Ep #419: I Ghosted You—Here’s Why (and What’s Next)

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.

Well, hello my friend and welcome back to the podcast. It has been a minute. Here we are in 2026 already, and well, last November I kind of ghosted y’all and I.

I’m really sorry about that. I mean, honestly, I, I wasn’t even sure if I was gonna come back to the podcast or not. I thought I should at least record one final episode and I kept putting it off and putting it off. And, uh, and here we are. So, here’s what’s been going on and where I’m at now. Uh, over the summer, an opportunity.

Of a lifetime came up to take a science job. That is, it is literally the exact job I would’ve designed for myself 20 years ago if I had had that opportunity. And you know, I’ve mentioned before that in a previous life I worked in the pharmaceutical industry. My undergraduate, my graduate degrees are in chemistry.

I’m a science girly, and I love, I love science. I’ve missed science. I’ve missed being in the thick of it. Um, but I did not like the corporate environment. So, you know, uh, 14 or so years ago, I quit. The corporate world to start my own personal training studio for plus-size women. Uh, that evolved into not your average runner and coaching clients online and so forth.

I’ve been doing that again for almost 14 years now, and it has been amazing. But again, I missed working in science. So when this opportunity came up, this absolutely perfect golden opportunity, I was like, uh, you need to give this a chance and just see how it feels being back in a more traditional type of work situation.

Now, I, I have it. It’s a sweet gig. Fully remote so I can still work from home. Um, but I have an amazing set of coworkers. Uh, the job itself is fun and interesting. The company I work for is awesome. Uh, I’ve tried to explain to somebody about what I do and I’m like, it basically feels like solving math puzzles all day, and it is a literal dream job.

So I’m really, really pleased. A hundred percent pleased. It’s amazing. But after a couple months of doing that and doing all of the other stuff that I’ve got going on with not your average runner, I realized I was really getting burnt out, burning the candle at both ends, so to speak, by podcasting and trying to keep up Instagram and send emails to my mailing list and create new coaching programs and write my book and coach all my current clients.

All while working another job. And so basically something had to give and I decided to take a break from the podcast, the Instagram, the emails, all the extraneous stuff that was not my existing clients, my book or my job. So I’ve kind of been chilling like that for a few months. Just sort of letting the new routine settle in and see what it feels like.

It has been great, but of course I realize that I miss connecting with all of you. I am. I don’t know. I just love podcasting. I love having these chats, uh, with you, even though we’re not right here. I feel like I feel connected to you. So I started thinking about how I could bring back some of it and still respect all of my other time commitments and make it all fit.

And so here’s what I came up with. I think I’m gonna podcast. Once a month-ish, right? Maybe more. We’ll see. But right now I am planning on the first Thursday of every month to drop a new episode starting in February because I realize you are not listening to this on the first Thursday in January. But, so starting next month, first Thursday of the month, you’ll get a new episode.

Um, and. They’re gonna probably be a longer format than they’ve been for the past year or so. I’ve been doing a lot shorter episodes, again, just sort of playing around with things, but I think I’m gonna make ’em a little bit longer, especially since there’s only one a month. Now, those of you who subscribe to my emails, you will, instead of getting one on Mondays and one on Fridays, you’ll probably get maybe three-ish a month.

So instead of twice a week, instead of like eight a month, you’re gonna get maybe three a month. Um, sort of as the spirit moves me, if I’ve got something to share, uh, what have you. It’s, it’s gonna be a lot more loosey goosey and a lot less regimented than I’ve been in the past. And I’m working on being okay with that.

Now as to what we’re gonna do here on the show and what you’re gonna get if you are subscribing to my email list, honestly, that’s a little bit murkier. I know for sure that I’m gonna be talking a lot more about what it is, like, what it is like navigating life as a woman over 50. Now that of course will include fitness, but also everything else that we struggle with.

And you know, I’m 58 right now. I am postmenopausal, so I’ve gone through a lot of stuff, but you know, I’ve gone through a lot of the traditional, like change of life stuff, so for sure I’ve got, you know, a lot to say about that. Um, but also I’m navigating kind of coming up on being 60 and that feels. Super weird and confusing in a lot of ways, and also very liberating in a lot of other ways.

So I want to start bringing in more and more of those types of discussions. And for those of you that are in that phase of life right now, I think you’ll appreciate it. For those of you that are past it, um, you know, maybe you will have some advice to offer me as I move. Continue to move in that direction.

And for those of you that are approaching this phase of life, it may be like a little bit of a, Hey, here’s some shit you need to know about and plan ahead for to make your life easier. Okay, so that’s part of it. I may bring on some guests. I don’t know. I get pitched at at least daily. From people who have books that they wanna promote or products that they wanna promote, and they all think that they’d be a perfect fit for my podcast and here’s why.

