Ep #100: Listener Favorites and Massive 100th Episode Giveaway

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 100 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and wait, what? 100 episodes. Woo-hoo. I cannot believe we made it. This is a really big achievement and damn girl, we did it.

So did you know that most podcasts don’t even make it past the first 10 episodes? And here we are at 100, so we’re going to party like it’s 1999, even though it’s 2019. So first things first, this is part of the celebration actually. I want to give a huge shout-out to the entire Not Your Average Runner team, and there’s a whole bunch of us making this shit happen, you guys.

The free stuff like this podcast and the Facebook Lives I do every week, the huge free Facebook group, the books, the free training plans, the webinars, the challenges. All that free stuff, there’s a whole team of us making that happen, and then of course there’s everything that we do for our clients in Run Your Best Life, which is the classes and the retreats and the live coaching and all the gear we have in the swag shop. Just like the daily support for all of our Run Your Best Life members.

Again, it takes a team. It takes a village. So before we get too deep into the episode, I want to tell you all about them. So first of all, there’s Jen Lamplough who is a certified running coach and does a ton of coaching in Run Your Best Life, especially on nutrition and fueling. And of course, you know her because I’ve had her on the podcast numerous times, and she’s also an extremely accomplished chef and author in her own right.

So major, major props to Jen. I could not do this without her. And next on the list we have Meaghan Lamm, who is our business manager and keeps all of our stuff, including me in line, makes sure things happen on time, and just generally oversees the business and ensures that we are running like a tightly oiled machine and where we are not, she’s like hey, we need to fix this, let’s get on it. And so Megan is like, completely indispensable to the Not Your Average Runner business. She’s our rock.

Next we have Cher Tuz who mans the support desk and she responds to every email we get. She helps our clients with the members website and private podcast and does a ton of other things, and if you’ve ever emailed support@notyouraveragerunner.com because you had a question, maybe even looking for the free training plan you signed up for, or maybe you’re a Run Your Best Life member and you’re like, I need help with my password or something like that.

Cher is the girl who’s helping you out and she’s just such a valuable member of our team. So many of my clients come to me and say Cher really, really helped me with my issue and I just want you to know how awesome she is, and of course I know but I love to hear it from our clients as well. So Cher’s our support guru and she makes all that shit happen.

And then we have Erin who designs all of the stuff for our amazing Run Your Best Life members and trust me, without Erin, y’all would just be getting a bunch of sad looking spreadsheets because that’s pretty much the level of my talent. She’s the one who makes everything nice looking. She’s the one who recently redesigned all of our worksheets in Run Your Best Life so that you could actually edit them on the fly instead of having to print them out and handwrite things on them.

She makes our brand look gorgeous, so thank you so much to Erin. Now, there’s also Pavel and Angela who are our podcast production team from Digital Freedom Productions, and they’re just super amazing and Angela has actually recently joined the Run Your Best Life team, which I think is super fun.

And of course, I need to thank Andy who is my absolute rock. And he comes to almost every retreat to keep things going smoothly. He’s been a guest on the podcast a few times as well and he’s just my boo and he keeps me feeling centered and energized and excited and you have no idea how much stuff Andy does behind the scenes without anybody ever hearing about it because he’s just that kind of a guy.

So together, we formed the Not Your Average Runner team, and seriously, without this band of rock stars, we would not be able to help nearly as many women start running and become badass rebel runners. So I want to thank each and every one of my team members from the bottom of my heart for helping me bring this vision to life.

Okay, so what are we going to talk about on this 100th episode? We could talk about a million different things. And I thought about it, for the 50th episode I gave you guys 50 things that I learned from running, and I thought I don’t know if I can come up with 100 things. And then I was like, alright, maybe I could talk about 100 lessons and I was like, or maybe I can run 100 miles.

I’m like no, that’s way too far. So what I did was I actually asked the members of our Facebook group which episodes were their favorites and why. And so today we are going to do listener favorites. We’re going to highlight the best of the podcast from your point of view. And if you’re new, if this is the first episode you’re listening to, this is actually going to be a great introduction to what’s awesome on the podcast and I also want you to make sure that you listen in to the very end of this episode because as part of our 100th episode celebration, we are doing a huge giveaway. Huge. Huge.

