Ep #47: One Mission, Two Journeys with Nicole DeBoom

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 47 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today I am speaking with none other than Nicole DeBoom. She’s the host of the Run This World Podcast and founder of the wildly popular Skirt Sports. And y’all know how I feel about Skirt Sports.

Now, Nicole is a former pro athlete turned entrepreneur, and she’s got some great stories about all of that in this interview. And she’s fairly dedicated her life to empowering women to get up and moving and feel great about themselves. And I’m pretty much convinced that Nicole is my long-lost soul sister. We just had so much fun in this interview. She’s funny and sweet and just an amazing human being. And since we pretty much both have the same mission in life, it was kind of amazing to spend this hour with her. And also, I have been a fan of Skirt Sports for pretty much ever. I wear them all the time. Worn them in several of my own photo shoots and I recommend them to everybody I know, so this was actually a total fan girl moment for me.

Now, before I start the interview, I do have a couple of very quick announcements. The first is that we are doing a joint Skirt Sports, Not Your Average Runner giveaway, and that includes a Skirt Sports product of your choice and signed copies of my first two books, plus a Not Your Average Runner swag bag. So that’s a pretty sweet deal. So here’s what you have to do to enter this contest: write a review for both of our podcasts on iTunes. That’s the Run This World Podcast and the Not Your Average Runner Podcast.

All you have to do is go to the iTunes app, search for both of them. When they come up you’ll see the link to review. It’s a little bit of a pain in the neck but you kind of get some – I mean, there’s a chance to get some pretty sweet swag out of it. So you might just want to subscribe to both of them while you’re at it. But for non-iPhone listeners, if you don’t use Apple Podcast, you can submit your review on Stitcher. And so we’re going to start tracking new reviews after September 3rd to be eligible. And if you’ve already written a review because you’re awesome, then share the episode on Instagram and tag both of us. That’s @notyouraveragerunner and @nicoledeboom, or Skirt Sports, or maybe just all three.

So we’re going to be looking at all of those places, we’re going to pick a random winner on or around September 30th. And then the other cool thing is by the way, you can shop Skirt Sports gear right now. You don’t have to wait until the giveaway, and if you use the code RTWpodcast15, you get 15% off.

Okay, and without further ado, here is my really fun chat with Nicole.

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Nicole: So here’s the thing like, we both have these really cool podcasts because we want to help people. Like, that I’ve done all kinds of research on you and I’ve talked to you already and I just know that that’s like, your main underlying mission.

Jill: Yeah, for sure, and I would say as we discussed last week, the same for you. Like, it’s so clear in everything that you do, the same thing is like, just getting women out there, being active, feeling good about themselves.

Nicole: Well, you know, I agree. So we are like, two peas in a pod. We should just combine our podcasts. Two peas in a podcast. Oh my gosh.

Jill: I love that, that’s adorable.

Nicole: But you know, I think what’s really interesting is that our journeys to health and fitness are very, very different. Yet we come to the same result at the end. So maybe we can like, start with rolling that out. I’d love to hear from your words, how did you become a person who is helping others gain greater health and fitness and self-love?

Jill: Because I think I had to gain it for myself first, and that was a long process. But once I did and I saw so many of my – just like, my girlfriends struggling with their own self-image, I was like, oh, I feel like somebody gave me the secret to the universe and I need to tell everyone.

Nicole: Oh, the secret to the universe. I so love that. But you know, so it sounds like there was a period of your life when you were not in a place of self-love and you were not – fitness and health were not a priority.

Jill: Yeah, for sure. Well, it’s interesting because I would have told you at any point in my life that fitness and health were a priority, but in reality I think I thought that they were the path to happiness. And so once I kind of realized that being thin was not going to make me happy, I was like, okay, now I need to figure out a different way. And that’s when taking care of myself, like self-care and fitness and health for the purpose of just treating myself well became the priority. And then that really – I mean, it’s so funny, I say that all the time, it’s like my tag line in my own podcast. I’m like, you guys, I’m going to tell you the secret to the universe. But I really think that’s it, right?

I spent probably until I was about age 40 believing that the secret to happiness was having the body that I wanted and I tried everything I could to get that, and then somehow I sort of figured out like, oh wait a minute, like, I would actually lose a bunch of weight and then I would still be miserable and I’m like, so that’s not – it took maybe five or six tries of losing a bunch of weight, not being happy, gaining it all back, to realize like, maybe there is a different way, I guess, and maybe I can be fit and maybe I can just learn to love my body as it is and stop worrying about some circumstance that’s going to make me happy. Does that make sense?

Nicole: Oh yeah, but what a mind-blowing and like, cruel realization, you know? You spend all this time seeking an end result with the idea that once I get there, something will change and I will be happy. And we can transfer this thinking into many different areas of life like our marriage or our kids. Once they become this I will be this, and how sad is it when you finally achieve this thing you’ve been gunning for and then you’re like, oh, not happy, didn’t change.

Jill: Yeah, it’s heartbreaking. And I think like, so many people – they’re constantly chasing these external factors, thinking, “Well, maybe if I just do this, maybe if I just do that,” and then every single time their heart breaks and then they have to try harder and harder and it’s like, oh, you don’t have to be rich or thin or famous or any of those things to be – or married – to be a happy human being. You can just be happy without any of that stuff.

Nicole: I’m going to give an example of a person I live with, which is my husband, Tim, who spent many years, decade plus, chasing the dream of winning the Hawaiian Ironman and believing that once he did that it would be the pinnacle and he would achieve greater happiness. And he did win and he didn’t necessarily achieve greater happiness. What happened was he said, “Now I have to win again.” And he did. But then when you win twice, what next? Well, now I have to win again, and he didn’t. And that’s when the real cracks start to form and it cracks you open and then you realize, now I have to do the work.

Jill: The work is what we’re avoiding. We’re trying to fast track it, right? Yeah, I think that’s it. It’s like, we think that if – instead of doing the work, I’m just going to win an Ironman. I’m just going to win the Ironman, Hawaii, Kona, and that’ll make me happy, like, it can fast track me, and that’s just not how any of that works.

