Ep #114: Long-Distance Running Without Losing Your Shit

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 114 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today we are talking about how to run long distances without losing your shit.

So I am obsessed right now with creating tools to help people manage their minds around hard things. I’m actually doing a lot of work at the moment putting together all the tools and techniques for the things that we’re going to teach in the Savannah retreat, which is coming up in a couple of weeks.

And you guys, last week’s training run was full of material. So I’m getting closer and closer to the Philadelphia Marathon, which means the training runs that Amy and I are doing are starting to get up there in miles. As of this recording, we just finished our 16-mile run.

And oh my god, I am so fucking pleased with myself right now. I just keep saying to myself, fuck yeah, I did that. Yes. Me. I did that thing. That moment when my Garmin hit 16.0, I stopped, paused my Garmin, bent over, put my hands on my knees and I just took a deep breath, I cried a little bit. Not a lot. Just a little. But it really felt kind of like the moment when I finished my first triathlon.

I cried buckets after I finished my first triathlon because all I could think was like, I did that. Me. It was something I never thought I could do and I did it. I just blew my own mind. And I think the reason I was able to do it was because I did a lot of mental work the day before that run and it really, really paid off.

All the stuff that I talk about here on the podcast, all the tools I teach you guys, I use them on myself and it really, really works, and I learned a lot as well because this is the farthest I’ve ever run. And to be honest, I had some doubts. The week before the run, I had some doubts.

But I learned a lot about myself, I came up with some – even more new tools, and some great insight that I want to share with you today so let’s talk about it. Now, I knew going into it that the 16-miler was going to be physically challenging.

Four weeks before, I did a half marathon, I was slower than I wanted to be. Physically, that half marathon was challenging. It was hard. I found myself suffering a lot, at least from miles six to 10, until I turned my brain around. And I ended that race feeling pretty good about myself. Very tired and achy for sure, but positive mentally.

And the next day I was even able to go out and do another couple miles for Ragnar training. Anyway, I talked about all of it right here on the podcast in episode 110. So if you want the whole story, check it out. But short story, in that half marathon, I actually laid a lot of the groundwork for how my 16-miler was going to go.

Because in that race, I spent a lot of time thinking about suffering versus physical discomfort. Suffering, I think is a thought. Suffering happens in our minds. And physical discomfort happens in our bodies. I was definitely suffering early on in the race and then kind of had this moment where I was like, well, I’m going to be physically uncomfortable either way.

Running does not feel like a massage. But I didn’t have to be miserable also. So I shifted my thinking around and lo and behold, my body actually hurt less. Or maybe it hurt the same but because I wasn’t focusing on it with every step, it seemed to hurt less.

And pain is kind of like that. If you just sit there and think about how much something hurts, it hurts more. If you place your mind someplace else, you don’t feel the pain as much. So anyway, back to the 16 miles. I was very nervous the whole week before and my brain was coming up with reasons that I shouldn’t have to do it.

And I thought about quitting or just saying I’m going to walk as soon as it gets too hard, and honestly, I always have that option. I can always just walk and finish that way. But I really didn’t want to do that. So I spent a lot of time working on my thinking ahead of time, asking myself how do you want to show up for this run?

And I journaled on it and what I decided was that I wanted to be excited and I wanted to be determined. So I worked on thoughts that would create those feelings. For excitements, the ones I came up with were I can’t wait to see what 16 miles feels like. Only two more long training runs after this one. That made me very excited.

I realized I’m getting a medal for a training run. That was exciting. And also, this is the farthest I’ve ever gone and I’m going to be so proud when I’m done. So I was super excited about all of that. And to feel determined, I worked on thoughts like I’m not fucking around, this is happening. I’m going to get this done no matter what.

I’m going to push myself way out of my comfort zone. I know I can do this. And I thought it will probably be hard and that is okay. I can run with discomfort, I can do hard things, I can definitely always go one more mile.

And I ran this one with my friend Amy, and so we had a good strategy. She was already signed up for a half marathon that day, the Valley Forge Half in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, so I signed up for it too and what we planned to do is do the half and just cross the finish line, grab our medal, and just keep going and do three more miles.

Because really, it’s easier I think to get your miles in when there are people handing you water along the way and cheering you on. So the first eight miles went great. My legs felt awesome, my energy was high, it pretty much rocked. And I was like, hey, at this point in the half marathon last month, I was already kind of feeling the burn, and now I can go a lot farther without that achy tired feeling.

My training is working. And that is what endurance training is all about, isn’t it? You don’t expect your long runs to be easy. You expect there will be discomfort. Maybe a lot of discomfort. But with each long run, you can go farther before that discomfort sets in.

And I think it’s important to understand that because sometimes in Run Your Best Life, for example, people will say I’m really worried about my race because I started to feel tired two miles before the end of my training run and I don’t know if I could have gone any farther. I started to worry my legs were going to give out.

