Ep #193: 10 Reasons You Had a Bad Run (and How to Fix It)

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who has never felt athletic but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running and life coach and I teach women how to start running, feel confident, and change their lives, and now I want to help you.

Hey Rebels. Have you ever had a run that just sucked? Like, you’re slower than usual. Maybe your legs felt like lead bricks. You couldn’t catch your breath. Well, guess what? It happens to everyone. And I’m going to break down exactly why, and what to do about it in this episode.

But first, the spring session of the Rebel Runner Roadmap is open for registration right now. And before we kind of dive into this whole concept of a bad run, I’ve just got to share what Tine Parkinson, one of our long-time listeners said after going through just the welcome module of the program.

So, Tina wrote in to say, “I just finished the Starting Line module and printing out my progress checks. I am literally almost in tears because this is so helpful and so much better for me than any online app. I am not alone and I so appreciate you breaking this down into manageable chunks and making it accessible and easy to understand, no matter where we are in our journey. Seriously, I am not a weepy woman, but this is such a freaking relief. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Well, I just want to say, thank you, Tina for sharing that with me and the Not Your Average Runner team. We were so excited to get your letter. And I’m so glad that you’re finding the roadmap helpful. I cannot wait to see how much fun you have in the class.

So, Rebels, I want you to know that the roadmap is a running class like no other. It is perfect for beginners or for people coming back to exercise after time off, or for anyone who wants to up-level her running.

So, in the class, we dive into running form, breathing, and pacing, you know, all the technical stuff. But then, we also work really hard on mindset so you can get the fuck out of your own way and run. It’s 30 days of learning, of practicing, of becoming the runner you want to be. The community that comes with it is exceptional and it makes the experience even better.

So, class starts on April 26^th. The very first coaching call is on April 27^th. I want you to head over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com right now to sign up. I will wait, rebelrunnerroadmap.com. Just go there, sign up, come back to me, and we’re going to talk about bad runs.

So, you’re back. You’ve signed up. And let’s talk about this bad run phenomenon. So, first things first, everybody has bad runs. I mean, all runners have bad runs. If you don’t run, you can’t have a bad run. But really, it happens to all of us.

Not every one of your runs is meat to feel like prancing unicorns and daisies falling from the sky. Some days, you’re going to feel like you’re flying. Other days, you’re going to feel like you’re drowning in quick sand. And that is completely normal. That’s how running works, really for everyone.

Think of your life. Every day of your life is not the best day ever. We don’t’ expect to have every day of our life be amazing. And we are just like, when it happens, we have a bad day, we’re like, “Oh I had a bad day. Oh well.” Right?

So, running is just kind of like that. Some runs are great, some maybe not your favorite; that’s how it works.

And actually, I don’t really like calling any run a bad run because every bad run starts with a win. And that win is putting your shoes on and running. So, every single quote unquote bad run actually starts out with you winning.

And I think there’s always something to learn with every single run. So, I really do not judge them as good or bad. And honestly, even when I have a run that didn’t feel the greatest, even if it felt the worst of any run I’ve ever had, I still consider it a valuable experience.

I think a truly bad run would be one that I say, afterwards, “I wish I hadn’t gone running today.” And guess what? I’ve been running for almost 25 years. I have never, ever said those words about a run. Legit, okay. So, if you finish a run and you’re like, “I wish I’d never ever done that,” okay, then you can call it a bad run. Otherwise, stop judging them.

But for sure, there are runs that were not exactly my favorites. There have been runs where my legs felt tired, my body feels off, maybe it’s really hot and I’m just uncomfortable or I’m just dragging. Sometimes there are runs where my brain has opinions the whole time and I’m like, “Will you please pipe down so I can enjoy my run?”

So, when that happens, I like to do a little bit of detective work just to see what’s going on because bodies are pretty complex systems. And there are a lot of factors that go into how your run feels. And when you can start to see those patterns, you can begin to proactively do things to decrease the chances of having one of those runs.

I mean, you’ll never be able to prevent it 100% of the time, but for sure, you can stack the deck in your favor. So, here’s a little checklist that I like to go through when I have a run that feels not so great. And I just kind of go through and say, “Okay, what happened?” And I’ll go through all of these items and see if it’s maybe one or even a combination of them that created it. And that helps me stop thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m getting worse, my running has just been horrible,” And start thinking like, “Okay, what tweaks and changes can I make in my routine so that running starts to feel better?”

Because I think – I just realized, I didn’t say this before, but the problem is not that you had a bad run. That is never ever the problem. The problem is what you make it mean. And when you have a run that didn’t feel so good and your brain starts going, “Uh oh, that was not a good run. Oh no, maybe we’re not making progress. Maybe we’re sliding backwards. Maybe running will never feel good again,” when your brain starts to go down that road instead of saying, “Okay, what has been happening over the past few days or week that maybe led to it?”