And oh my God, I get so many bullet pointed emails with people saying this is exactly why you need to have. Meet on your show so I can tell all of your listeners about the Best Gun Safety program. Like it’s so random, the shit people email me. But anyway, I do wanna have some guests on that. I can have deeper conversations with about some of the topics that affect women over 50.

So expect that. Honestly, I have no idea who those people are right now. I will just be keeping my eye out and. And having some discussions. Um, I’m also gonna talk about things that I’m loving right now, like the bra that I’m currently obsessed with. I’m gonna tell you about that at the end of the show today.

Um, the books I’m reading, oh my gosh, I read y’all, I read 84 books last year. Seven were audio books and the rest were either, you know, print books, physical books, or on my Kindle. And, uh, I kept a whole book journal. I wrote about it on my substack, I’ll tell you about that in a minute. Um, but it was really.

A fascinating experience to read that much. I have never in my life kept track of the number of books that I read a year. This is just not a thing I’ve ever done. And last January 1st, I was like, Hey, what if I kept a book journal and just like, you know, wrote a few words about each book that I read, and I was kind of shocked at how many books I actually did read.

And, uh. Oh God, that was super fun. But again, I wrote about that over on my substack. I even put, I even did a whole post on like my 11 favorite books. That I read in 2025. Um, and again, I keep saying this, I will link to that in the show notes. I’ll tell you about that in the moment. But bottom line is you’re gonna hear more about just kind of the things that I think everybody needs to know about.

And that is going to include products that I am personally loving and using, and, uh, books that I’m reading, or maybe podcasts that I’m listening to. We’re just gonna, we’re just gonna wing it and see what happens. Okay. I will also, um, be sharing updates on how my murder mystery novel is coming along because 2026 is the year that it’ll be finished.

It’s been in progress for a while, but I’m, I, you know, I’m getting into that, um, space of like, this is the year. The working title is Death Comes Running. It’s a little bit of a nod to Agatha Christie. Um, and the protagonist is of course a woman in her fifties and she is a runner. So running will be a part of this mystery novel and it has been quite the experience learning to write fiction.

I will tell you, um, the substack that I’ve mentioned several times already, um, is where I’m also sharing that process. I’m sharing bits of my writing over there. Um, I’m, you know, gonna be doing weekly progress reports on how, um, how we’re moving along with the novel. So if you are on Substack already, you can just look for Jill Wright’s Mysteries.

That is the name of my substack. If you’re not on substack, um, or you don’t feel like doing that search, I’m gonna have a link for you in the show notes. It is totally free to subscribe. There’s no, there’s no like, hidden anything, right? You can just sub subscribe and every time I put up a new post, it’ll, the system will email it to you.

Easy peasy. Now, if you have suggestions for, uh, guests that you would like to have on the show or topics that you want me to talk about. Let me know. All right. You can hit me up over on Instagram, uh, not your average runner, obviously, or I have an Instagram called Jill Writes Mysteries Now, which is super fun.

Uh, you can also email me at support at not your average runner.com. I would love to hear from you. Okay, now I have a few more things I wanna talk about today. This is gonna be a little bit of a longer episode than we’ve had in the past, and it’s, you know, it’s kind of setting the scene for what we’re gonna do for the rest of the year.

So what is going on in my fitness life? This is something I feel like I need to have a conversation with you about. Um, ’cause I think there’s gonna be others that are in the same boat. And the thing is, I haven’t gone running in months. Uh, for real, I, the last time I think might’ve been in April, I did kind of go for a half run in, um, on our big road trip when we were in Ohio, we went to a beautiful, uh, national park and we did go for a very abbreviated half run there.

Um, but because I do have a goal to go running in every single one of the states, but the last time I went for a proper run where I put on my Garmin and did all the things, was in April. And I was looking back at my stats. Honestly, it was a great run. I don’t even know why I stopped. Right. I just did. But honestly, here’s the thing that’s so interesting.

I have not missed it. Not even a little, which is. Weird, but I guess not unprecedented. Um, I have been doing a lot of walking every day and that, that’s what feels right to me in the moment. I’m very lucky to live in a place where I can walk pretty much everywhere I need to go. Even the grocery store, I, there’s a grocery store two blocks away from us.

Although I will be honest, I prefer shopping at Wegmans and once a week I do pay $6 to drive over the Ben Franklin Bridge so I can go to the one in Cherry Hill. But other than that. I, I really do hoof at most places. It’s pretty great. I love it. But I started back to the running. I started running in 1996.

You’ve heard me tell this story a million times. Um, and I’ve been on and off it with, with it since. That’s just kind of been my pattern. I used to think that made me a bad runner. Like if I took breaks, I’d be like, oh, you’ve done it again. You’ve fallen off the wagon. And of course, you know, when you beat yourself up like that, it makes it a lot harder to start again.