I am super excited about it, and actually, you know what actually, I can’t even wait until the end to tell you so I’m just going to say it right now. We’re giving away a spot in the upcoming half marathon class to one lucky listener to celebrate 100 episodes and to say thank you for being a loyal listener. So if you have not heard about it, on July 15th, the next round of half marathon training kicks off in Run Your Best Life.

And this is a four-month class where you’re going to learn everything you need to know about really slaying your training and your race and like I said, one very lucky listener is going to get in it for free. But here is the catch. You do have to listen to the end to find out how to enter. I’ve always got a trick up my sleeve for you guys.

So now that I have your attention, let’s take a run down memory lane. So, like I said, I asked some long-time listeners which episodes were their favorites and why and I got tons of responses. Way more than I could possibly put into this podcast, but some of them really made me laugh, some of them were super sweet and heartfelt, and some made me go yeah, that’s awesome.

So what I did was I picked a few of my favorites to share. And I’m just going to dive right in, so the first one is from Ashton, who’s one of our Run Your Best Life members. And her favorite was episode number 41, which is called The First Mile Always Feels like Ass, and she said, “It made me so happy to know I was not alone in feeling this way, and now I always remind myself that the first mile may suck, but I can push through and have a great run.”

So I love that this is your favorite episode, Ashton, because personally, it’s a concept that I use every single time I go out running, and I think it’s very freeing to believe this because then when it’s hard for that first mile, you can just say oh, I know it’s going to get better soon. You can just believe that it’s going to get better soon, that you can do anything for 15 minutes.

I think this is a concept that most of us don’t realize until we become a runner that our bodies just need some warm up time until they get into a nice groove. That first mile is when your circulatory system and your respiratory system is just adjusting to the new extra effort, and it doesn’t always feel good because you’re asking your body to do things that your heart and lungs aren’t quite on board with yet.

Takes maybe 15 to 20 minutes for your systems to catch up, and until then your brain is just arguing with you. So I always just say to myself, the first mile feels like ass, and I never allow myself to decide anything about my run until I hit that one-mile mark, and of course by then everything feels much better so it’s just a little trick. But we did an entire podcast episode on it. It’s episode 41, and thanks for letting us know that’s your favorite, Ashton. I love it.

Okay, next one. MJ, her favorite episode was number 89, Determined AF, and what she said was, “I listened to it on replay. I recommend it to everyone who is trying to do hard things. It applies to absolutely everything. It got me through half marathon training. It is absolutely life.” And so MJ, first of all, I love that you put this episode on replay to inspire you instead of just once and done because sometimes we need to hear things over and over to make it stick.

And sometimes a podcast like this can be like that song that always gets you moving that when you hear that song you’re like, oh yeah, I’m going to go run, I feel excited. Sometimes there are short and sweet podcasts like number 89 that just pump you up. And the thing is, we talk so much on this podcast about thoughts creating feelings, and when you know the feeling that you need to take the action you want, you just have to create it.

And so when I ask people which feeling they want to create, most often it’s either determined or motivated because seriously, if you spend most of your life feeling determined, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish. Not just in running but in life, and so much of what I teach on this podcast does double duty between running and life. So I’m very happy that episode 89 keeps you determined as fuck, MJ. Keep on listening.

Alright, and that brings me to Michelle, who said she listens to episode number 71, Are Your Goals Big Enough, at the beginning of every month. And so just like with episode 89, Determined AF, this is another one you can listen to over and over again to help you stay focused. And I actually think episode 33, How to Coach Yourself is another one like that.

And so Michelle, it made me super excited that you use that episode as a way to set your intention for the month because that’s exactly what it was designed to do, so keep on doing that and thanks for writing in. Okay, next up is Megan and Megan had a lot to say, and I’m going to read everything that she wrote here because it’s so good.

So Megan loved episode 55, How to Love Your Race Photos with Kara Loewentheil. And in that episode, Kara and I talked about avoiding being in pictures because we don’t like how we look. And so Megan’s takeaway was, “We aren’t fooling anyone by not being in pictures. Our size is our size.”

She wrote, “You talked about not living our lives on the sidelines and embracing imperfect pictures of ourselves. It was like you were talking directly to me. I have been doing this very thing, trying to hide in plain sight and not fully living my life because I was ashamed of my size and who I am. It was a really deep episode that made a big difference for me. It touched something inside and started my true journey to love myself, to stop hiding away and start really living my life again. To not worry what my old high school or college friends will think, but to live fully now, not just when I reach my goal weight.