When your brain starts to go down the road of, “Oh shit, running is going to be terrible from here on out,” guess what? You’re going to get stuck in a mental spiral that is going to ensure that your next run and the one after that and the one after that don’t feel good.

So, we want to stop that train before it leaves the station. So, when you have a bad run, do a little detective work so you can maybe understand why and then your brain has a harder time saying, “Oh, running is just not for us.”

Alright, so let’s dive in. So, I’ve got 10 things that I look at when I’m trying to understand why my run didn’t feel so great. The first is, “How well did I sleep last night? Or how have I been sleeping for the past few days?” Because if you have a night where you sleep like three hours and then you get up in the morning and your run feels hard, well guess what? It’s because you’re not rested.

We’re not going to judge ourselves saying, “Oh gosh, there’s something wrong with me because I didn’t get my sleep in.” No, it’s just that is why your run didn’t feel great. And then you can be like, “Okay, well maybe I can go to bed earlier before my next run.” That’s a possibility, right?

So, look at your sleep habits, specifically the night before, but even like over the past few days. And if you’ve been struggling with insomnia or maybe you’ve got a big project due at work or your kid was up all night, you’re like, “Oh, well that makes sense. I didn’t have a lot of sleep so my run didn’t feel too good.” So, then you can just drop the judgment and drop the worry and just be like, “This is why, and I’m going to figure out how to fix that.” Okay, so that’s number one.

Number two – and this is so common and we always seem to forget this. But if you do a really hard strength workout or a hard peloton workout or something like that and then the next day running feels hard, that’s pretty normal.

I know that if I try to run on the day after leg day, I know that it’s going to feel difficult. I just know this ahead of time and I’m okay with it. My strength training workouts are usually in the afternoon, so I’ll run the morning of my strength training so I get the feeling of running on fresh legs. But if I have to run the day after my strength training, I’m like, “Oh yeah, it’s just going to be hard. That’s alright. That’s normal.”

So, think about what have you been doing in the past day or so and have you been really taxing your muscles more than normal. Another really common example at this time of year is, okay, Saturday you spend the entire day planting things in your back yard, doing lawn work, doing landscaping. And we all know that that actually is a pretty good strength workout.

So, you spend six hours on a Saturday doing all that stuff and then Sunday you get up and you go for a run and it’s hard. It’s like, yeah, you just did the equivalent of like 500 squats the day before.

So, think about what you’ve been doing physically, what do your workouts look like? What does your life look like from a physical perspective for the past few days? And factor that in. Maybe that could have had something to do with it.

Another thing that might be going on is you might be coming down with a cold. You might be coming down with the flu, with another illness or if you’re somebody who had chronic illness, if you have rheumatoid arthritis or lupus or an autoimmune disorder that kind of ebbs and flows with the symptoms, you might be coming into a phase of the illness where you’re going to have more prevalent symptoms.

So, be aware that your body, your immune system might be fighting a battle that you’re not aware of yet. And in that case, it’s not going to have as many resources for your running. And so, if you have a bad run and you can’t figure out any other reason, maybe baby yourself for a couple days. Get some extra vitamin C, drink some extra water, get some extra rest and see if maybe your immune system is just busy doing other things and it’s kind of like, “Listen, I can’t give a lot to this running right now because I’m fighting off a virus.”

Number four is, you might be in a particular spot in your monthly cycle where your energy levels are low, where your hormones are sort of conspiring to make you not feel so great.

I think that women, especially who maybe are on the kind of birth control that takes your period away for months at a time might not necessarily be as tuned into their cycle because they don’t have that reference point of, “Okay, got my period and in four more weeks I’m going to have another period, and so I know there’s a cycle going on.”

We kind of get a little bit detached from it. So, your hormones are still rolling through that 28-day cycle whether or not you’re getting your period if you’re on a certain type of birth control. So, you might just be at that low point in your cycle and not realize it.

And here’s something I learned the other day, that even post-menopause, we still have cyclical motions in our hormones that can impact us. And again, when you’re post-menopausal, like I am, you’re thinking, “Oh, well I don’t get my period so I shouldn’t have those days where I don’t feel great.”

Guess what. You still have fluctuations. It might be a different pattern, but you still have fluctuations, so start paying attention to that.

Number five – there’s no judgment with any of these, by the way. But number five, maybe you had a few too many drinks last night. Like, if you’re more of, like I am, I have maybe two drinks a week. I’ll have one on a Friday night with my husband for our date night. And then maybe I’ll have one on a Sunday afternoon or something, I don’t know.

