Ep #157: How to Disaster-Proof Your Running

I’ve got a four-step method for you today that will help you put your own exercise consistency plan in place. You might even want to listen to this episode a couple of times, first just to hear it and absorb it, and then the next time, to take notes and actually make your plan.

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. How you doing? So first of all today, before we dive into this episode, I have got to tell you that I am so excited. Why? Because I have been putting the finishing touches on the workbook and slides for the Not Your Average Workout that I’m teaching in a couple weeks.

And it is amazing. Amazing. So one of the most common questions I get from people is how to stay consistent with exercise. So they’ll start a fitness routine, maybe it’s running, maybe it’s something else, and then a few weeks in, they quit before the habit is established and then something happens, they quit, they have to start all over again. And it’s very frustrating and it turns into this pretty routine cycle for a lot of people.

Or sometimes maybe it’s a tendency to prioritize everybody else’s stuff over your own, or when things get busy in your life, the first thing you do is you drop your exercise routine and your self-care off the list. This is a big problem for people and I’ve created a class to address all of it.

And it’s a half-day workshop. I know it’s going to be so helpful for so many people. I was actually just coaching one of my Run Your Best Life members today on this very thing, and I can tell you, if you’re struggling with consistency, you’re not alone. There’s nothing wrong with you. So many people have this issue. There’s nothing wrong with you, you’re not lazy, you just haven’t gotten your thoughts in order to support consistency.

So if you’re having this problem, you need this class. So I want you to go to notyouraveragerunner.com to join. You just click on consistency class in the menu. Go to notyouraveragerunner.com. You can do notyouraveragerunner.com/workout. That will take you right there.

Or again, you can just go to notyouraveragerunner.com, choose consistency class right from the menu, or you can even just go to the show notes for this episode. Actually, just go ahead, do that right now. I will wait.

Okay good, now that we’ve got that out of the way, so my friends, it has been a crazy couple of days. So tropical storm Isaiah blew through on Tuesday, basically took out half the power in New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania, and I got to tell you, I have a whole new respect for electricity now.

We had a power outage for like, a week, and that was not as painful to me as this particular one because I don’t think I’ve ever been without power that long during the summer. And wow, it got really hot in our apartment. Finally, it came back on day three. I almost cried I was so happy.

I just walked around standing in front of the fan going, “This is amazing.” But seriously, I actually learned an important lesson this week, and I promise this does come back around to running in a moment, so just bear with me.

After working in corporate pharmaceutical industry for many years, I’m very used to the idea of having backup plans and disaster recovery plans for business systems. And I have those for my own business. I have a second laptop with all my software installed on it in case my primary laptop blows up. I have an unlimited data plan on my cellphone so if the internet goes out, I can just tether my phone and boom, I’m covered.

I have no less than three backup power packs for my phone. I keep them charged up so I have at least seven full charge cycles. I have an assistant coach in my business, so if something comes up and I’m unable to make a call, I can call on her to step in.

I mean, when the power goes out at my house and it’s too hot or too cold, I just take my laptop to Panera or Starbucks or Wegmans and I sit at one of their tables to work. And it works beautifully. So all of this has worked great. Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Irene, no problem. I didn’t miss a beat.

Multiple ice storms, we’ve had no internet or power and my business still ran. One time I went almost a week without power. I still had it covered. At least I did until COVID. So now, in New Jersey, you can’t just go some place and sit and work.

For that matter, you can’t just go some place, to a public place and just hang out and charge your laptop. I tried multiple places and I was politely but firmly declined every single time. One time not so politely actually.

So obviously, I need a new backup plan for power outages because I can’t depend on using local places to support me. And honestly, that was a little lazy of me to use Starbucks, to have Starbucks as my backup plan, as my backup business plan.

I should have proactively gotten some sort of solar-powered battery pack that can support a couple days laptop power so I wouldn’t have to spend a full day – I really did. I wasted a whole day this week running around like a crazy person trying to figure out how to charge my computer.

But anyway, it really was a great lesson. It was a sweaty lesson but it was a great lesson. And I’m actually going to review all of my business systems again this month in light of COVID and just in light of like, being a more mature entrepreneur than I was when I came up with the plan the first time.

So what does this have to do with running, you might be wondering? Well, one of the reasons for not being consistent with working out is people say, “Oh, something came up and I couldn’t do it. I had to stay late at work, I overslept, my babysitter called in sick, it was raining,” whatever. There’s always a reason.

And I think to myself, when people tell me that, I think to myself, well, why did you let that get in your way? It’s not like those things are a complete surprise. Things like I had to stay late at work or I overslept, or it was raining, those are a part of life. They’re not something that just comes out of nowhere and you’re like, what? My babysitter’s allowed to call in sick?