Nicole: Well, and here I am rooting him along, gosh, I hope he wins the Ironman because then he’ll finally be happy, which means I’ll be happier. How horrible is that? Now you’re relying on all these things that you’re not even controlling at all.

Jill: Yeah, it’s like you’re outsourcing your happiness to something or someone that’s completely unqualified to do the job.

Nicole: Totally. And it’s only once we get older somehow and gain perspective that – and maybe it’s not older, but like, more life experiences that add up to give us the perspective to know that that’s not the right approach. Like, I don’t think I could be having this conversation with you when I was like, 26. I could understand it, like, inside my own head I could understand that that makes sense, but still there would be this, no, I’ve got to push to do this because then this. Like, you actually have to go through some pain to come out the other side a lot of the time.

Jill: Yeah, I could not agree more.

Nicole: So I want to go back a little bit and actually like, maybe talk – like, I originally started with maybe talk a little about your physical journey to starting running and you know, what age you were and all that, and then maybe I’ll share mine because I do think it’s really interesting this idea that here we are with the same common goal later in life, yet we got here in very different ways.

Jill: Yeah, actually I love that because for me, running was always some sort of punishment. I started running in my – I played sports in high school, I played tennis and she would make us do laps around the course and I hated it, I was just like, this is the worst thing ever, but then somewhere along the line, like in my late 20s I thought, “Okay, I’m actually just going to start running just to run because that’s going to help me lose weight,” right? That was like, the refrain in my mind all the time. So I would lose a few pounds and then gain it back, and I never really loved running because I associated it with sort of a punishment, I guess.

And somewhere along the line, I don’t know how, I can’t really pinpoint the shift, but I started to enjoy running for the sake of running because I was doing it on my own terms. I wasn’t trying to run a 5K without stopping or I wasn’t trying to run an eight-minute mile or anything like that. I just was like, actually I feel pretty good after I go running so maybe I’m going to do this a little more often, but I’m going to do it in a way that feels good to me. And so I think that’s how it evolved for me. It started out as a way to beat myself up or a way to punish myself thin, and ended up being something that I loved, but I had to like, meet myself in the middle and not expect that I was going to be an ultra-athlete or anything like that. And once I sort of took that requirement away that I could just like, actually do it for fun and enjoyment and fitness and self-care rather than as a way to lose weight, it became just like, really amazing. And it became therapy, it became like, something that like, I almost needed it like coffee. It’s just like, part of how I would prepare myself for the day and prepare my mind and all of that. But I’m curious, so I’d love to hear how your journey to the same place has been different because I suspect it’s quite different.

Nicole: Very different. But what’s really interesting too is that what you’re kind of hitting on is this concept of creating new habits and they manifest as like, physical activities or things you do throughout a day, but they start in your brain, as shifting the way you think about something, right?

Jill: Yeah, for sure.

Nicole: And so for me too, health and fitness is a habit. It’s a priority, and so because I’ve decided that it will be a priority in my life forever, it’s become a habit. And for me, habits are like – they’re so powerful because when you talk about setting yourself up for the day, it’s about making your list or however you do it, right? Looking at your calendar, and for me, it’s a constant shifting of priorities. And some sort of health and fitness is almost always on the list. Some days it’s not, but it’s on the list, it just depends on what level of priority I give it that day, you know? So interesting. But my road is very different because I have always been an athlete. Like, not just someone who does activities or plays sports sometimes or whatever recreationally is healthy. I have always been an athlete.

Since I was very young, my mom and dad put me in all kinds of sports. I tried every sport. All kinds of good and bad memories of sports, like, anything with a ball, not so good. Like, coordination, not so awesome. I mean, I remember dancing like at my friend’s house in maybe like, sixth grade, and her mom was like, “You really can’t dance, can you?” And I remember that, so it stuck with me like, I’m awkward, I’m uncoordinated, I can’t dance. But I sure could swim and I sure could run. And anything that required a ball but that part might not have been great, but man, I could run up and down the field like crazy, you know? So I gravitated into swimming and running very young. I was a really good runner in junior high and in high school I ended up choosing swimming over running. I swam Olympic trials in high school when I was a sophomore at 16 years old. I was recruited to college, you know, I was a swimmer. So if you would ask me what do you do at that period of time in my life, I swam. I was also a student but I swam. That was my identity. Isn’t that interesting?

Jill: Yeah, for sure.

Nicole: But what happened to me is that I also went through all kinds of ups and down along the journey just my body was changing, puberty, you know, I hit plateaus, I never got much faster after I got into college. I wasn’t going to swim in the Olympics so after college I was sort of despondent, I didn’t know what I was going to do. And just started dabbling in temp work and all kinds of stuff that wasn’t really necessarily putting me in a positive place to go forward in life. So I actually did this really cool exercise, this is bringing me all the way back to this idea of habit and priority. When my mom noticed that I was – I complained to her that I just didn’t know what I wanted to do and I was sort of starting to feel despondent a little bit and she I think might have seen that this could lead to something like depression or something like that, which I don’t even know if that was a buzz word or a topic that people talked much about in the mid-90s, but I went to see a counselor. Like, a social worker, I think, and she said “Well, what you’re experiencing is totally normal. Like, when people don’t have something that they wake up and look forward to, you could definitely be starting to display signs of depression.

And so what I encourage you to do is a certain exercise that may help you find something that you may want to pursue to give you that purpose when you wake up every day.” And so she said, “I want you to go home and write down all the times in your life” – at that point my 22-year-old life – “where you have felt the most alive. The times when you have been happiest, and I want you to just write them all down, don’t think about it. And then let it sit and then come back to it and see if there’s a theme or something that kind of rises to the surface there.” And so I did this exercise and when I looked at my list, I realized that the times in my life were the times when I felt the most fit or healthy. And I realized right then that those were the times when my mind was also the clearest, and so it hit me and what has now become kind of a founding principle of my life is that when my body is fit and strong, my mind is fitter and stronger too. And I just realized at 22 years old that no matter what I did in my life, I had no idea I would become a professional triathlete one day, but whatever I did in my life I would need to make sure that I carved out time for fitness so that I could maintain that mind body health. Isn’t that interesting?