Like, I would say I average two drinks per week. And if I go out with friends and have, like, three maybe four glasses of wine, I will tell you what. The next day, my run does not feel the way I want it to because I’m dehydrated. My body is still trying to flush out the toxins from the alcohol.

So really, like, hey what did you have to drink last night? Because going out and having a few drinks, there’s no judgment. I’ve done that many times; many. I still do it.

But if you’re not realizing that it may impact the run you have the next day, that’s a connection you want to make. And maybe you say, “Okay, I’m going to be going out with some girlfriends tonight. I plan on having a few glasses of wine. I’m not going to plan an important run for tomorrow.

You also, because alcohol dehydrates you, but just dehydration in general, if you haven’t had a lot to drink over the past week, if you haven’t been getting a lot of water, maybe you’ve been in a whole bunch of work meetings and you haven’t had access to your water bottle or you’ve been traveling a lo, or who knows, maybe you’ve been traveling on a plane and that can be very dehydrating.

If your body is dehydrated when you start your run, it can impact the quality of your run. So, that’s something to think about, like, look back and see, “Where have I had different liquid intake patterns over the past few days? And what have I been doing that may have impacted my body’s hydration levels?”

Alright, so along the lines of things that we put in our mouth, if you’ve been eating a lot of maybe junk food – I know that’s probably not the politically correct way to call it. But if you had, like, four pieces of pizza last night and finished it up with a cupcake, you might not feel as good the next morning for your run as you would if you had a huge salad with a lot of vegetables and some protein and no sugar.

And again, I’m not saying don’t eat the junk food. You want the junk food, go for it. I love junk food. It’s my favorite. But be aware of how it impacts your performance as a runner. So, if you’re going to have a pizza on Friday night, Saturday morning’s run might not feel so great. And usually, when we eat a pizza for dinner, there’s a few beers and so you kind of get that double-whammy of dehydrating yourself from the alcohol and eating the type of food that does not give you as much of an energy boost the next day.

So, just kind of look back over the past two to three days and be like, “What have I been eating and did that impact my performance?” And again, I’m begging you, please don’t judge yourself for what you’ve done. You cannot go back and eat differently. You cannot go back and drink differently. You can only say “This is what I did. This is the impact. How can I use this information to my advantage going forward?”

Alright, now let’s talk about some external factors that are outside of your body. What about where you were running the last time you ran, or what did this route look like today? Have you been running a lot of hills? Was today’s running route hillier than usual? Were you, for example, if you decided to go running on the beach, it’s harder to run on sand than it is on pavement.

If you went for a trail run, you’re going to be slower on the trail than you will be on the pavement. If it’s snowing out and you’re trying to run through the snow or not slip on the ice, again, that can impact your pace. And again, if you are running a hilly route today and you normally run on flat terrain, that is going to impact your performance.

And you might think, “Oh gosh, why am I so slow? Why does this feel so hard? Oh, well maybe it’s because I got like 200 feet of elevation today and normally I get 10 feet of elevation.”

So, look at the course that you’re running when you’re having your bad run and then compare it to does this match up with what I usually do? And if it’s different, that’s probably a contributing factor to why it doesn’t feel great.

The weather is another contributing factor. If it is hotter than usual or more humid than usual or both, even if it’s like normally you go running and it’s in the 50s but today it’s like in the mid-60s, that’s warmer than normal and your body needs to adapt to that. So, those first few runs of the summer where it’s warmer – and it doesn’t have to be 90 degrees for you to have this impact, if it’s just 10 degrees warmer than usual, you may feel an impact.

And if the humidity – the humidity has even more of an impact on your body than the heat. If the humidity is a lot higher than usual, then that is going to slow down your body’s ability to throw off heat through your sweat. Because if there’s already a lot of humidity in the air, if there’s already a lot of water in the air and your body is pumping all of this sweat out of your skin to cool you down, if the air is full of water already, your sweat won’t evaporate as quickly.

And when your sweat can’t evaporate as quickly, your body temperature remains higher. And literally your body will say, “Okay, well we need to slow down because the pace we’re running is putting out too much heat for us to accommodate cooling down our core temperature.”

So, heat and humidity have an impact, much more than you think. So, pay attention to that. And if you go out for a run and it’s that first warm day of the year and you’re like, “Oh god, why am I struggling? It’s so nice out.” It’s like, well that’s exactly why you’re struggling.” And it will get easier though as your body adapts.