I have, since that podcast, purchased 20 tank tops and started running in them with no shame, and I even went to a swimming pool without my shorts on to cover up my thighs. I still have a long way to go, but that one helped me so much. Thank you, Jill, for being who you are and leading the charge of helping us reclaim our love for ourselves and our bodies, and for helping us to feel safe, to claim space for ourselves in this world with no apologies needed. I’m proud to be a rebel runner.”

Megan, I literally got teary reading this. I’m getting teary re-reading this now because I want so much for all of you to feel that acceptance of yourself instead of resistance because it is just so hurtful when we look at ourselves in a photo or in the mirror and criticize. And it just doesn’t have to be that way. Honestly, I was just coaching someone in Run Your Best Life on this exact thing yesterday, and what she posted in Run Your Best Life was that she was struggling to love photos of herself because they never match up with her mental image.

She’s like, I get dressed in the morning and I’m okay with what I see in the mirror, and then I catch sight of myself in a shop window later on and I think, what? Is that what I look like? And then she feels awful. And it’s so funny because this is work that we do in Run Your Best Life for sure. We did a whole month on body image earlier this year. And it’s work that I’ve done on myself really hard and it’s paying off.

So I did an Instagram story earlier yesterday where Andy was filming me from behind doing TRX lunges. We didn’t set up a fancy angle or anything. I was just like, here’s the camera, can you just film me doing these TRX lunges. And so I looked at the video. You can see rolls of fat, you can see cellulite on my legs, you can see my double chin from the side, and I didn’t get all upset or grossed out or anything.

I noticed it, but really that’s just my body. That’s how it looks. It’s strong, it can do a lot of things, and it looks like a million other women’s bodies out there. I think that is so important to note. It looks like a million other women’s bodies out there. But my ass, I noticed my ass as well. My ass looked amazing in the running skirt I was wearing.

I noticed this too. I just noticed everything as a neutral circumstance. I was like, cellulite on my legs, rolls of fat on my back. My ass looks amazing in that running skirt. And also, my ass looks like a million other women’s asses out there. So making it mean that there’s something wrong with yours because of how it looks, it’s painful and it’s the least productive thing I could think of to do with your thoughts.

The thing I want everyone to remember, we certainly talked about it in that episode number 55, I talk about it at length in Run Your Best Life is that what our bodies look like is so fucking irrelevant. Cellulite and fat rolls having nothing to do with who you are. They’re just circumstances. And having a great ass is the same thing. Having a great ass has nothing to do with who you are. It’s just a circumstance.

Being fat doesn’t make you a bad person any more than being thin makes you a good person. So when you are criticizing yourself and when you’re praising yourself, notice if you’re saying like, oh, look at me, I look so terrible, I’m an unworthy person, and notice of you’re looking at yourself in the mirror and saying look how good I am, look how good I look. That makes me more worthy.

You might not use those words, but we ascribe the qualities of our worthiness to the size of our body or the way it looks and it works in both directions. Being fat doesn’t make you bad any more than being thin makes you good. The two things, your body size and who you are as a person, completely and utterly unrelated. And seriously, if I leave any legacy on this planet at all, it would be that our appearance and our worthiness have nothing to do with each other. I for real want them to write that on my tombstone.

Okay, thank you Megan though for highlighting that episode because I think it’s a very powerful one and it’s certainly a message that is very, very meaningful to me. Okay, so next up is Erin, and Erin loved episode 42, which was called Run Fatty Run, and that episode was all about dealing with hecklers. And what she said, short and sweet, she said, “It really helped me bring the thoughts I was having into perspective.”

And Erin, I love this so much because other people are always going to have opinions about us. That’s how it works. And sometimes we like those opinions, and some not so much. Sometimes we hear those opinions and sometimes we don’t. But you’ve heard me say this a million times before. Other people’s opinions are none of your fucking business.

Whether they like you or they loathe you, it goes both ways. Just because somebody likes you, also that opinion is not any of your business. Other people cannot hurt our feelings, and they also can’t make us feel good because your feelings are created by you. Not by someone else. When someone heckles you, you need to remember that it is your own thinking about it that creates whatever feeling you have.

And that means somebody could heckle you and you don’t have to feel bad. Somebody can compliment you and it doesn’t mean you have to feel good. And honestly, how many times have you been complimented and you didn’t feel good about it, right? And if it was the compliment that made you feel good, everybody would feel good when they receive a compliment.