And I’m like okay, but you did finish. Your legs didn’t give you and if you’re doing longer and longer runs, of course you’re going to feel tired for that extra mileage each week. If you do a seven-mile run and you start feeling tired at mile five, it’s kind of normal. And then when you do your eight-mile run, you might not start to fatigue until mile six. That’s your training starting to accumulate.

And when you think to yourself I can’t take another step, my legs are going to give out, first of all, they never have. I don’t know anybody whose legs have just given out and they’ve just fallen down right there and that’s it, they’re done. It just doesn’t happen, right?

So I can’t take another step is just a thought. And when you think it, you feel exhausted. You feel defeated and overwhelmed. And then when you feel those feelings, exhausted, defeated, and overwhelmed, your action is to stop running. So you never actually train yourself to see what you’re capable of if you just give up when it gets hard.

Rebels, you are all capable of so much more than you think you are because if you were in a race and you had that thought, I can’t take another step, and you still had two miles to go, and then someone said, oh my gosh, there’s been an accident, something happened to your sister, she’s at the finish line, she needs your help, you’d keep going. You’d find a way.

You would not just say I’m sorry, I can’t take another step. She’s on her own. We always have more gas in the tank and it comes from our thinking. Now, I’m not saying you should run through pain when it is clear that that pain is injuring you. You know your body. Have an honest conversation with yourself about your discomfort.

And in Run Your Best Life, I teach a body scan and discomfort scale where you actually evaluate the sensations in your body objectively and then we have a chart that tells you what to do. It’s an awesome tool. I use it on every single run. I used it on the 16-miler. Can’t recommend it enough.

Anyway, I digress. So in this training run, I started to feel discomfort kind of around mile eight. About halfway through. My feet were starting to hurt a lot, it felt like the little bones in my feet were just rubbing up against each other. It did not feel awesome.

Bottoms of my feet were sore. And I was like alright, it’s about a four out of 10. I can keep going. And my lower back was starting to hurt but I realized that was actually because I was leaning forward from my waist a lot. I had a backpack on and I had put more water in it than usual so I sort of corrected that and made sure that I was running more upright, and within a couple miles, that was gone.

But then around mile 10, my hip flexors started to hurt and that pain level was around a three, and I just said alright, let’s keep going. Then by mile 12, my feet were at a five. They were starting to feel a little ground beef, like hamburger. My legs were aching. They were so tired.

But I kept going. I was like, run 30, walk a minute, run 30, walk a minute. And the sensations were there but yet, my legs were still able to move. Amazing, right? So from that point on, things intensified a little bit discomfort wise, and what I did was I sort of went right into my brain.

I went real deep into my mind to focus on my thinking, on how I wanted to show up. And I must have said to myself at least 100 times, I’m not fucking around. I’m going to finish this run no matter what. My brain kept offering me the option to stop and walk very, very vociferously, if that’s the right word.

I guess if it’s in your brain it’s not vociferous because it’s not loud, so my brain was just very insistent. Let’s use that word. You could stop and walk now. It’s okay. You can still count the mileage, even if you walk it. And I was like yes, I can, but that’s not what I came here for.

So Amy and I, we set up a plan. At the end of every mile, starting with mile one, we walked one extra interval. So one of those run intervals we walked right through. We used it to take selfies and to refuel and so forth, but we started that right at mile one, and it was kind of a little bit of a brain trick.

I was like, alright, what’s going to break this up into 16 one-mile increments instead of one 16-mile increment? And I was like, let’s do something at the end of every mile. And it really worked. It kind of gave us something to look forward to. I was like okay, this can pull me through to the next mile, and it gave us like a little teeny bit of extra rest, which I think was helpful.

But seriously, despite that, my brain was very hard at work, offering me all the reasons that walking the last four miles was an extremely smart idea, and I rejected every single one of them. Because I had another thought that turned out to be a game-changer.

I started to think, these are the miles I came for. These last four miles. When everything hurts. These are the miles I wanted to run today. Because anyone can run the easy miles. Anyone can run the ones that don’t require mental gymnastics. Those miles are fun. They feel amazing. We love those miles.

When we think of running, that’s what we picture, right? When it gets hard though, we make it mean we should stop because it doesn’t feel good anymore, and that is a thought error, my friends. I’m going to say that again. The easy miles, they feel amazing. Anybody could run them. The problem is when those miles become difficult, we make it mean that we should stop because it doesn’t feel good anymore.

And here is the thing; if you train yourself to stop when it doesn’t feel good, you’ll never learn how to go farther. If you train yourself to keep going when it doesn’t feel good, two amazing things happen. First, you get way more out of that workout because training on tired legs builds your endurance like nobody’s business.

And the second thing is the work you have to do on your mind in those miles will change you. You will evolve, my friends. Because those miles will show you how powerful you are, and it will have an impact on your whole life. But the problem is you have to hang in there until the workout gets to that point of feeling like it’s impossible, until you can reap those rewards.