Jill: It really is and I love – just so much about this whole story that I love. But it amazes me, so for you fitness is like a founding principle and it’s not about having a certain body or having a certain accomplishment of being a professional triathlete, which, damn, that’s amazing. But it sounds to me like it’s more about like, that’s how you take care of yourself and then the sort of side effects of having that be a founding principle are having the body that you want, having a career as a professional triathlete, like all of these things are – they’re not things to chase, they’re things that are sort of a byproduct of making fitness a founding principle. Am I understanding that correctly?

Nicole: Yeah, you are but you know, it doesn’t mean I didn’t go through the whole body image thing.

Jill: I think you can’t be a woman in this day and age without having some sort of body image.

Nicole: Well yeah, of course, and so you know, I did struggle a lot with my body and how I looked at myself and how I thought others saw me. At this point in my life I don’t care anymore. It’s not important to me. But the founding principle of fitness definitely helped me put together that your mind and body are connected. And I would always notice that when I let myself get out of shape, I would start to have more negative thoughts in general. And you don’t need to be winning an Ironman to be fit either. Like, I am happy doing like, hiking and yoga five days a week. Five activities a week now. It’s different than when I was working out 12 workouts a week and 30, 40 hours. So but it’s still a priority.

Jill: Yeah, I love that. It’s like, okay, these are the things I do every day for myself. I brush my teeth, I take a shower, I get some activity, some sort of – like, they’re the minimum baseline things that you need to do on a routine basis to keep your mind and body where you want it to be. Like, I think when you make it a non-negotiable like that, it’s so powerful because then it’s not like I’m doing this to get to a goal. It’s like, no, this is maintenance, this is just how I feel my best. So you know, it’s like the food that we eat too, right? I notice that if I eat nothing but cake and ice cream, I don’t feel very good. My mind doesn’t work as well, my body doesn’t work as well. But when I make choices of lots of fruits and vegetables for me, I feel amazing when I eat like that. And so it’s just like, okay, that’s a founding principle for me is like, don’t put crap in your body.

Nicole: I love that. And you made a really good point, which was you make your choices. And so we make our choice. We eat this or we don’t eat this. we workout or we don’t. We can be happy or we can be miserable. Like, that’s a really powerful one. Do you really believe that you can choose whether you decide to be happy or not?

Jill: 100%.

Nicole: How does someone choose that? there’s people listening who are like, I’m totally miserable, I don’t believe you.

Jill: So well, here’s the thing. I teach this a lot in my own podcast is that I had this deep belief that in our lives, our thoughts, our thinking, our brain is the only thing that we have 100% control over. We really don’t have control over what other people do, what happens in the world, the weather, we don’t really have all that much control over our bodies. We can influence what happens but like, we can get sick, we don’t always have control over that. But we do have control about how we think about everything, and I believe that there are circumstances in the world, the facts of our lives, the data, so to speak. We have thoughts and opinions about that, and those thoughts create emotions and everything we do, every action that we take is a result of a feeling or emotion that we have in our body. And so you know, if you’re looking to change a habit, it’s as simple as thinking something that creates a feeling of, I don’t know, motivation or excitement or determination that drives the action of keeping that habit and that habit creates our results.

And so like, we can choose whatever we want to think to create the results that we want in our life. Now, most people think, “Oh, I can’t really choose my thoughts, I’m just wired to think this way.” Or, “I don’t know, I just woke up in a bad mood,” and I think most of us are not really aware of what our thoughts are most of the time. They’re there, we’re just not really paying attention either because we’ve thought them so much, we’ve been taught to think that way since we were a little kid or something like that, and so it’s become so habitual that we don’t even notice it’s in there. Or, because our thoughts are so like, painful or negative that we’re like, I’ll be damned if I’m going to listen to that thought. And so we do things like Facebook-ing or overeating or even like, some people over-exercise in a way to like, quiet the negative voices instead of saying, hey, I don’t actually want to think that way, let me just decide how I want to think on purpose so that I can feel better.

Nicole: I love this. and I know you sometimes refer to it was your inner mean girl.

Jill: Yes.

Nicole: I just totally understand that because of course, the movie, Mean Girls is like, super – it’s a comedy but it’s so real so you just imagine those girls, but they’re in your own head and you’re actually them in your head to yourself.

Jill: Yeah, exactly. And we don’t even realize that it’s a voice in our head. We just think, oh, like, when we think the thought, “I’m so slow,” and this happens a lot with the runners that I work with. They’re just like, “Oh, I’m just a slow runner.” I’m like, no, no, that’s your opinion. The facts are this is the pace that you ran. You can decide whether that’s fast or slow or medium or you can think whatever the hell you want about it. It’s the inner mean girl, like that thought that we have about the facts of our lives that – and the inner mean girl is basically a combination of every girl you ever knew in high school, your mom, your sisters, the people that you see on social media, like that inner mean girl is basically just all of the stuff that you’ve been exposed to over years and years and years and internalized and it’s all optional. Like, and once you really get that, it’s all optional, it’s so powerful and so freeing but like, until you get to that point, it feels like you’re being victimized by your own mind.

Nicole: Yeah. So true. Is there – since you’re a coach and a life coach, you know, you take a holistic approach, is there a somewhat common sort of mean girl stream of consciousness or mean girl topic that people seem to, I don’t know, tell themselves more often than others?