So if you’re serious about being somebody who exercises consistently, you got to plan ahead for what you’re going to do when that stuff happens. Not if it happens but when. So things like a pandemic coming up, for sure nobody could have predicted that 2020 would have been the year of a pandemic, of COVID-19.

But you know what, it’s been here for six freaking months. This is not day one of the pandemic. We’ve all had time to figure out how to deal with our new circumstances. So I’ve got a four-step method for you today that will help you put your own exercise consistency plan in place. You might even want to listen to this episode a couple of times, first just to hear it and absorb it, and then the next time, to take notes and actually make your plan.

So step one is to do a risk assessment and assess your vulnerabilities. I want you to take 10 to 15 minutes and write down every possible thing that has stopped you from working out in the past, everything you can imagine might happen in the future, and you could even put things like an asteroid hits Earth on the list.

I want you to really exhaust your brain. Make a huge ass list and then spend a couple more minutes thinking of even more things. So that’s part one of step one. And then next, part two of step one – and this is probably the most important part of the step. I want you to take another five minutes to write down all the bullshit thoughts you might have that are going to make you feel unmotivated or overwhelmed and prevent you from running.

For example, I might think I’m too tired and believe my own bullshit and then turn off the alarm. That’s really a thought that you have that’s turning into something that prevents you from running. You might also think I have to do everything around here because nobody helps out, and then you’re going to feel self-pity and you’re not going to run while you sulk about how shitty your life is.

Again, it’s really a thought that you have. It’s not a circumstance that nobody helps out. It’s a thought that you have and it makes you feel self-pity, and then the action is to not run. So I want you to put down all the thoughts that you’ve had and all the circumstances that have stopped you from running in the past and that might stop you from running in the future.

Because here’s the thing; really get into the thoughts. Because you know that 90% of what gets in the way of your running is really just your thoughts about the circumstances and not the actual circumstance itself. But we’re going to talk about that in a moment.

So do you have your list? There should be at least 20 things on this list. Even better if it’s like, 50 things. Because human brains are so creative, and I know you’ve got a lot of excuses for not running. And you believe these excuses. So be honest and be thorough. Nobody else is going to see this list but you.

Alright, let’s talk about step two. Now, you have a nice long list of everything from oh yeah, I do that all the time, to okay, an asteroid could hit the Earth. And I want you to rank them, rate them in order of likelihood, on a scale of one to five with number one being highly unlikely, like this is probably never going to happen, but it could and so I’m going to put it on the list. And number five being oh yeah, this is a regular occurrence.

I want you to go through everything on your list and give it a number from one to five. And again, be honest with yourself. If you turn off your alarm every single time you have an early run schedule, that should be rated a five because you fucking know you’re going to want to do it.

And all of those thoughts that you know are going to pop up in your brain should be on this list too. I want you to rate them just like they’re a circumstance because actually, they are a circumstance. The circumstance is you had the thought, “I don’t feel like running today.” That’s a real circumstance and you should be planning for it.

Alright, now that you’re done with that, I want you to reorder your list from most likely to least likely. And so this probably means you’re going to take another sheet of paper and write out everything on your list, but you’re going to start with the fives and then you’re going to write out the fours, and the threes and so on.

And you can also use a spreadsheet. I love spreadsheets for stuff like this because then it’s easy to move things around. But if you’re handwriting them out, make sure you leave a few lines under each item on the list.

It is now time for step three, and this is where we start planning. So you’re going to start at the top of the list with the most likely and work your way down to that asteroid hitting the Earth. For each occurrence, you’re going to go one by one. For each one, I want you to ask yourself, what can I do to prevent this?

If you’re somebody who forgets your running shoes all the time when you’re going to the gym, can you buy an extra pair and keep them in the trunk of your car? Think ahead. If you are somebody who consistently forgets your running shoes, what preventative measures are you going to put in place so that you don’t end up at the gym going, “Oh shit, I forgot my running shoes again.”

What can you proactively do ahead of time to make sure the thing on your list does not happen? Can you buy a backup pair of headphones or an external battery pack for your phone? Or can you block out the time on your calendar so your coworkers can’t book you for a meeting at that time?

I want you to get creative, think about what you can do for every single item on your list. No, you can’t prevent an asteroid from hitting Earth, but you can make sure your car doesn’t run out of gas on the way to the running trail. So I mean, this is an important step and I want you to get creative and really think like, if my life depended on making sure this didn’t happen, what would I do? Start there.

So you can’t prevent everything obviously, but you absolutely can do your best to create systems that mitigate a lot of potential issues. So that’s what prevention is about. Going through and saying what can I prevent? What systems can I put in place so that this doesn’t happen?

Now, for circumstances that you can’t prevent, like a babysitter calling out sick, you can’t follow your babysitter around, keep her in a bubble so that she never gets sick. This is where you need a backup plan for what are you going to do if it does happen.

