Ep #44: Is Running For 20 Seconds Enough?

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who is midlife and plus sized and you want to start running but don’t know how, or if it’s even possible, you’re in the right place. Using proven strategies and real-life experience, certified running and life coach Jill Angie shares how you can learn to run in the body you have right now.

Hey rebels, you are listening to episode number 44 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today we are talking about a question that I get asked all the time by people who are thinking about running and that question is, “Is 20 seconds at a time really enough?” Now, there’s more to that question that you think, and I’m actually going to dive in and explain why people ask it and of course, what the answer is.

And today’s episode is sponsored by Run Your Best Life. Run Your Best Life is a one of a kind running program where you don’t just get better at running, you run your way to confidence, self-love, and a kickass life. I coach live in that group once a week and my members are getting some pretty awesome results. So if you’ve been enjoying the podcast and all the tools I’ve been teaching you here, you are going to love Run Your Best Life because we take all of this stuff and apply it to your life. It’s like you have a running coach and a life coach on call. So join runyourbestlife.com today and see how $98 can change your life.

So it’s time for our warm up and today’s quote is – drum roll please – “It’s a slow process, but quitting won’t speed it up.” Now, I want you to just take a moment and let that sink in. It’s a slow process, but quitting won’t speed it up. Now, you have no doubt seen this on memes all over Facebook and Instagram and every single time you see it you probably say, “Yeah, that’s right, true story,” and then you keep scrolling and you forget about it after a few moments, right?

So let’s really think about it this time. Let’s really dive into what this quote means. If you listen to episode 20 of the podcast, which was called How to Stop Quitting, you know that I like to talk about quitting in terms of big quits and little quits. Now, big quits are when you make a conscious decision to quit or give up. It’s like when you decide, I’m just going to stop running completely, I don’t want to do this anymore, or I’m not trained for this race so I’m just not going to show up, I’m going to quit the race.

So those are big quits. And they can be things like I’m going to quit smoking or I’m going to quit my job. They’re big decisive actions. Little quits are much more subtle. They’re things like skipping a workout because you’re just not in the mood, or you’d rather sleep in, or you’re just too tired. So you don’t think you’re quitting in the moment because you’re like, I’m still going to train for the race, but I want you to start thinking of it that way. You are actually quitting on yourself temporarily just for that moment, right? And what happens when you do that enough times is you really slow down your progress.

So when something is hard like building the habit of running, for example, skipping your workouts won’t make it any easier. They really slow down the process quite a bit. You literally make running harder by avoiding doing it because it’s hard. It’s crazy, right? But we have a thought, “I don’t feel like doing this, running’s too hard, this is too hard for me right now,” maybe that’s your thought, and you feel kind of discouraged and the action that you take is you skip your workout and the result is running doesn’t get any easier.

So you think the thought that this is hard, and it literally is not easy, it’s hard because you’re thinking that way. And I know sometimes it’s hard to wrap your head around that but that’s how it works. So the next time you’re tempted to skip your run, I want you to say instead – instead of, “I’m too tired to run right now, I’m just going to sleep for five more minutes, I don’t feel like it,” whatever it is that you normally say, instead of that, I want you to say, “I’m choosing to quit on myself right now and I know that it means I’m going to take longer to make progress as a runner.”

So that’s what you’re going to say. And here’s the thing: when you say that to yourself, you’re like, oh, hell no. It’s not how I’m going to show up, I’m not going to quit on myself. You put your shoes on and you go. When you tell yourself the truth about what you’re doing in that moment, it’s much more likely that you’re going to go put your shoes on and go for a run. And then even if you don’t, at least you’re telling yourself the truth, right? You’re not coming up with some excuse like, “I don’t know, I’ve just lost my mojo,” because I hear that all the time.

“I don’t know what happened to my motivation, it just disappeared.” I know what happened to it. You started thinking shitty thoughts that make you feel unmotivated and then you quit on yourself, right? So it’s a slow process. But quitting makes it harder. Quitting won’t speed it up. I want you to remember that.

Alright, that is your tough love for the week. Well, actually, there may be a little more tough love coming, but that your tough love warm up. And before we get into the main workout for today, I want to share a post from The Not Your Average Runner Podcast Facebook group. So earlier this week I asked the members of that group, the ones that are working on the six-week free training that you can get from my website, I asked them how they were doing. I was like, hey, how’s it going? What week are you on? Are you having fun with it?