But so often, somebody compliments us and we have a thought thinking that’s not true, and then we feel bad. So it is always your thoughts. So hecklers, let them heckle. So thank you so much for highlighting that episode, Erin, and I love that it helped you bring your thoughts into perspective. So good.

Next up we have Elizabeth, who actually had two favorite episodes. Number 21, Starting a Cultural Revolution with Kate Brown, and number 97, The Power of Visibility. And she said, “I love the episodes with overt girl power feminist rants. I get all pumped up after listening to them. Fuck yeah, we can do this and we are part of an amazing sisterhood.”

And so Elizabeth, I could not agree more. Those are some of my favorite episodes as well because I love to get all fired up about this kind of thing. I personally believe the world needs a certain amount of people to be loud and speak up and lead the charge for whatever we’re trying to improve, what we’re trying to change. And change doesn’t happen by pretending everything is okay, and I am more than happy to step forward and raise my voice. So thank you for sharing that those were your favorites.

Okay, now we have Lynn-Anne who said her favorite was actually number 20, How to Stop Quitting. And honestly, I had so many people write in and say that this was their favorite episode. So the message of that episode, as Lynn-Anne sums it up was, “Little quits add up to big quits, and after listening to this episode, I have stopped quitting altogether. When I feel the little nudge to not run, I repeat in my head that little quits lead to big quits. I want to improve more than I want my current circumstances.”

And she’s like, “That was another gem from a different episode.” So this is so awesome, Lynn, and I think it’s amazing how hearing something from a different perspective can shift your thoughts enough to change all your results, and I’m so proud of you that you have stopped quitting. So this is amazing, so congratulations.

Okay, next one is from Raquel, who loves episode number 85, and this was actually a Q&A about motivation with none other than Jennifer Bucko Lamplough. Raquel writes, “For so long, my why for running was losing weight. I never enjoyed my run, I was punishing myself to lose weight. Since I have started running after my four-year hiatus, running has been more for my mental health, and this episode really helped me reflect on that and appreciate my runs more. I prioritize my runs because it is no longer a punishment and helps my mental wellbeing. I could really bring up more episodes, but this one stood out to me. Thanks Jill for changing so many lives for the better.”

Raquel, you are more than welcome. I’m super glad that this episode was helpful to you and honestly, I pretty much think any episode where Jen Lamplough and I are riffing on stuff together is amazing. But I agree, this is one of my favorites as well, and I just love that you’ve shifted your compelling reason for running from weight loss to mental health, because I feel like that’s a much more productive reason.

And it’s going to keep you going a lot longer than just the reason of weight loss, because once you get to your goal weight, then you stop running because if running is the point of losing weight, then what do you do afterwards? So mental health is something that we need to create for ourselves on a daily basis, so I love that running is helping you for that.

Okay, next up is Melissa who had three favorites. She said, “My absolute favorite one was number 66 on perimenopause. I learned so much from that episode. Thank you.” And just as a side note, personally, I learned a lot too. And we’ve got another episode coming up on menopause. Just women’s health issues in general in a few weeks, so stay tuned for that.

So Melissa says, “I also like number 20 on how to stop quitting,” that was another vote for that, “and I got great practical advice that I can apply to numerous areas of my life. And then also number 28 on self-care because we all need to do a better job of taking care of ourselves.” And Melissa, I could not agree more because I think we believe that self-care should be sexy. It should be bubble baths and massages and expensive chocolates and dates with ourselves to go out to dinner and a movie, and really, self-care is the least sexy thing ever.

It’s like, getting up early to do your run before work so that you don’t feel guilty later. It’s pushing yourself a little bit harder because you know you can do it. It’s arguing with your inner mean girl. It’s brushing your teeth. It’s getting dressed for work and taking time with your appearance even though it’s a pain in the ass to blow-dry your hair or whatever.

Self-care is doing your mental work on your brain on a daily basis. It’s doing your thought downloads, it’s writing out your models, and my Run Your Best Lifers, now we’re doing this on a daily basis is writing our models in that group because it’s so powerful. But self-care is not sexy. Self-care is not exciting and fun.

I mean, it can be if you change your thoughts about it, but when we feel entitled that self-care should just be easy and feel luxurious, we end up not doing it because we think luxurious, it must be a massage, it has to feel pleasurable and so forth, and self-care doesn’t always feel pleasurable. Sometimes self-care is hard and that’s okay because it’s worth it. So thank you so much Melissa.