This is a thing that maybe babysitter calling out sick, that’s probably not a five, but it might be a two or a three. It’s possible, definitely more possible than an asteroid hitting Earth. So what are you going to do if it does happen? Because you can’t prevent it but it could happen and you could just pout and say fuck it, I give up, babysitter called out sick.

Feel kind of self-pity, but you know what, that is the least helpful thing you can do. It doesn’t move you closer to your goals, makes you feel like shit. So let’s just decide ahead of time that if you’re depending on a babysitter, you’re going to have a backup plan in case she can’t make it.

Don’t just wing it and say I just hope it works out because humans, we can’t depend on other humans to always be there for us. So if you’re planning to go for a run after work and an unexpected thunderstorm happens that wasn’t on weather.com, you’ll know exactly what you’re going to do because you have a backup plan in place in case of inclement weather.

You have a backup plan in place in case of a babysitter. Have your backup plans in place. And that might mean that, okay, if there’s a thunderstorm, then I go and I run on my friend’s treadmill, there’s an indoor track, or I just take the strength training I was going to do tomorrow and I do that during my run and I do my run tomorrow during my strength training.

Have a backup plan, you guys. Don’t just hope that all your circumstances work out because that’s not the way life works. So this might all seem like, silly and a total waste of time to you, to spend time thinking about this ahead of time, but here’s the thing; spending half an hour now to plan it all out is going to save your ass on the day when, oh shit, you’ve completely forgot your running shoes, we’re drawing out on the back porch instead of in your gym bag.

And you get to the running trail, you realize you don’t have them, but oh wait, you put a backup pair in your trunk for just this occurrence, and boom, how fucking proud are you of yourself right now?

So really think this stuff through and put it into place. And of course, you also need to decide. You need to plan ahead of your thinking. You got to decide what you’re going to think instead when all of those thoughts on your list come up. When your brain says, “Oh, it’s raining, I don’t want to run,” what are you going to tell yourself instead?

This is how you plan ahead. This is how you stay consistent, by knowing your mind is going to offer you thoughts that make you feel unmotivated. And you’re going to plan ahead for how you’re going to redirect those thoughts. You’re not just going to live at the mercy of your brain because your brain is a jerk. I’ve said that before. Brains are assholes. Don’t let your habitual unmanaged mind run the show.

And seriously, this is such an important part of the planning process. I know you don’t like it. I get it. But wouldn’t you rather do it now than be at the mercy of your brain in the moment? So that’s step three.

Now you have your plan in place, we’re going to move on to step four, which is what are you going to do when something new comes up? My disaster recovery plan did not have in the this is what I’m going to do if the power goes out, not having the ability to go to Starbucks and hang out. Oops, my bad.

So step four is really learning from those truly unexpected things that come up that you have to handle them in the moment. So in the moment of this week, I had to deal with it the best I could. And yeah, I had to reschedule a couple meetings so that I could drive around and figure out how I was going to charge my laptop.

But instead of saying oh well, I’m glad I got through this week, I’m saying okay, how am I going to do things differently next time? What systems can I put in place so that if I lose power two months from now, that I’m not losing time as a business owner trying to find a fucking car charger that are sold out all over the county?

So now that that new circumstance is on my radar, I can use my amazing human brain to create a backup plan, and you can do that for your running, you guys. So when something unexpected happens, we don’t say, “Oh my god, I’m such an idiot, I didn’t plan for that.” We say, “Oh, alright, now I’ve got a new thing that I can put on my disaster recovery plan. I can say what is the likelihood of this happening again and I can go through the whole process and come up with a plan for next time.”

We can’t change the past. We can’t go back in time and plan ahead for something you didn’t know was going to happen, but you can say how am I going to deal with it going forward. Alright, that it is. That is how to plan to stay consistent.

And you know, one amazing thing that I want you to put on your plan right now is to sign up for the workshop I’m teaching on consistency. I promise, it’s going to help you put your plan into place, it’s going to help you stick with your exercise routine for good.

We’re going to get through all your bullshit excuses, and so instead of quitting on yourself any old time something comes up, you are going to be that person that everybody else looks at and goes, “Damn, she’s so motivated. She never ever misses a workout.”

Don’t you look at people like that and think, what the hell is wrong with you? Why are you so consistent? And then you’re secretly like, and teach me your ways. So this workshop is going to teach you those ways, so that you can be that person that everybody else looks to and says how does she do it.

So let’s stop quitting on ourselves. I want you to come to the class. I will whip you into shape. You can go to notyouraveragerunner.com. Click on the consistency workshop tab, and you can sign up right there. Or you can go to the link in the show notes.

So the class is August 23rd. August 23rd. It’s a Sunday. I’ve got you covered. Go sign up now and we are going to get you to be the consistency queen. Okay my friends, I love you, stay safe, get your ass out there and run and I will see you in the next episode.

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.