But now. I think it just makes me human. Okay. I’m 58. I’m done beating myself up over things that do not matter in the big picture. I am moving my body in the way that feels good to my body and my brain right now. That’s what’s important to me. So I’m like, all right, I’m, I’m in a period of not running right now, and I’m not gonna spend hours and hours questioning and trying to like force myself to do it again.

I. It, it’s gonna happen when it, when it happens. Um, but I will say though, I woke up early the other morning. Uh, this was like over, over the holiday break and I thought, oh, running kind of sounds like fun right now. And I, I do like to run when it’s cold outside. And so I thought, Hmm, maybe and. Opened the curtains and I looked outside and we had had a big storm the night before and everything was like covered with ice and I just noted myself right back to bed.

Um, but I do think, like I can kind of feel the desire sort of building up inside me to go running. So I’m sure it’ll happen sometime soon. And I will know when the time is right. And one of the things that I love about getting older is just truly giving myself permission to see what happens instead of always trying to force things to, you know.

Uh, twist my arm to manhandle myself into doing things the way it’s, you know, quote unquote, the right way to do things. It’s a lot easier to be like you. Let’s just see what happens. And so that is kind of my approach to running right now. Now, what I will say is that when I start running again, here is what I will not be doing.

Number one, I will not be shaming myself for falling off the wagon. Fuck that. I am so over it. There is no wagon. Okay. I, I refuse and you should as well. I refuse to spend another iota of energy, be rating myself for not being perfect. Okay. I figure I have, you know, if, if things go well 30 years-ish, left on the planet.

I’m not gonna waste it. Beating myself up, being angry, thinking I should be different than I am. I’m just not. So there’s no shaming myself for falling off the wagon. I’m like, okay, didn’t run then. Might be running now. It’s all good. I also, here’s number two, we’ll not be getting frustrated about how hard it feels.

Because it’s gonna feel hard. I haven’t gone running in eight months. Who knows? By the time I start again, it might be 10 months, might be a year. I don’t know. It’s going to feel hard. That’s normal. I will slow down and meet myself where I am. Okay. And on the flip side of that, I will not be pushing myself to make progress as fast as possible.

There is no hurry. There is no end game right. For me, running has always been about enjoying. The activity, enjoying the process, enjoying how it feels to, to just move my body in that way. And I’ve never been obsessed with, I have to make progress. I have to get here, I have to do this, um, act. Actually, I shouldn’t say that.

I have been obsessed with that in the past, but lately I have not for, you know, maybe the past five. Or more years regardless, I will definitely not be pushing myself to make progress as fast as possible. There’s no hurry, okay? So if you have seasons with running or movement in general, I do invite you to take the same approach.

All right? Let it ebb and flow without judgment, because yelling at yourself is not gonna make it more fun. Okay. All right. Couple more things for today and then we’re gonna close it up. Friends, we are in January. January is a fresh start, month, new year, new you, all of that, blah, blah, blah. What people usually do in January if, if you are somebody who likes to set resolutions or goals or what have you.

As they draw a line in the sand and they say, okay, starting on January 1st or January 2nd, or wherever Monday falls, right? Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m gonna quit diet soda on day one, cold Turkey. I’m gonna exercise every single day. I am gonna make this amazing routine, and I’m gonna do it every day.

I’m gonna stop eating gluten, cold Turkey. What? Whatever it is, whatever your resolution is. The tendency is to go from zero to a hundred on day one and to be like, okay, well my goal is to stop eating gluten, so I need to stop now immediately and never eat it again. And that is hard. It is not sustainable.

And like 99% of people just give up. O. Okay. To be fair, I don’t know if that’s a real statistic, but I bet it’s pretty close to the truth. It’s gotta be at least 90%. So I want to give you another approach. If you want to set resolutions, which you know, they’re not the worst thing in the world, right? If we do them the right way, I wanna give you another approach that has worked really well for me in the past.

Uh, and I mean this very sincerely. Uh, this is how I’ve implemented when I’ve implemented new things in my life. This is how it’s worked for me. Start out really small. I mean really small. So, okay. For example, say you are trying to give up Diet Coke and you are currently drinking three Diet Cokes a day.

Use January to get used to drinking two diet Cokes a day. Make that your goal. Then in February when you’re like, okay, I am consistently drinking just two diet Cokes a day. Now you can move down to one diet Coke a day. Okay? Figure that out for all of February. You practice just having one diet Coke a day, and then when you get to March, okay?

Try maybe having a Diet Coke every other day. Okay? And then in April you can go down to two a week. Ease yourself into it. Let yourself get used to the new behavior or the new habit, or whatever it is. Slowly, and this is important, let yourself fuck it up and not be mad about it. Okay? So if you said, for using the Diet Coke example, all right, I’m drinking three diet Cokes a day.

