Ep #3: Is Running Hard?

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 there, cutie. Welcome back to episode three of the Not Your Average Runner podcast. I have a lot of fun things packed into today’s episode for you, like whether running is hard for everyone or just you, why it’s okay to suck at running, how you can actually get life coaching from me, and what I’m totally obsessed with this week. And you’re going to laugh when you find out what it is, but I’m also going to share why it’s so awesome and how you can try it yourself. And then of course we’re going to have a ton of fun along the way. So whether you are a brand new runner or an experienced pro, or maybe even you’re just contemplating it because all your friends are doing it. Either way, you’re in the right place, so let’s get started.

Now, last episode, I did mention that I’m going to be answering your questions on the podcast, and that starts with episode four. So if you want to get your question answered, all you have to do is email me at podcast@notyouraveragerunner.com and I’m going to pick one question each week to read and answer on the podcast. You can ask me anything within reason obviously, but running questions are awesome, any other questions are awesome as well. And if I pick your question to answer on the show, I’ll also send you a Not Your Average Runner car magnet in the mail. So yay, and also if you tried last week’s running challenge, or any of the challenges I gave you last week, I would love to hear about that in the Facebook group. You can join the Facebook group by going to notyouraveragerunner.com/jointhecommunity.

Right, so let’s talk about the main topic this week. Last week we really discussed a lot about what it means to be a runner, and just to recap, if you run, you are a runner. Full stop. And there’s actually no compendium or authority that decides how fast you have to be. The dictionary literally says that running is going faster than a walk. That’s it. So I repeat, if you run, you are a runner.

And I also challenged you to go for your first run. So I hope you had fun with that and you want to do it again. And I also told you it would be easy, and I did mean that. And in theory, of course, it is, right? You put on your shoes, you walk out the door, you run, you walk, you run, you walk, until you’re done, right? It sounds ridiculously simple. But sometimes, what is simple doesn’t always feel easy.

And I have a little story to tell you. So earlier this week, I was on a video call with the Run Your Best Life group, and by the way, if you’re not in that group, you should really check it out because we coach live over video every week, we talk about all things running from training plans to motivation to nutrition and everything in between. We have a private Facebook group and it’s just insanely fun. So you can actually find that group at www.runyourbestlife.com, and that’s how you can get live video coaching from me on a weekly basis.

But anyway, I was on video with that group a few days ago and one of the members said she was really worried about her next training run because her last one felt kind of hard. And just for clarification, she had done a seven mile run, she’s training for a pretty long race, she had done a seven mile run a couple weeks ago, it felt really hard, and her next big long training run was going to be eight miles, and this is the one she was worried about. So I ask her like, what were her concerns, and she said, “Well, you know, the next one might be hard too.” And I looked at her and I said, “Well, of course it’s going to be hard. Running is hard. It’s running. If it were easy, everybody would do it.”

But here’s the advice that I gave her. I said, “Now that you’ve gotten through one hard run, you know you can do it. You know that when things are difficult, you don’t quit. You keep going.” This is amazing information to have about yourself, right? And besides, I said, “What else are you going to do with that two hours?” She’s got eight miles to run, it’s going to take her about two hours, she could stay at home and watch Netflix or scroll through Facebook, and there’s a million other things that she could do that would be easier than going out for a two hour run, but I asked her, “Isn’t doing something hard but really rewarding, like running for example, a great way to spend that time?”

When we talked about – there’s probably been movies that you’ve gone to see that lasted about two hours, and they were painful to watch, and yet you sat there and you watched the whole thing, and you’re getting nothing out of it. So I like to think of a difficult run as I’m really getting a lot out of this, you know, it may be hard and I may be uncomfortable, but I’m moving myself forward. This is actually benefitting me in the long run.

And here’s the truth of the matter, right? Running really is hard, and the reason for that is because you’re moving your body faster than a walk. Walking is pretty easy. Running takes more effort. You’re asking more from your heart, and your lungs, and your muscles, and your brain, and your skeleton than you’re usually asking them. It feels harder than walking or standing or laying on the couch because it just is. It’s hard for everyone, even people who are in the Olympics. So you are not special, or you’re not damaged or broken, or anything. You’re just human, you’re normal. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong.

And also just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing either. So you might have done a few intervals in the beginning, the first two or three felt pretty easy, but then as your body got warmed up, like, it started to feel more difficult. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing and it doesn’t mean you’re not meant to be a runner. It just means you’re a beginner, basically. You’re just at the beginning of your journey and you will get better and stronger over time. Of course, the spoiler is as you get stronger, you’ll make it harder for yourself because you’ll run further or you’ll run faster, and it’ll still feel hard.