Jill: Yeah, I think with women, there’s always some body flaw, right? It’s oh, I have cellulite, my arms are too fat, my stomach’s too fat, my neck is too – like, whatever it is, there’s always – the inner mean girl always picks out the “problem areas,” which drives me bananas because giving our – putting a standard of excellence on how someone’s body looks I think is so ridiculous because it’s completely arbitrary and what’s super perfect in one society is the opposite of perfect in another society and so I think the inner mean girl is always some version of you’re not good enough, you don’t measure up. And a lot of times it comes up with body flaws. With my runners it very often comes up with everybody else is faster than me or everybody else can run farther than me or running is so easy for everyone else and not for me. Like, no, running is hard for everybody. That’s just how it is. But yeah, the inner mean girl’s always some version of you’re not good enough, you’re not worthy.

Nicole: Yeah. You know, and it’s also tied into how we label ourselves. It’s like, not only good enough but there’s like, a word we put for who we are, what we look like. It’s usually what we look like. Labels. Why do we label ourselves?

Jill: No. I don’t think it’s helpful.

Nicole: No, it’s not. It’s not but even, you know – like, you have a series of books that are awesome. Not Your Average Runner, Not Your Average 5K, Not Your Average Half Marathon, am I missing any?

Jill: I don’t think so. I think that’s it.

Nicole: There might be a few more in your head, but like, you know, to get to that point you had labeled yourself as like, I’m fat. But I’m still going to be a runner, so I’m going to be a fat runner. So is that a label? Is that – and is it okay to have that label if you don’t have a negative emotion attached to it? You’re just describing it like a kid would say that person – they would say their skin color, that person is peach, that person is tan, you know? It’s just what it is. There’s no emotion attached to it. So are labels dangerous only when there’s emotion?

Jill: I think you just hit the nail on the head is that when there’s an emotion attached to it, that’s when it can get tricky, right? We can label something just based on its circumstantial characteristics, and it’s not until we have a thought and we make it mean something that it has any value or that it becomes a problem. And so I think when you make it mean – if I call myself a fat runner, which I do, and like, I don’t make it mean anything about me except that I’m awesome because you know, it’s physically harder to run when you’re carrying extra weight, and so I’m like, well, that just makes me more of a badass. This is what I choose to make it mean. So to me, saying, “Oh, I’m a fat runner,” has nothing to do with me not being good enough, me not being worthy or anything like that. It’s just like, oh, this is a – like, I have brown hair, I’m five foot four inches tall, I’m fat, like, I just look at that as like, information about me, but a lot of us use it as a reason to beat ourselves up, and I think that’s where the labels can get tricky. I mean, what has your experience been with – because you work with a pretty wide population of runners, of athletes with Skirt Sports, so what has your experience been?

Nicole: Exactly the same. I mean, it’s – everyone’s on their own journeys. Some people have found their way to places of peace and self-love and acceptance and acceptance not only of like, what they look like but like, the shit you’ve done in the past. Like, it might still be hidden so you’re not walking around with a sign on your chest that’s like, I cheated on my husband and blah, blah, blah. You’re just – it’s who you were, you’ve done it, and you’ve moved on. You’ve been – gone through a process to get yourself to a good point, right? But there’s a lot of people who are in that place of seeking happiness. They’re finding it in bits and pieces and they’re in a really good community of supportive women who can share their own trials and tribulations, and they’ve also, in my world, already stumbled upon health and fitness. So that to me is a really positive first step because we know that, you know, your body creates happy chemicals when you move it. And so that alone, the fact that they are starting to make it a priority or surrounding themselves by other people who do, which is a huge step in the right direction, you know, that’s going to get them potentially into a better place as they gain more life experiences.

I have a cool story about a woman who has been on the podcast before, her name is Kara Burns. I met her through our non-profit called Running Start, so we help women who have barriers to health and fitness regain their sense of self and confidence and courage and strength and all those things that fitness provides you through training for their first 5K. And Kara had recently been released from federal prison for selling drugs, and she was a former meth addict and had all kinds of problems. And she came into our very first meeting and she almost bailed because she looked around the room and she thought I’ve made a huge mistake, these are not my people. I don’t think I have anything in common with them, as soon as I can I’m going to bolt. And she sat through our icebreaker, which is like, incredibly emotional. It’s when people share why they’re here, and she started to listen to the stories of other women as they went around the room, and some of them said, “I have lost who I am and along the way I’ve gained 100 pounds,” and that might have been a story. “I have lost a child.” “I have a child with severe developmental issues.” “I have been through breast cancer.”

Like, she started to realize that yeah, these women might not have been to prison, but they’ve all been through something. And we’re all here because we want to move our lives forward. And so when it got to her, she explained to everyone that she was going to leave until she started to listen to their stories and then she realized that you are my people and I am meant to be here, and my goal in my life moving forward is to make positive choices and positive connections, and I feel that I’m doing that right now. And here’s the thing, Kara went on not only to finish the 5K but to run a marathon just a few months later. Now she sits on the board of that non-profit.

Jill: Oh my god.

Nicole: I know, my whole point of even sharing her story is that you mentioned like, the people I work with and who I’m surrounded by my community with Skirt Sports is it’s a community. That’s the whole point is that we’re not alone in the world. If we were meant to be alone, like, this world wouldn’t exist. We wouldn’t be able to have babies, you know? Like, we are meant to be around other human beings. And you have a choice with who you surround yourself by. So if that person does not share some of your important say, founding principles, it might be time to let that relationship go and move on and find people who do share your priorities.

Jill: Right. Well, what – and I don’t know who it is that says it, but there’s – I keep seeing it. You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with.

Nicole: I like that.

Jill: And so because I think a lot of our belief systems that we have, especially as women in our 20s and 30s are a result of the people that we spend time with in our teen years when our brains are really starting to form patterns. And so we kind of end up with this belief system that’s kind of been handed to us. We don’t really know that it’s optional and if you keep surrounding yourself with people that have those belief systems, like, they’re just going to get more and more ingrained, and it doesn’t really – you can’t really change that until you see an example of what’s possible. So it sounds to me like the woman that you were just telling me about like, wasn’t able to see it until other people spoke up. And if those people hadn’t spoken up, if you hadn’t had them do that exercise, who knows where she’d be right now?