Now, speaking of that first run of the season when you go outside, some people, a lot of people, run on a treadmill all winter. And then, when it starts to get warmer outside, they go outside. Well, running on a treadmill and running outside are different. They feel different. And if you’re used to running on a treadmill and this is your first outdoor run either ever or of the season, it’s probably going to feel harder because there are variations in the terrain, you have to watch where you’re going.

A treadmill, the belt helps you a little bit by pulling your feet backwards. So, treadmill and outdoor running are different and very often, the treadmill physically feels easier. And so, if you go outside for that run and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, what’s wrong? I can go this fast on the treadmill but I go outside and I’m so much slower,” it’s like, yeah, you’re just not used to the outdoor running yet. So, that’s another factor.

And then finally, number 10 – and this one, oh my gosh, this is probably the responsible for 90% of our worst runs. But we find it hard to understand. If you spent the whole run thinking, “This sucks. This is so hard. What’s wrong with me? I’m getting worse. I’m not making any progress.” If those are the thoughts you have in your head throughout your entire run, you are going to feel discouraged, disappointed, frustrated, and angry. And guess what? Your run is going to suck.

So, I just gave you nine physical factors, either internal or external physical factors that can impact your run. But number 10, if you’re going to spend the whole damn run thinking, “This is so hard. This sucks. I’m pissed because this is a bad run,” you’re going to make everything so much worse.

I probably should have made this number one instead of number 10 on the list because I think it’s the most important thing. If you have a sucky run, the first thing I want you to look at is, “Well, what was I thinking during that run?” And if what I was thinking was, “This is too hard, this feels awful, why am I so slow?” If that’s what you’re thinking, you’ve got to check yourself and you’ve got to work on your thinking going forward. Because your thoughts create your emotions. Your emotions drive your actions.

Have you ever been out running and you’re like, “Oh my god, this run feels so good? I’m going to see if I can go a little faster. I’m going to push myself here. I’m going to sprint the last quarter-mile.” You’re thinking to yourself this run feels so good, your emotions are excited, encouraged, empowered. And when you have those emotions, you do things like see if you can sprint that last quarter-mile or see if you can run through a few of your intervals, a few of your walk intervals when you’re thinking that way.

When you’re thinking, “This is so hard. This is too difficult,” what do we do? We quit early. We spend the whole time looking at our watch. We say, “Oh, I need to take a break and I need to walk.”

So, notice what you’re thinking and how that impacts the experience that you’re having of your run. Because again, the run is the circumstance. The distance you ran, the time it took, the elevation, the weather, all of that is the circumstance. You get to decide whether it’s a good run or a bad run.

And I recommend never calling it a bad run. Just call it a learning opportunity or just ask yourself, “Okay, this was my run. This isn’t necessarily the way I wanted it to go. So, what can I do differently next time?” But watch what you are thinking. Because when you are all up in your head about how hard this is and how it doesn’t feel good, you’re literally making it harder.

So, those are the 10 reasons you might have had a run that you didn’t love. And it’s probably not just one. It’s probably a combination of one or more plus, of course, spending the whole run thinking, “This sucks.”

But you guys, sometimes you just have a bad run and it really doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes, you’re never going to know why, and that’s okay.

We also go out and sometimes you have this amazing run and you’re like, “I don’t know what just happened because that was amazing. That came out of nowhere.” We don’t question it when we have a good run. We don’t say, “Oh my god, I’m getting better at this too quickly.” We don’t freak out over it. We’re just like, “Yay, I had a great run.” And then we move on.

So, I want you to have this same approach to a bad run. You’re like, “Okay, I just had a bad run. I’m just going to move on. I’m going to evaluate, see why that might have happened, and then I’m just going to move on.” And you can do that with a good run too, by the way.

If you have a good run, I want you to look back, ask yourself the opposite of all these questions, “Did I sleep really well last night? Has it been three days since my last strength workout? Have I been drinking extra water? Have I been eating particularly well? Is it cooler out than usual?” Ask yourself the opposite of all those questions to see if maybe you can deduce why you had a good run and start looking at the quality of your run and the data surrounding it to see if you can draw some conclusions and support the activities that are going to help you run the way you want to run.

Alright, my rebellious friends. That is it for today. I want you to go right now, if you didn’t do it already, sign up for the Rebel Runner Roadmap. We start on April 26^th, so like real soon, rebelrunnerroadmap.com. You will not regret it. You will not. It is an amazing class and it is going to help you either start running, get better at running, restart your running program. It’s a program for everybody.

Alright, Rebels, I love you, stay safe. Get your ass out there and run. And I will talk to you next week.

Oh, and one last thing. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out the Rebel Runner Roadmap. It’s a 30-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com to join. I’d love to be a part of your journey.