And Raquel wrote something really awesome that I’m going to read right now. So Raquel wrote, “I am on week five, run two, and this is the most consistent I have been in three years. I used to be an avid runner before I had a kiddo, and since then I’ve been trying to get back into running. I have severe anxiety and I am a perfectionist and I would get down on myself when I was not running as fast or as long as I used to so I would just give up. Running is my stress reliever and helps with my severe anxiety, so I am incredibly thankful for this six-week beginner plan because it has changed my life for the better. I had an amazing run today and I feel like I am reclaiming my life back. Thank you so much. I cannot express how much of a life changer this has been.”

So I mean, that just gets me right in the heart because that’s why I do what I do. Thank you so much for sharing that, Raquel. I mean, I know how hard it is to share something like that, I know it takes a lot of courage to come out and say like, hey, I have anxiety, hey, I’m a perfectionist and I’m starting over and figuring this out as I go along. But I know there are so many women out there just like you who are going through the same thing. Maybe they used to be a runner, they’re trying to get back into it, they’re fighting their inner mean girl and their anxiety the whole way. And the six-week free training is a great place to start. I am so, so glad that it’s been helpful to you and just thank you so much for sharing and congratulations on getting through five weeks of it. That’s awesome.

Alright, so here we go. We are diving into the main workout for today, and if you recall from last week, I’ve restructured these podcasts so that we’re going to do a warm up, a main workout, and a cool down. And so the warm up is always going to be a quote and then I’m going to share a listener story or question. The main workout is going to be the topic for the day and then the cool down is going to be my latest obsession.

So we’re onto the main workout for today and that’s all about this is 20 seconds enough business. So very often when I talk to somebody who’s like, thinking about running – here’s the thing. I get asked this question all the time. How do I get started? Right? People aren’t really sure how to start running, which blows my mind because I’m like, well, you just put your shoes on and you go out the door and you run a little bit and you walk a little bit, but that’s not necessarily intuitive.

So what I always say to people is go out, warm up by walking briskly for three to five minutes, five minutes is preferable, and then I want you to run for 20 seconds and walk for a minute, and repeat that 10 times. And they always just sort of raise their eyebrows at me and they say, “Really? 20 seconds? Is that enough?”

I just had this conversation with somebody on Facebook live recently and I just had to laugh. I was like, well, let’s break it down. So it is really an interesting question because when somebody said – they almost always say, “Is 20 seconds enough?” But nobody really says enough for what? Right? Nobody clarifies what they mean by that. Is it enough to train for a 5K? Is it enough to train for a marathon? Is it enough to call yourself – is 20 seconds enough to be able to call yourself a runner?

I think what most people mean when they say, “Is 20 seconds enough?” is they mean is it enough to make a difference? Is it enough to improve their fitness? Is it enough running to get better at running? And the short answer is of course it is.

So now I’m going to give you the long answer. So first of all, again, I’m going to make three points here, and the first one is it’s more running than you’re doing right now. 20 seconds is more than zero seconds. Zero seconds of running will not make you a better runner. It just won’t. But intervals of 20 seconds will get you a lot closer to being a better runner. Definitely closer than zero seconds. So 20 seconds is enough just from the perspective of it’s more than zero.

Second, my second point is you’re not going to go out, run 20 seconds and then go home. You’re going to do that 10 times, maybe 20, maybe more, and that actually adds up to a lot of running. So for example, if you were to run 20 seconds and then walk a minute and do that for half an hour, your total amount of running is about seven and a half minutes. So now, it doesn’t seem so insignificant, does it?

Now, it might take you months to work up to seven minutes of running if you don’t take walk breaks, but if you do it in little 20 second chunks, you can get there pretty fast. Like, probably within a week, and you’re going to find that your fitness level with this little chunks of running is actually going to improve a lot faster than if you tried to just go out and work up to seven minutes of running without taking walk breaks.

So I want to introduce the concept of massive action here. And massive action to me, my definition is this is where you keep taking the small actions that you need to take until you get the big result that you want. So for example, if you’re learning to play the piano, you might practice scales over and over and over again until they feel like second nature, and then that skill of moving your fingers quickly over the keys becomes something you can apply to playing other more complicated pieces of music. So the massive action is doing the scales 20 times a day for as long as it takes until your fingers easily can move over the keys.

Saving money is another example. So for example, if you put $3 in a piggy bank every single day for a full year, at the end of that year, I’d have over $1000. $3 on its own isn’t much and a lot of people will say, “Is $3 enough?” Well, you tell me. $3 a day for 365 days is over $1000. $3 is like the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee, but added up over a year it’s a lot of money. That is massive action. That is what massive action can do for you.