And here’s why that’s so great. Because sometimes believe it or not, doing hard things is kind of fun. Sometimes it even feels good, right? I mean, have you ever spent a whole day on the couch watching Netflix for like, eight hours straight, and at the end of that eight hours, do you feel amazing? Not usually. I mean, in the moment, it’s easier to lay there and watch TV, but often by the end of that time you feel kind of icky and gross because you haven’t moved your body all day, right?

So doing hard things is really I think, what the human experience is meant to be. And if your run felt hard this week, I want you to ask yourself what you’re making that mean. So if you are making it mean maybe that you’re not meant to be a runner, you’re just not cut out for it, or that something’s wrong with you, you’re going to feel pretty shitty about yourself. But if you are making it mean that you’re someone who can do hard things, you might feel pretty good. And you actually get to decide which way to think about it.

The run feels the way it feels physically, that’s a given, but you get to decide what you make it mean. You can make it mean that you’re someone who can do hard things, you can feel great about it, you can make it mean something different and not feel so great about it. It really is the only choice that we have as humans on this planet. We don’t have much control or choice over anything else in our life, it’s all in our brains, and it’s all – like, that’s where we have 100% control is over what we’re thinking. So since that’s such a powerful tool, I like to apply that to running and my experience of running changes with how I think about it.

Okay, so that’s the first thing I wanted to tell you about today, and I know that was kind of a heavy topic to discuss and so I’m going to just dive right in and talk about the next heavy topic, which is for all of you perfectionists out there. Those of you who don’t want to run unless you can be an overachiever because you feel like your life has no meaning unless you’re overachieving. Now, I get it. I have like, multiple graduate degrees in Chemistry, of all things. I spent the beginning of my career overachieving and overachieving and always having to have everything be perfect and having to be better than everybody else, and honestly, it really didn’t get me very far. I mean, sure, I had a great career and everything, but I didn’t feel very fulfilled.

And it’s all great to want to do your best at something, but with running, this is the key thing. There’s always going to be someone faster than you, always. Unless you are Meb Keflezighi, and I am so sorry Meb, if you’re listening to this, I always mess up your name. But you know who I’m talking about. Like, he’s super fast, right? Like, he’s probably always going to be the fastest person, but everybody else, there’s always going to be someone faster than you.

So there are going to be those days when running doesn’t feel as amazing as usual, or you’re running really slow, slower than usual, even though you’re sweating bullets and it feels really hard and you’re like, “What’s wrong with me?” You get a mile in and your whole body just decides to quit. This is all normal, right? Running is hard. You remember we just talked about it. Running is hard and on those days when it feels awful and you’re thinking, “Everyone else is better than me”, I just want you to remember this: it is okay to suck at it.

Not every run is going to be a glorious, perfect experience. And if you expect it to be, you might end up quitting or at the very least beating yourself up for not having everything be perfect. So before any of that happens to you, let’s just agree on one thing. Be willing to suck at running and still do it, because the thing is, if you’re not willing to suck at something, you’re never actually going to practice. You’ll never make mistakes and fail, which means you’ll never ever get better. And ironically, you will continue to suck.

So being willing to just not be good at something and actually keep doing it is one of the most powerful tools you can ever have. When you don’t depend on being good at something to feel good about yourself, you are really and truly free. And I just want you to spend some time thinking about that. Where are there places in your life where you felt like, “If I can’t be great at it, I’m just not going to bother”? And how fulfilling is that? How much fun is that, right? Like, not being willing to try something because you’re afraid you’re not going to be awesome at it. So I want you to start it right now, be willing to suck at running. Just assume you’re going to suck at it, be willing to do it anyway, and see where that gets you.

Okay, so I kind of waxed really philosophic there at the end, but I hope that gives you some food for thought on this week’s run, which by the way, we’re going to talk about right now, and it’s going to build on last week. So here’s what I want you to do. Again, I want you to warm up for five minutes of walking, and then alternate 30 second of jogging at like, an easy, comfortable pace. Again, this isn’t a sprint, right? We’re just going to suck at it this week. Alternate that 30 seconds of jogging with 90 second of walking, and this week I want you to do it 12 times. Just an extra two intervals, and then walk for five minutes to cool down. That’s it. Just a couple more intervals than you did last week. I know you can do this.