But it’s such a great demonstration of how sharing your experiences with other people and telling your truth basically, like, hey, this is me, I’ve done some things that I’m not super proud of but it’s okay, everybody’s the same, like, that’s just so – it’s just so powerful to see other people that have gone through what you’ve gone through and either risen beyond it or been able to make those changes because then you see it as like, if they can do it then maybe I can do it. And that’s like – just that possibility, that shift in the thinking of this is my lot in life, this is as far as I can go to oh hey, maybe something different is possible for me is like, the biggest gift you can give somebody.

Nicole: Yes, oh my gosh. It’s like eyes wide open, mind wide open. And that’s – there is chemical changes that happen in your body when you start to focus on having a positive mindset. You become more open. You stand taller. Your shoulders – literal physical changes versus when you have negative thoughts and you’re shrinking and you’re closed.

Jill: For sure, for sure.

Nicole: We’re talking about relationships. Actually, we’re all about women, right? We’re going to come back to women, but I think we should talk about men for a minute because you were married when you started this journey into running and eventually like, triathlon. And he was like an Ironman triathlete, wasn’t he? And I didn’t even ask you if like, this is off the – if we can talk about this. But like, I feel like it’s important to understand like, was he part of your journey or was he not able to adjust to the new person you were becoming?

Jill: Yeah, so that’s an interesting question. And I’d started running before I met him and I mean, I got married pretty late in my 30s and so I’d been running for a while, and one of the things that I thought would make me happy in addition to being thin was being married. And so when we met, I had – I’d been running off and on for maybe six years or so, seven years, and he was a runner and a triathlete at the time and so I thought, oh, this is so great. Like, he’s going to keep me motivated. But of course, we would go out – I tell this story and I laugh about it now. At the time it was really humiliating, but we would go out to work out together and I would be running and he would be walking next to me. Like, that’s just – I was just like, can you just not do that? Can you at least pretend to run even though you’re going really slow? Because he would walk – his walking pace was my running pace. And so – but honestly, he’s actually an amazing, amazing human being and was super supportive of all the changes that I made. So as I started running more, as I did triathlons and half marathons and so forth, as I started my first business, he was 100% on board with that and I just think as I grew with the person, I realized that he and I were not really a great match and it took – it was hard, and I don’t think I could have done it until I got to the point where I realized I can choose how I want to look at this. I can choose my future and I realized like, for both of our sake I needed to choose differently.

I needed to choose to leave the marriage so that he could maybe find somebody that was better suited to him so that I could certainly do the same. So there’s no animosity whatsoever, he’s been a very supportive person. But yeah, it was weird being a woman, almost 300 pounds, with a husband who’s an Ironman triathlete. Now, he wasn’t winning Kona but still like, just being around somebody with that level of commitment to their fitness, it was a blessing and curse because many times I felt like – I felt really inadequate because he would just like, get up and workout for three hours a day, four hours a day, sometimes on the weekend he’d be like, “I’m going to go for a run,” and he’d come back 30 miles later and he’d be like, okay. Who does that? And then I would have been sitting on the couch all day like, eating ice cream, watching Netflix. So there I think – and he never judged me. He never ever said a word like, “Hey, maybe you want to come with me or maybe you want to do this.” Like, he knew it was my internal journey that I needed to figure out on my own but yeah, it was kind of weird.

Although here’s what’s so interesting; he had foundational principles just like you do and one of them was that his brain and body work better – so similar to what you said. Just like, I need to move my body every day so that I can function, so that I can feel good as a person. And I said to him one day, “You know, it’s just so easy for you because you just always wake up ready to go the gym,” and he looked at me, he’s like, “No, I don’t. I have to argue with myself every single day just like you.” And that blew my mind.

Nicole: So – wow, okay, and that comes into like, comparing, right? We’re comparing ourselves to like, what’s really going on in someone else’s head, but you know, when you met him, where were you – he knew who you were when you met him, so it wasn’t like you said it was hard to be married to somebody who was like him when you were like, close to 300 pounds, but it wasn’t – I mean, had you put on tons of weight after you met him or something?

Jill: I put on – trying to think – I probably put on about 50 or 60 pounds after we met. I was heavy when we met, so I never felt like he didn’t find me attractive, I never felt like he didn’t love me and appreciate me or any of that. Like, it was all my own internal inner mean girl stuff that would say terrible stuff. I never got anything from him that I felt like, he doesn’t appreciate me, he doesn’t love me, he doesn’t find me attractive. And it was probably because I was overweight when we met. And so we met and we got married a couple years later and shortly after we got married my mom was diagnosed with ALS and that really – I just did not have the coping mechanisms to deal with that so I ate and I ate. I gained – I probably gained 50 or 60 pounds just in the first year after we were married because I was dealing with my mom and my dad had passed away several years before that, so my mom was my only remaining parent and I had a complicated relationship with her and so I ate to deal with it and I mean, I felt so physically awful and I think I tried to make him the bad guy. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t because he wasn’t a bad guy.

Nicole: Isn’t that horrible?

Jill: I know. But like yeah, I did see in him all of these things that he was doing that I wanted to be doing and couldn’t seem to get myself to do and so I think that was the struggle is not comparing myself to him but like, making myself feel worse because he was doing what I wanted to do and I wasn’t. He was delightful.

Nicole: So we’ve dissected your first marriage and I’m happy to know that you’re on good terms and all that and you grew through it, you know? And that’s an incredible thing.

Jill: Yeah. I think it’s just – it was failing forward, I guess. Because I like to think of everything that goes wrong in my life or every mistake, every choice I make in my life that doesn’t end up I want it to as like, okay, I learned from that, won’t do that again. And so that’s kind of how I look at my entire marriage. Everything that I’ve done in my life so far, I mean, do you kind of take that approach to your life as well? Because I think you must.

