we can minimize them. We can hit the little minimize button and just put them to the side. For 30 minutes, like let yourself not problem solve for the length of your run. Let yourself not check your pace. Let yourself just run.

Just do the thing. This is your time. You earned it. So let go of the mental micromanaging and here are a few ways that you can help make that happen. Start your run with an intentional exhale, like a real audible sigh, and it is a physical cue to just let it go for a moment. Let the day go just for now.

So just like really let that breath out. Set some boundaries with yourself. You can tell your brain. We will come back to that after the run. Every time a thought pops up that you’re like, listen, we’re gonna spiral, so we’re just gonna, we’re gonna spiral later. Right now, we’re gonna run. And so you’re not ignoring your problems.

You might be thinking, oh, if I just tell myself to think about it later, I’m ignoring my problem. No, you’re rescheduling it for a more appropriate time. While you are running is not the time to be letting your brain beat the shit out of you. Okay? You can do that later. Leave the watch alone or leave it at home.

And I get it. It it, it’s, if it’s hard, I. Not to obsess over numbers. Leave the watch at home or flip it over or cover it with a sweatpant. Put it around your ankle. I have seen people do this, which I think is brilliant. ’cause then you still get to count your steps. You still get to count your mileage, but you can’t check it, right?

So if you can’t leave it at home, at least make it harder to check. And finally, use a sensory anchor. So when your mind is wandering, just bring it back by noticing one thing that you see. Hear and feel. Okay. And I want you to know if this feels hard, that’s totally normal. Letting go is a skill, not a switch.

And the more you practice it, the easier it gets and the more peaceful your runs will become. Now the third step is to give your brain a job that is helpful. So you know, brains like to be busy. And if your brain is insisting on that when you’re running, don’t try to shut it down completely, because that creates a lot of resistance.

Instead, give it a job, give it something helpful, simple and low stress like you would do with a toddler. It’s like really testing your patients while you’re trying to get stuff done. You give them a small job that is not going to interfere with you and is gonna keep them busy. Because the thing is, you’re not trying to empty your mind like some kind of zen master on a mountaintop.

You are simply redirecting it with intention. So here’s a few ways to do that. You can pick a mantra to repeat during your run. Something that grounds you in the moment. Like, I’m here now. This is my time. I don’t have to fix anything right now. Right? Keep it short and believable. Something you would text to a friend who needed a pep talk.

You can count your steps or your breath, right? You could try to breathe in for three steps and out for three steps, or in for two and out for two. Whatever makes sense for you. You could just keep counting to 10 over and over and over again. It is not about doing it perfectly. It’s about giving your mind a rhythm to follow and something to focus on so it doesn’t spiral off into chaos.

And you can always use a music, um, playlist or a podcast or a book to shift your energy. I know for me, like listening to, uh, music. Can you know the music that I choose can shift my mood for sure. So not every run needs to be silent reflection time for me. Most of my runs are not silent reflection time, and sometimes the best thing you can do is listen to something that makes you laugh or feel empowered or just escape.

From your brain for a moment. And pro tip, this episode of this podcast totally counts for that. Um, another option is to use a visual focus. So pick a landmark and focus on it until you reach it. Then pick another and another, and another. It keeps your brain from drifting too far into the future and, you know, gives it, again, something to focus on.

That’s not all the other stuff. And finally, this one’s kind of fun and silly, but you could just narrate your run like it’s a nature documentary, like the Majestic Midlife Runner glides past the Trash cans on eighth Street. It breaks attention. It reminds you that it’s as enough to be so serious. But the point is here, your brain likes to be busy.

Fine. Let it be busy doing something that helps you stay in the run rather than pulling you out of it. And our final step is to redefine what success looks like, because success isn’t always faster splits or perfect heart rate zones, or beating your last GPS, uh, map by 0.03 miles, right? That stuff yes can be fun to track, track it after your run because it’s not the definition of a successful run.

Success is showing up even when your brain is loud or your body feels slow. It is. Honoring the promise you made to yourself to move, even if it’s not perfect or pretty or impressive. It is putting on your shoes and stepping outside even if your run turns into a full on walk. And even if your walk turns into standing in the sun for five minutes before you head home, even if you cry during the run, even if you walk more than you wanted to, even if you forgot to hit start on your watch and the app says you didn’t do it, your body still knows.

It still counts. Success isn’t about proving to anything to anyone else, okay? It is about building trust with yourself, and every time you show up, you are reinforcing that trust, okay? And that trust is what’s gonna carry you further than any pace ever could. All right. Okay my friend. That is it for today, and if this show is helpful to you, I would love for you to share it with a friend or post it on Instagram and tag me.

But either way, get out there and run whatever it looks like and I will talk to you next week. Mwah!

Real quick before you go, I’ve got a fun challenge for you. Take my exerciser personality quiz to find out exactly what kind of exerciser you are and how to make running feel easier and more enjoyable.

Just head over to not your average runner.com/quiz to take it and get your results. That’s not your average runner.com/quiz.