Alright, next one we have is Jené. She had several episodes. She said, “Episode 12 with Mirna Valerio as the guest and episode 18 with Latoya and Martinus. Episode 22, Making a Scene with Susan Hyatt is one of my favorites too. Episode 23, which introduced the idea of rebel runner and episode 33, How to Coach Yourself, which is I think my all-time favorite. But then also episode 93, how to make a 24-hour plan.”

She said, “Both of those episodes, 33 and 93 addressed how motivation is not fairy dust and star alignment, but something you create for yourself. This was so good.” And then Jené said, “I could keep going but I don’t want to look like a stalker,” and I just want to say, stalk away, Jené. If you want to listen to every single episode a million times, I’m all in for that.

So thank you for sharing that and honestly you guys, I could go on for hours with all of the things that people wrote in about their podcasts and I just want to say, first of all thank you for writing in, for taking the time because I know it took you a little bit of time for you to write in with your favorite episodes. It was super fun personally for me to read all of the responses and to relive some of those moments.

And every single one of you who listens to this show, who shares it, who tells your friends about it, who takes the lessons to heart and shares the lessons with people, I want you to know how much I appreciate you. And I especially love when I find out that you listen and re-listened to certain ones because it’s helpful to you, but I just want you to know how grateful I am that you’re here on this journey with me and I’m grateful to be able to be a small part of your own running journey, so thanks. Thank you very much.

Okay, as promised, I am saying thanks one more time by giving away an entry to our half marathon class that starts on July 15th, and this episode that you’re listening to comes out on July 11th. And so the class starts pretty soon, you guys, so you got to act really quickly if you want to enter to win.

So a little bit about it. It’s a perfect class for both beginners and more experienced runners because it’s not just a training plan, and we actually have two levels of training plans, depending on where you are on your experience level. But what we do is it’s all the other stuff that you need to think about, including fueling, speed work, race day strategy, mindset, motivation, how to stop quitting on yourself, how to deal with your inner mean girl, how to learn how to do a long run and not want to poke your eyes out, how to finish a long run, how to just mentally prepare yourself for the distance, how to help your family understand what you’re doing and get on board with what you’re training for.

So it’s the whole package because half marathon training, people think like oh, I’m just going to go out and run a bunch of miles, and for sure that’s part of it, but that’s maybe 10% of it, and the rest of it, there’s so much more that goes into it that is the difference between you being successful and you having a shitty race or maybe not even finishing or not even showing up.

And so that’s what this class is designed to is to fill the gap between just a plain old training plan that you pick up on the internet and all the other stuff that goes into it. So it does come with live coaching calls and it also comes with a four-month membership to Run Your Best Life. So it’s a pretty awesome class, and actually it’s $156 for the class that includes, like I said, a four-month membership to Run Your Best Life.

So this is a pretty fun prize for me to give away here. So if you want to enter, there are two parts to enter. So the first thing you need to do is make a post on Instagram and let people know which Not Your Average Runner Podcast episode was your favorite and why. And then tag @notyouraveragerunner. Not just a hashtag but you got to @ me. You got to do @notyouraveragerunner in your post.

So that’s part one. It’s on Instagram, and if you’re not on Instagram, I apologize. There’s really no other way for us to do these contests on Facebook because of everybody’s privacy settings and the way Facebook is set up, so we’re doing it on Instagram. But hey, if you really want to do this thing and you don’t have an Instagram account but you want to enter, you’ll set up an Instagram account.

So part one, post on Instagram, let people know which podcast episode was your favorite and why, and then tag @notyouraveragerunner. Not just hashtag me after you @notyouraveragerunner. So that’s part one. Part two is you got to tag at least three of your friends who you think would like the podcast as well.

So all those instructions are going to be in the show notes at notyouraveragerunner.com/100. And here’s the deal. We’re going to do the drawing itself on July 17th. Now, I know that’s two days after the class starts, but it’s okay. You’re only going to miss two days. We want to give you a little bit of extra time to enter. We’re going to do the drawing on July 17th. We’re going to make the announcement on Instagram.

So make sure you mark your calendar right now to check your Instagram on July 17th to go to my Not Your Average Runner account on July 17th to find out if you won, and that’s it. Alright my rebels, episode 100 is officially coming to a close. Our first 100 episodes is done and it has been my pleasure to share this journey with you and I cannot wait to celebrate 200 episodes. Alright, have an amazing week and I’ll 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.