Also, note to self, when I look at it this way, I spend a lot of money on Starbucks so I may need to re-evaluate that. Anyway, massive action is powerful. And here’s the thing: running is literally massive action. You are taking one step, then another step, then another step over and over and over until you’ve gone a mile, until you’ve gone two miles, until you’ve gone 10 miles, right? So taking one step is, I don’t know, what? A foot and a half maybe? Two feet? That’s not very far. It’s like putting $3 in a piggy bank. It’s like doing one scale. It’s not going to get you to your goal. But if you take two steps, if you keep taking the next step, you do that enough times and you’ve gone a mile, two miles, 10 miles.

Running 20 seconds at a time over and over and over again, exact same thing. It’s going to take you places. So yeah, 20 seconds is enough. It’s enough to make a huge difference to improve your fitness, to call yourself a runner. You can do an entire half marathon, you can do an entire marathon running for 20 seconds, walking for a minute, running for 20 seconds, walking for a minute. So I really want you to understand this concept of 20 seconds on its own is not much time, which is why it’s so awesome. You only have to run for 20 seconds. Anybody can do that. but if you do it over and over again enough times, you’re going to go places.

Now, the third point that I want to make is 20 seconds of running is where you’re going to start. So for some of you, it might be what you decide to keep doing as long as you’re a runner. But many of you will end up doing longer intervals than that, and I have plenty of clients that started with me brand new to running, 20 seconds of running, and a minute, 90 seconds of walking, but after a few months of repeating that over and over and over again, they’re doing a minute at a time of running, and then they’re doing it for an hour, and then the next year they’re running three minutes at a time. Some of them even drop the walk breaks entirely at a certain point.

So the important thing is to keep consistently getting out there and doing that amount of running that feels good. The amount of running that maybe even feels like a little bit of a challenge, and stop worrying about whether it’s enough and focus on how your body feels, whether you are enjoying yourself, whether you’re able to go farther and not necessarily longer intervals but whether you’re able to increase your distance.

So here’s the thing: when you focus on whether 20 seconds seems like too little of an amount of time, when your thoughts are all about, “Oh, 20 seconds isn’t enough,” you’re likely to interfere with your progress because when you think the thought, “20 seconds isn’t enough,” it creates usually one of two feelings. The first is that you might feel discouraged. And then this feeling, feeling discouraged when you think the thought, “20 seconds isn’t enough,” is going to lead you to the action of quitting. You’re not going to stick with it if you don’t think it’s enough to get you to your goal. And then that proves your thought that 20 seconds isn’t enough because you’re not running and you’re like, “See? I told you,” instead of if you’d continually done the 20 seconds over and over and over again, you’d find that you were getting better at running.

The other feeling that often happens when we think 20 seconds isn’t enough is that you start to panic. And when we are panicky, we do some crazy shit. So that’s when you’re like, I’m just going to push myself as hard as I can, I’m going to push myself and I’m going to make myself do more, and when you push beyond your capacity, there’s a tendency to get hurt. And then again, that results in you not running. Like, proves it all over again, right?

So I want us to just agree to stop focusing on whether we’re doing enough, whether 20 seconds is enough, stop with that. Instead, tune into how your body feels when you’re running. If it doesn’t feel challenged, 20 seconds, you know, you can go faster during your 20 seconds, you can increase your 20 seconds to 30 or a minute or whatever gives you that feeling of challenge. If you do feel challenged at 20 seconds, then 20 seconds is enough, right? Keep practicing it. Take that massive action over and over again. Then when it starts to feel too easy, you can do more. That’s the beauty of running.

So one thing that I love to do with my clients, some of the work that I love doing with my clients is finding a run-walk interval ratio that gets them that best combination of effort and pace and distance. And oftentimes most people think that to get faster – actually, don’t even get me started. Everybody thinks that when you start running, the whole goal is to run as fast as possible. I don’t believe that. I believe that the goal with running is to enjoy it and to do it in such a way that you can do it for many, many years and to do it in such a way that you feel proud and accomplished rather than always feeling like, oh, I’m not doing enough.

So if you’re constantly chasing running faster, first of all, there’s going to become a point where you can’t get any faster. So that’s one thing to remember, and if you’re carrying extra weight, as many of my listeners are, including myself, you’re going to hit that point, you’re not going to be getting down to like, a six-minute mile. It’s just physics, that’s just how it works. So if you’re constantly chasing getting faster, there’s going to become a point where you’re not going to get any faster and then if that’s your only reason to practice running and get out there, you’re going to be disappointed.