Nicole: Well yeah, so I mean what really just hit me right now when you talked about forward was I think my biggest fear in life is stagnation. Like, I don’t necessarily care if I’m busting down new barriers or something, being super aggressive in my life with tackling goals and all that. I just don’t want to stagnate and I definitely don’t want to go backwards. And I’m talking about both like, personal development and physical, that’s kind of – I’m 46. I mean, I was a pro athlete, I will never be as fit as I was, so chasing down athletic pursuits has gained a new meaning, but I’m just talking about in life. Feeling like I’m not excited about something, it’s not a good feeling to wake up for me and just be like, I don’t know what I’m doing. And it takes me back to when I was 22 and I was feeling despondent. And so I don’t get there often because I find interesting – I don’t know, I find joy in little things when I’m feeling that stagnation coming on and I push and prod other areas of my life to keep it moving forward.

So that idea of failing forward, I think that’s really important because at least you’re not stagnating. That’s how I look at it. And when I do need to kind of sit in a place that’s uncomfortable for a period of time and I’m not talking about like, meditating for three minutes like I do sometimes on this one app I have. I’m talking about like, sitting in a place where I don’t know what I’m really doing for weeks or a month or however long, like, that’s hard for me.

Jill: Yeah, I can imagine. I can totally imagine. Well because like, literally you move your body physically every single day, right? It’s like, sort of a metaphor for life. Like, I’m constantly moving physically to run from point A to point B or swim from point A to point B, and I think athletes have that sort of innate desire to constantly be moving their life forward as well.

Nicole: Yeah, I think you’re right.

Jill: And maybe not even forward. Sideways or just moving in some direction like sitting still is not comfortable. It’s really not.

Nicole: It’s really hard, and that’s why you get me five years ago, 10 years ago, for sure, I could not do yoga to save my life because I felt like it was just sitting around stretching. And I wasn’t like, my heart rate wasn’t that high and now there’s something about it that’s calling to me, and it does feel like a workout. I would have done it in the past and not counted it as a workout and still had to go out and workout. Isn’t that hilarious?

Jill: Oh my gosh.

Nicole: Yeah, but now I am perfectly – I understand. I’ve reached a point where I realize like, movement in tiny little ways sometimes can be even more beneficial than busting your ass up a steep hill.

Jill: For sure. Because I feel like busting your ass up a steep hill is sort of a blunt instrument whereas yoga is like a finely tuned machine.

Nicole: Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. So we get a healthy dose of both. You know, I want to talk – we’ve been rocking this, we could talk for like, three hours I think. When you and I first had our first conversation, you mentioned this massive lofty goal that is out there in the universe and I was like, how are you going to do that? Which is, I want to get one million women running. Tell me about that.

Jill: I’m like, oh crap.

Nicole: Because there’s already a million women running, but like, how are you doing this? What does this mean to you in a different way than like, the facts and statistics that yes, there are that many women out there running, but how are you translating this?

Jill: Well I mean, actually I want to get one million more women up and running, and maybe it’s like – because obviously there’s already millions and millions of women that run, but I want to create one million new runners, and particularly from the population of people that think, “Oh yeah, it would be great to run a 5K but that’s just not for me, that’s something I can’t do, I’m not good enough for that. I’m too fat, I’m too old, I’m too slow, I’m too whatever,” like, those are the people that I want to convert to running. And not against their will, obviously, but I just think that like, running is like – and for some people maybe it’s not running.

Maybe it’s swimming, maybe it’s cycling, but my gig is running and I feel like it helps you – it builds your confidence, it helps you love your body, it helps you respect your body. It helps you have a kickass life. And so I just feel like everybody deserves to have that and so I want to – I’ve just kind of set this crazy goal of like, okay, I’m going to help a million women start running and get all these things for themselves. So my team and I are trying to figure out how we’re going to measure this because I don’t know if I can take on a million clients, although hey, that would be an amazing goal as well, but it’s going to be through the podcast, it’s going to be through people who read my book, it’s going to be through people – like, I’ve got free training plans on my website that you can download. You don’t ever have to coach with me at all. You can just download the free training plan and do that. So that’s how I’m going to start measuring this I think, but the feeling that I want, it’s that whole thing that we’ve been talking about. Like, a reason to wake up in the morning and be excited that I’m making a contribution, that I’m sort of paying back all the people that helped me get to the point that I’m at. I want to, I guess pay it forward, to use the term that we used before. Yeah, so it’s a feeling of getting a million women up and running kind of motivates me to show up every single day and just help as many people as possible.

Nicole: I love that. So we’re going to get one million more women running. And I’m going to help you. I don’t know how but we’re going to figure it out. This is so cool. You’ve written a bunch of Not Your Average Runner books so we’re going to make sure there’s links in my podcast. This is a dual podcast. You’re going to post it too. It’s really long for yours.

Jill: It’s actually totally cool. It’s totally cool. Mine are like, all different lengths, but one thing we didn’t talk about though is like, why have you started Skirt Sports? Why – because I actually don’t know the full story. What was behind that? What drove you to start that experience or start that endeavor and what kind of drives you forward?

Nicole: Well, it is an experience after all. Hey, you getting clothing that fits your body and it is a whole new life. Boom. It’s amazing. Well, you know, it’s funny, when I was a professional triathlete, I raced from 1999 until 2005, and I – all through my entire early adult life experienced these feelings of leaving my femininity, like, the girly side of me, just a part of my personality that I appreciated and thought was important. I would always sort of leave it on the sideline when I went out to race or train because the gear that was available at that time in the world – it’s very different now 14 years later, believe it or not – but it was very unisex. It was not flattering, it didn’t fit my body. Everything rode up, there was chaffing, even when you’re super in shape and you don’t have as much jiggle.