That’s where the gold is. If you quit early, if you’re like my legs are starting to hurt, I should probably stop, you’re never going to reap the rewards of the part of training that feels impossible. You won’t get that thought of I just did an impossible thing, I feel so proud. And you can’t do the hard miles until you get to the point where you just want to give up.

So that’s my new mantra. Not just in running, but my whole life. These are the miles I came for. I’m not here for the 10 miles or the eight miles where it all feels fine. I’m here for the last six where it was hard as fuck and I still did it. That is where the change happens. Change does not happen in the easy miles. They don’t challenge you, they don’t change you.

And if you’ve listened to my podcast for any period of time, you know that I am always trying to evolve my mind to be stronger. And that evolution doesn’t happen until you’re willing to face the discomfort and decide what to do about it.

And like I said, you can use this anywhere in your life. Not just in running. Not just in fitness. Wherever you have something hard to do, I want you to start saying these are the miles I came for. And now, for some of you, this might sound a little weird. You’re like, hey, I just want to run. My mind is just fine, thank you very much.

I get it. When I started running, I was not at all interested in how my brain was involved. I just wanted to lose weight. But over time, that shifted and now for me, running is such a source of deep thinking and evolution and I love working with women who feel the same way.

Women who aren’t happy with just the status quo, women who are not happy with just going about their daily lives and not making waves, not questioning anything. I like to work with women who want to have conversations about how we can level up our thinking so we can have whatever the F we want in our lives. That’s what lights me up. That is my jam.

And my Run Your Best Life members know it. Some of them are surprised I think when they get in the group. They’re like oh, I thought I was just going to run a half marathon. I’m like, we’re totally going to do that but now we’re going to go to work on all this other stuff too.

And we are really shifting hard in Run Your Best Life to focus on that mental work even more than before. Yes, we run. We run a lot and we love it. But I also want to create a community of mental warriors who run. Doesn’t that sound amazing?

Because women who think about their thoughts – so meta – women who think about their thought begin to realize there is no problem they cannot solve. There is nothing they cannot do if their minds are powerful. And I’m not saying you got to be super smart. Has nothing to do with smarts.

A powerful mind is simply one where you recognize your thinking is what determines how you feel and act. Because if there are things you want to do in your life and you’re struggling to make them happen, it’s not because you’re just lazy or uninspired or stupid. It’s because you haven’t gotten your thinking under control, and that, anybody can do that. It can change at any time.

So I want to give a shout-out to my Run Your Best Lifers who are working their asses off right now on their thinking. There have been some really amazing results in that group lately. I mean, Ragnar was kind of a game-changer for quite a few of our members, but overall, the half marathon training we’re doing right now, these women are just showing up.

They are bringing it and they’re getting some awesome results. And I got to get some of them on the podcast so you can hear about it, so stay tuned for that. So really, my question to you this week is what are the miles that you are here for? What do you want to get out of running? Are you in it to push your limits and evolve?

And if you are, you need to be in Run Your Best Life because holy shit, there’s so much evolution going on there. We take everything I teach on the podcast and we apply it. For example, I just did a class for them on how to set big scary goals and make them happen.

And buckle up, bitches, because 2020 is going to be insane for these women. So yeah, let me know what are the miles that you came for because I think that’s an important question for all of us to answer for ourselves.

Oh, and real quick, before I get into my latest obsession, I need to let you know, we are not going to be taking new members in Run Your Best Life after next month. The group is growing pretty fast and we’re going to close it down to new members so that we can make sure we’re helping everybody already in the group be the best runner they can be.

So we’re going to open it again some time next year. I honestly have no idea when that’s going to be, but we’re closing it next month for new members. So you got to join now or you’re not going to be able to get in for quite a while.

You can do that at runyourbestlife.com of course. I’m so excited to talk about my latest obsession I forgot to mention the website. Alright rebels, this week’s obsession is a recipe. It’s Andy’s pumpkin chili.

Oh my god, so first of all, I came home from that 16-mile run and I walk in the door and he is making pumpkin chili. He is pulling out a pumpkin from the oven that he just finished roasting and the crock pot is like, fired up. And then I went out and got a massage, I came back, there’s fucking pumpkin chili. It’s just ridiculous. So good.

So I don’t even know – honestly, I don’t even know what he put in it. What I’m going to do is get the recipe from him and we’re going to put it in the show notes because it is not overwhelmingly pumpkiny. It doesn’t taste like pumpkin spice, but it has a really nice texture to it and there was pumpkin and beans and ground turkey and it was really good.

I topped it with a little bit of cheddar cheese and sour cream and had a piece of cornbread with it. And it was like, the perfect fall meal. So Andy’s an amazing cook and so I’m just going to share his recipe for pumpkin chili with you guys and I hope you all make it.

Let me know if you do. Alright rebels, until next week. Get out there, run, let me know what are the miles that you came for 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.