So here’s what I am currently obsessed with, and you’re just going to laugh when you hear this. Okay, speed laces. And no, they’re not shoelaces that make you run faster. What they are is basically elastic shoelaces, and I know it sounds weird and crazy and kind of like those Velcro shoes from the 90s that were super popular, but I want you to hear me out. So I first discovered these miraculous creations when I was training for the my very first triathlon. And so in a triathlon, you actually have to quickly – you do a swim and a bike and a run in that order, and so as you can imagine, you’re swimming, you’re in your bathing suit or your wetsuit, or whatever it is you’re swimming in, you have to get out of the water, put on your bike riding gear, and that includes your helmet, your shoes, your bike shorts, et cetera, and this is called a transition. And from the swim to the bike it’s called transition one, or T1 is what we call that, call it in the multisport world, and your goal is to reduce the amount that T1 takes because it all counts in your overall finish time.

So every second that you’re spending transitioning from swimming to cycling is part of your whole triathlon time. So that’s T1. Now, T2, transition two is where you take off your helmet, your gloves, your riding shoes, your cycling shoes, and then you put on your running shoes and you put on your running race number and you do all that stuff. And again, you want to make this as fast as possible. So triathletes have actually invented quite a few really cool things to shave every possible second off their transition times, and elastic laces are one of them.

So what you do is you remove your regular laces from your running shoes and you take these elastic laces and then you lace up your shoes with them. You get the tension exactly the way you want it, and then you sort of lock the end so that it remains exactly where you left it. So basically, what happens is when you put your shoes on after that, you don’t need to untie and retie your laces. You just kind of pull up on the tongue and because the laces are elastic, they stretch, you slide your foot in, you go over the tongue of the shoe and voila, perfect lacing every single time.

So this for me at least, saves a minute or two in transition because there’s no fussing around with making sure shoes are properly tied, and I mean, they’re basically slip-ons at that point. So I started using them when I was doing triathlons, but what I realized is that they’re just amazing in general for running. It’s so much more valuable than just a triathlon because it means when you found a lacing style and a tension that works for you, that you know, keeps your shoe on, first of all, and keeps them at the tension that you want but without being too tight, you can have it exactly the same way every single time because you never have to untie and retie your shoes.

Also, your shoes don’t come untied when you’re out running, which means no more double knots or whatever, and if you want to change the tension, there’s just like, you just push on a little button and then slide up on the laces, and voila, your shoes are wide open. And there’s more. They’re inexpensive. They’re under $10, they come in a bunch of reflective colors so you can always match them to your shoes and yes, I do that. And they’re – also because they’re reflective, they’re a little bit of an extra safety measure if you’re running at night.

They last forever, and I mean, I have pairs that are probably – I did my first triathlon in 2010, and I still have my first pair from them. They’re light blue because they match my sneakers at the time. So I mean, every time I get a new pair of running shoes, or every time I get rid of a pair of running shoes I should say, I take the laces from the old pair and hold on to them, and then when I get a new pair, I you know, pick from my collection of different colors and I put on a matching pair. Now, you don’t necessarily have to have like, a whole wardrobe of shoelaces. You can just get one or two pairs, but I like to match them with my shoes.

Anyway, getting way too excited about these shoelaces. My favorite brand is iBungee, and you can actually find a link in the show notes to this, and the show notes are at www.notyouraveragerunner.com/3. So that’s my favorite brand, it’s iBungee. But if you Google just easy laces, speed laces, lock laces, triathlete laces, you’ll actually find a bunch of different options. But like I said, in the show notes, www.notyouraveragerunner.com/3, there’s a link to the specific brand that I like to use, and all you need to do is just choose the length of the laces that you want and go from there.

Alrighty, so our time is up this week, and I just wanted to let you know that if you’re really anxious to get started with running, I know you’ve probably tried a couple of these workouts, but if you want to get a little bit more into it, I do have a free one week jumpstart plan that’s designed to help you do exactly that. So you’ll get your first week of workouts along with some tips to help you get started, and I promise it’s all super easy. Anybody can do it. So you’re just going to head on over to http://www.notyouraveragerunner.com/start to download the one-week jumpstart plan.

And then after you’ve done that, make sure you check your email for the plan. After that, I’ll actually be dropping in on you, not personally at your house, but I will drop you some emails to even give you some additional guidance to help you get a little bit more out of it. So if you’re still here, I want you to go right now. Just go do it. www.notyouraveragerunner.com/start. I promise it is going to be so much fun, and that’s about it for this week. I am so glad we’re on this journey together, my friend. I wish you the happiest of running. Bye.

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 http://www.notyouraveragerunner.com to download your free one-week jumpstart plan and get started running today.