Still, nothing fit well. And I specifically remember coming out of the water at a race peeling off my wetsuit, and I had on kind of this unitard tri suit that was like, just blue. There was nothing cute about it, and this little boy was standing with him mom like, amongst this channel of people cheering and I hear him go, “Mommy, is that a boy or a girl?” And in my head I was like, yeah, that’s not going to help me today. Because there is – not everyone adheres to this mindset, but for me when you look good, you feel good, when you feel good you perform better. And looking good doesn’t need to be about that like, smirking, sexy vibe that the millennials are putting out there. It can just be feeling good, looking good for yourself, however that manifests. So I came up with an idea actually on a workout, which is when I have my best ideas always. I was on a run and I looked at my reflection in a window, which I often do and did, and I was like, oh my gosh, I look like a boy. That boy was right. Child was right. I look like a boy and I am just so uninspired. And I was wearing like, all black men’s clothing because you know, you’re just wearing what your sponsors give you and all that and I just – the word pretty hit me hard and I was like, why can’t I look pretty out here? What is so wrong with that? Is there something wrong with that? And why isn’t anyone doing this? Why is all clothing for athletes ugly and it doesn’t fit and it’s designed by men for women? They don’t know anything about our bodies.

So I ran home that day and I started scribbling notes and what came out of that was this thought: I am going to start a women’s clothing company that helps you look good and feel good on the race course. And that was it. And I narrowed it down to starting with one piece, which was a fitness skirt or a running skirt mainly because it had never been done before. It was only in tennis or golf where athletes are wearing skirts, and I just literally became obsessed. So this was at the end of 2003 and I spent about nine months dreaming and working and learning and my mind was buzzing in ways that it hadn’t buzzed before and I was researching and having meetings and meeting with like, the chambers of commerce, anyone who would talk to me who touched the world of clothing and fitness I met with. And I just started to develop a plan and created prototypes and I just started learning an entirely new skill, which was how to start a clothing company. And you know what’s funny is I have along the way just used so many things I’ve gotten in sport, but I always look back on it and I’m like, it was like, the aid station approach to starting a business. Like, you know there’s an end 26 miles away, say you’re doing a marathon, but you really can only think about the next three miles at a time.

And at each mile marker you’re going to get a drink of water, hydration and stop for a second and make sure you didn’t go off course. And that’s what I did the whole way, and I just – if doors were open I went through them, if doors were closing I didn’t try too hard to bang them down. Like, I took things as signs and in 2004, in September of 2004, I wore a little prototype of this first ever running skirt during the Ironman Wisconsin and I won the race wearing it and it was like, boom. Can you write a better script? No. Thank you, I’m starting this company.

Jill: Oh my god, that is mind-blowing. I did not know that. Like…

Nicole: It happened. It’s real. So we came out swinging and we’ve been around 14 years. September 12th will be our 14th birthday.

Jill: Aww, happy birthday. So amazing.

Nicole: Yeah, it’s a baby. I mean, and it shook my life up, down, and all around and really tested my marriage and I’m like – Tim and I both admit, we’re just completely shocked that we’re still married. And you know, this – we had to get through some tough stuff because when you start a new career, the other person in your relationship has to adjust to what that means, and it can just be scheduling but it can also be how – what your priorities become. They’re not as much on the other person anymore.

Jill: Yeah, for sure.

Nicole: So yeah, it’s been incredible and like, over all this time I mean, I’m shocked that we’re still in business because we’ve been thrown all kinds of wrenches and I’ve had to think like MacGyver a lot. Like, fix it with a piece of gum and tape, you know, whatever it takes, make it happen. But I have never believed that it wouldn’t succeed, and that I think is the foundation for anything going forward. If you waiver in your belief, especially with something as hard and risky as a startup business, you should probably consider stopping or changing because you can’t waiver. If you waiver, you’re done. It’s not that important.

Jill: You literally have to believe it into existence. With the power of your thinking, this is going to happen, I’m going to make this happen, there’s no way it won’t succeed, like, keep thinking those thoughts and you’re going to create it. But if you’re wavering, if you’re thinking, I don’t know if I can do this – because when you were telling this story, not once did I hear you say, you know, I really wondered if it was the best idea, I wondered if I could make it happen. Like, you were like no, I just decided and with no experience whatsoever in the clothing industry, you just created it. I’m like, that is brilliant. That is just…

Nicole: I would never do it again.

Jill: You didn’t know.

Nicole: I am so glad I am here but I would never do it again. And you hit on something that I call willing it to happen. It’s funny, I have a couple quick willing it to happen stories, but when I was 23 years old, I was sitting on an airplane going to Cancun, Mexico for the World Championships as an age group in triathlon and I watched all of these incredibly gorgeous athletes walk in the plane and I finally saw one and I was like, that’s the one. He will sit next to me. He will sit next to me and I willed it to happen and sure enough he did and it’s my husband, Tim DeBoom. Sat next to him on an airplane. I willed it to happen.

Jill: I love that so much. Yeah, because really, I think when we believe something, we want something badly enough and we don’t have a lot of interfering like, BS stuff that makes us do things that interfere with that, when we just like, want something from that pure place of yes, this is going to happen, it does come to us. It really, really does.

Nicole: It does, and maybe it’s just that your energy is open to it. It was going to happen anyway but you wouldn’t have noticed it. In business I’ve been tested in so many ways but there was a tough period during the recession in 2008 and we were manufacturing in Taiwan, which is an incredible country to manufacture small batch active wear because they have incredible fabrics there and they work with smaller companies and most of the factories are women-run. But we were working with an agent at the time, but what’s interesting is now I know better, I thought he was the factory. But it turns out he was like an agent to a bunch of factories, and that wasn’t clear.