So I think it’s more important with running to set goals that are sustainable, right? So again, finding a distance – maybe set some distance goals, maybe set a goal of doing a half marathon or a full marathon or even an ultra, depending – I know I’ve got some clients that are thinking about doing that, or set a goal of how much fun can I have, right? Or how many races can I do in a year? But like, find goals that challenge you but they’re exciting to you and they make you feel good instead of a goal that ultimately is going to result in frustration.

I got off track there for a moment. We were talking about run-walk intervals. So finding a run-walk interval that is the best one for you – first of all, there’s no perfect interval for anybody and I actually talked about this – I think it’s episode nine. I did a whole episode on finding the run-walk ratio that works for you. But I think the best one gives you that combination of effort, so you know, it’s the right amount of effort, it’s a pace that feels good to you and allows you to go as far as you want. And so it’s not necessarily the ratio that includes the most running.

So often there’s a fine balance between the amount of running we do and the amount of walking we do for recovery. So when you take that walk break, your legs can recover, then you can come back and run again pretty quickly and it allows you to go a lot farther. So if you think, “Oh, I have to run 10 minutes and then walk 30 seconds,” that’s sort of an advanced running interval for The Not Your Average Runner community. There’s probably plenty of you out there that are doing it, but I just want you to know that that doesn’t necessarily have to be the goal. Like, a lot of my listeners are – they fall somewhere in between running 30 seconds and running three minutes. That seems to be the most common intervals. Somewhere between 30 seconds and three minutes with a walk break of 30 seconds to a minute. And they do entire marathons and more with that ratio.

So anyway, that is a continual discussion in the Run Your Best Life group. We talk about that a lot because as a runner evolves, you know, when you first start out, the ratio that works for you might be different than what works for you a year later, two years later, five years later. So it’s a continual discussion that we have in the Run Your Best Life group, so if you’re struggling to find an interval scheme that works for you, if you think, “Oh, I could probably tweak this a little bit better,” I invite you to join at runyourbestlife.com and I can help you figure it out.

Alright rebels, we are heading into the cool down, which means it is time for my latest obsession. And this one is kind of, I don’t know, it’s kind of silly, funny. I saw it on somebody else’s Facebook page and I can’t remember who it was because if I could I would shout them out right now but I can’t remember. But I ordered it immediately because it’s extremely cool and extremely simple.

So it’s basically one of those write on, wipe off calendars, but it’s a magnet that sticks to your fridge. So it’s a calendar and then you basically write in the day numbers and then there’s room to write in – you can use it for you running calendar, you can use it for your meal planning, I mean, you can use it for whatever you want, honestly. I’ve been using it for planning out my meals, and then it comes with a magnetic shopping list. So on the right side, on the right hand door I have the calendar and I’m like, “Okay, these are the meals I’m going to have this week,” and then I just go right over to the shopping list and write down the food that I need to buy for the shopping list. And because I’m in the kitchen, I can just literally open the refrigerator and look inside and be like, “Oh look, we’re out of kale. I’ll write that on the list.”

And so it comes with six magnetic markers too, so you can stick the markers to the refrigerator as well and there’s like, six different colors and it’s funny, I can’t put them too high on my fridge because Maddie likes to get on top of the fridge and then basically anything that’s within reach of her paw is destroyed. So pretty much I have to have everything kind of down low on the fridge. But anyway, I write down the meals that I’m planning to eat for the week and then I make the shopping list out of it, and then when I’m ready to go shopping, I just take a picture of the magnets so I don’t have to copy it all down into my phone.

And then the other really cool thing is the markers have – each marker has like a little eraser on the end so you don’t have to like, go hunting around. You don’t have to have a separate eraser for it or go looking for tissue and the spray or whatever, so it’s super easy. And the best part – in addition to all of those other amazing things – I can’t believe I’m so excited about a stupid magnet – but the best part is it’s only like 15 bucks on Amazon, which I think is pretty darn affordable for something that’s given me so much functionality.

So I mean, I have mine on my fridge like I said. You could stick it pretty much anywhere that you have a metal surface and it’s about 17 inches wide and 13 inches high. That’s the calendar, and then the shopping list piece is smaller. And the shopping list thing too, it’s really cool. It’s got like, a section for fruits and vegetables and meats and household goods and like, there’s about 10 different sections. So it’s not just like, one big huge list. Like, you get to categorize it. So I think it’s a total winner. The Amazon link to grab one of these babies for you, for yourself is right in the show notes.

Alright rebels, that is it for this week. Everything that I mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes at notyouraveragerunner.com/44, and I will talk to you soon.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you liked what you heard and want more, head over to www.notyouraveragerunner.com to download your free one-week jumpstart plan and get started running today.