I wanna drink zero diet Cokes a day. All right? In January, my goal is to only drink two diet Cokes a day. Maybe there’s a few days in January where you did drink three. Okay? Not a big deal. Overall, you made it down to two. You are ready to move on to the next step. So don’t get all twisted with being perfect.

Work more on like. Implementing a new normal. If you’re starting to, uh, if you’re trying to start strength training, same thing. Okay, so this is instead of trying to take something away, we’re adding something in. So instead of saying, okay, well my goal is to train for 30 minutes three times a week, that’s, that’s the kind of strength training routine I want.

Okay, that’s fine. But starting in the first week of January, like that’s not gonna be something that’s super sustainable and you might get injured. So aim for 10 minutes once a week in the month of January, and then when that feels easy, maybe by February. Okay. 10 minutes twice a week, and start noticing how much easier it is to keep doing the new thing when the bar is low.

So what this does is. When the gap between the version of you right now current you and the version you wanna be is too big. It’s hard to maintain. We make the gap a lot smaller so it’s easier to close instead of trying, like imagine you’re trying to cross, uh, a river, right? Maybe not a river, but maybe like a really big creek, and you can see the other side.

But it’s too far for you to leap all the way over without falling in the water and getting wet. But if you throw a couple of big rocks in the creek, you can maybe close the gap to the first rock and then take a step to the next rock and the next rock, and then you’re on the other side of the creek. So you have to make the gap between where you are and where you wanna be a lot smaller.

So that you can close it more easily and then you move on to the next gap. All right, so when we do it this way, it builds up trust, it builds up compassion and empathy with yourself so that you, you know, get to actually make progress. And maybe it’s a little bit slower, but it’s lot more sustainable and you’re gonna feel a lot more proud of yourself in the long run.

So that’s my 2 cents on how to approach January resolution. Okay. Final thing I wanna tell you about today. My friends, it is the bra that I’m obsessed with right now. It’s called the Eel Light, and it is different from the running bra that I’m always going on about. That one is the eel sport. It is very constrictive.

It is meant for high impact activities like running and jumping, and if you are like a DUP or higher, the eel sport will. It is like somebody is carrying your boobs for you when you’re running. Okay. I’m talking about a different version of the inel, a different model entirely. It’s called the Inel light.

Here is why I love it so much. So let’s take a trip back to the beginning of the pandemic. Um, when all of us stopped wearing underwire brass because we were not leaving the house, all right? For me, when it became time to be social in public again, I put on an underwire bra and I was like. Uh, no, no, thank you ma’am.

This is not happening. So since then I have been searching for a good, sturdy, soft cup bra that is comfortable, but also supportive. Keeps the girls in the air, keeps them separated, you know what I mean? Um. I have not found one. I, I had not found one until now. Uh, but I just decided, you know what? Fuck it.

I’m at the age where comfort is way more important than my cleavage looking a certain way. I made my piece with just a low hanging unibo. I’m like, all right, this is it. I’m, I’m cool with it because the alternative, getting stabbed by wires and feeling like I’m wearing a corset that is no longer an option.

I’m not. Willing to accept that. So I was like, all right, this is where we’re at, friends. Um, but then a few months ago I was going through this bin of, you know, clothes that I hadn’t worn in quite a while. In fact, it was something that we had moved from a couple houses ago. And anyway, long story short, I found this email light.

Bin and I’m like, oh, huh, haven’t worn this in a really long time. So I put it on and. Oh my God, my boobs were up where they should be. They were separated. They were two individual boobs, and the best part is my back was supported. So the Inal light has very similar back support to the Inel sport, but the fabric has a lot more give to it.

It is a lot stretchier and it is a lot more comfortable for everyday use. I cannot even tell you, this is the only soft cup bra I have ever found that is comfortable, supported, supportive, and keeps the girls up and apart. So I immediately ordered bore, and now it is all I’m wearing. I’ve thrown out all my other bras.

Um, not all of them, but. Most of them because honestly, this one, this one is a real game changer. So again, this is for the girlies who have a C or D cup or higher breast size. Um, and yeah, you need to check it out. So I have actually included a link in the show notes to this bra. Um, but also listeners of the podcast, y’all get 20% off anything on the email website when you use the code, NYAR 20.

I will have a link in the show notes to that as well. Um, but yeah, this bra has been a, a major game changer for me. It, ugh, I can’t, I can’t even, I’m wearing one right now. I love it so much. All right, my friend. Um, this episode has kind of been all about me, uh, but I feel like you needed these updates. I feel like I owed you an update for like where the hell I disappeared to, um, a few months ago.

So that’s where we’re at. And again, I will be back in February 1st, Thursday in February, which I believe is February. I’m gonna say fifth, February 4th. February 5th. I’ll be back on February 5th. Um, and if there’s anything you want me to cover on the show in the meantime, drop me a line, let me know. All right.

I’d love to hear from you. Okay. All right my friends. Bye for now!

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.