And so we sent him a bunch of money for a down payment for a batch of product that was slated to go into REI and Title Nine and a bunch of other big box stores who if you miss a delivery, you’re done. You don’t get another chance. So we wire him half of our down payment and we didn’t hear from him. And we’d already done some work with him so it wasn’t like this off the cuff we’re just going to send you a couple hundred thousand dollars. Yes, that much. We had history. Then we didn’t hear from him and we didn’t hear from him, and he’s in Taiwan. And how – I mean, you can only Skype someone every three minutes for so many days or weeks so finally I talked to a friend of mine who had a company at the time called Golight and I sat down with one of their founders and she said to me, “You know Nicole, I really feel for you. I don’t know what to tell you to do but you’re going to have to will it to happen.” And I took that and I thought, there is no answer. The only answer is what I decide to do. And so I called up my dad who was like, in his mid-60s at the time. He does our financial work with the company and I said, “Hey dad, we need to go to Taiwan. We got a little problem over there and I want you to come and deal with it with me,” and he said, “Okay, when?” And I said, “Tomorrow, I just bought you a ticket. We’re going.”

And we literally flew to Taiwan, we through some email chain found one of the factories, we got there, we discussed and negotiated directly with the factory and we willed it to happen and we got our product and we didn’t miss our deliveries and we’re still here. I mean, those are the things that hit you throughout these endeavors that we choose to do in our lives, and if you’re not up to the task or you haven’t learned the skills of hard work and persistence and like, making it happen, you’re not going to get there.

Jill: Yeah, I love that story because it’s just like, alright, how badly do I want this and what am I willing to do to make this happen?

Nicole: We could have sat on Skype for like, three more months and then finally been like, oh man, like, so there are moments in your life when you realize now is the time to act. Now.

Jill: I love that, and I think that you can apply that to sport so easily because there’s so many times when you’re training for a race like a half marathon or a marathon or an Ironman distance triathlon and there’s a lot of things like that that come up in the middle of your training and you have to decide, am I going to keep moving forward or am I going to give up? There’s just – I think some people, they get it in their mind, they’re like, I’m going to make this happen no matter what, I’m going to will this into being, and they just do whatever it takes, but you have to have that decision point in your head first that I’m going to make this happen, I’m going to will this to happen, and then you jump into action and then you start doing whatever’s necessary to make it happen.

Nicole: And you know, I do think there are times when there’s a difference between discomfort and injury. Like, what’s really cool about sport, I use the word bonk a lot. Like, I get business bonks all the time. And literally I’m like, eating energy bars during business meetings because I’m like, I’m bonking, it’s a business bonk. But bonking from a bigger perspective, you have to push through your limit all the way to the other side where you’re laying on the living room floor unable to move for two hours just like, bring me a rotisserie chicken now. Like, I can’t even go to the store to get it. You have literally depleted yourself to that level. But you know, to learn the signs that got you to hitting that bonk point. And so I think like, we can use this concept in so many areas of our life. Like, when things are starting to turn ugly, sometimes you have to go all the way to the ugly side because you don’t know the signs.

But after you do that once, now you know the signs or you’re starting to learn them, so hopefully you don’t have to go all the way there again and again and again, and I think even with like, weight gain and weight loss, you’re probably – that’s a cycle that you can start to understand the repetitive nature of, with marriage issues, you know, you see that – there’s so many places in life where you can see the cycle repeating and it’s only after you hit those times of extreme failure that now you can start to nail it.

Jill: Yeah, and sometimes failure is like, the best thing that could ever happen.

Nicole: Absolutely. Well, Jill, we’ve been on so long. It’s been over an hour and my podcasts are known for running long so my listeners won’t be at all worried about it, but I always end with one final question, and before I do, I wondered if you have any certain final thoughts you want to add before I ask you mine. I get to go last.

Jill: Okay, well I’m going to ask you my question then that I like to ask people is what would you do if you knew you could not fail?

Nicole: Did you hear the pause? So many things. There are so many things. I think what I would do are some of the things I have told myself I cannot do and that I literally have a physical reaction to doing. For instance, climbing. Climbing, doing anything that includes a fear of heights and falling I don’t do because I’ve had panic attacks doing them. If I did not have that reaction and would not fail, I would climb the highest peak. I don’t know if I would start another business. I don’t know if I would travel around the world non-stop for 10 years. I’m not sure, it’s a really – it’s an incredible question because it makes you really start to dig deep into the things that you say you can’t do.

Jill: Exactly.

Nicole: I love it.

Jill: Especially when you ask somebody who’s super accomplished because they’ve already got in their mind that there’s not much that they can’t do.

Nicole: Well, I think – it is true. It is true. I mean, I’m looking straight ahead of myself at a list of three goals for the year and the first one was learn to surf. And that’s something that I was scared to do but – and I did it. And so I realize with each thing that you’re afraid to do, as you take baby steps towards doing them and then in a safe environment, you realize that pretty much just about anything is possible, which is so cool. I love that question.

Jill: Yeah it’s a good one.

Nicole: So I didn’t really have a great answer, but anything that has to do with a fear of heights I would do…

Jill: I’m right there with you, to be honest.

Nicole: Well then we probably need to go find a retreat that includes climbing and make it happen. Damn it, Jill Angie.

Jill: I’m all in.

Nicole: Alright, well my final question is that if you could leave our listeners with one final piece of advice, one little nugget to help them run their worlds in a bigger and better way, what would it be?

Jill: So much advice I have. I believe I know what everybody should do with their lives. But I think my advice would just be choose your thoughts wisely. Literally that. Choose your thoughts wisely.

Nicole: Done.

Jill: Also put your shoes on and go for a run.

Nicole: Well, I am choosing to say thank you very much for an awesome conversation.

Jill: Same here.

Nicole: I wish we could have done this in person. We’re going to have to at some time.

Jill: I know, well I’ll just have to come out to Colorado. I actually have a really good friend that lives in Denver and I haven’t seen her in a while so.

Nicole: Alright, well…

Jill: And any time you’re on the east coast, you know, I’m all about it.

Nicole: Put me on the list.

Jill: For sure. But thank you, this has been wonderful.

Nicole: Absolutely, it’s been amazing.

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Hey rebels, I hope you enjoyed my chat with Nicole, and if you want to connect with her, all of the links to do that plus instructions on how to enter the giveaway will be in the show notes at notyouraveragerunner.com/47. Until next week.

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.