Ep #77: How to Not Half-Ass Your Race Training

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 77 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today I’m going to teach you something that I actually taught to my Facebook group last week about race training. It’s a class I taught that goes over the number one most important thing you need to know to make any race your best one ever.

And also this week, back by popular demand from all of the emails that you guys sent to me and said, “Hey, we miss the latest obsession,” I’ve got my latest obsession. So stay tuned to the very end of the episode to find out what that is and how you can save money on it too.

Okay, so let’s dive into that very important skill. Now, the class I taught to my Facebook group was called Don’t Half-Ass Your Half Marathon Training, and it was geared towards half marathon but the skills and tools that I went over and taught everyone really applied to all areas of running and your life because basically, I just want everyone to know how to full-ass their training and their lives instead of half-assing it.

I mean, that’s whether it’s a 5K or a 50K or anything. I mean, you can actually get away with a lot more half-assing for a 5K race because it’s a shorter distance and it probably is closer to the number of miles you run in any given workout. But when you half-ass your training at the 5K distance, here’s what happens. You kind of start to think that skipping training runs isn’t a big deal because you can still show up on race day and feel pretty good about it.

And what happens is you teach yourself that it doesn’t matter if you keep your commitments, doesn’t matter if you quit on yourself from time to time, and then when you approach half marathon training with that attitude of like, “It’s okay if I don’t get it all done,” you end up crashing and burning on race day.

And I work with a lot of women who have that happen because they’ve not done enough training for races and then they have a terrible time on race day, and then they come to me and they say, “Hey, can you help me? I did this half marathon and it sucked and I don’t want that to happen again.” And sometimes it happens because they quit on themselves, sometimes they just really didn’t know what they were getting into when they signed up, and they sign up for this race and then they look at the training, they’re like, oh shit, this is more than I expected, and they really don’t know how to plan.

So either way though, most of them do spend a lot of time beating themselves up afterwards and feeling kind of like total failures, and I want to make sure you don’t have that experience. So today we are going to talk about what it takes to full-ass your training, regardless of the distance so that you will be proud of yourself on race day.

And by the way, what I really want you to be proud of here is not so much that you finished the actual race or that you beat your PR or whatever it is. I mean, those things are awesome but what I really want you to be proud of is that you showed up for yourself throughout the training, did all of those training runs, even when you didn’t feel like it, and just generally acted like a superhero in your own life.

Your actual pace and distance accomplishments are amazing, I promise you, we will celebrate that shit all day long. But in my opinion, the real win is becoming that person who shows up for herself no matter what because that is a skill that you can use everywhere in your life, not just in running.

And of course, that is what the Rebel Runner Formula is designed to do. We teach you running and life skills so that you can be that badass runner girl who loves her body unconditionally and believes that she can do some pretty epic shit. And by the way, if you want to know more about the whole Rebel Runner Formula, check out episode 23 where I go over the entire thing.

Today’s skill that we’re working on is from the consistency circle of the formula. Consistency, this is the area that most of us think about when we decide to start running. This is the basics of running. It’s learning how to run. Practicing and improving all your skills, figuring out a training plan and nutrition, working on the run-walk interval ratio that you like.

And most of the time when people think, “Oh, I want to start to be a runner,” they’re like, I just need to figure all those things out and I’ll be fine. And really, consistency is all those things, it’s also the discipline necessary to keep doing it and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. But it’s the foundation for becoming a runner.

So you start out by learning the basics, and then the Rebel Runner Formula, at least we teach you all of the mind work that you need to do to keep focus. But today’s skill of how to full-ass your training is part of the consistency circle, and this is actually one of the first things that I’ll be teaching in February to the Rebel Runner students to set them up for success at their June half marathon in Seattle.

So you’re getting sort of the behind the scenes of what I’m teaching to all of my clients that are going to be going to Seattle. Real quick, there is a worksheet that goes along with today’s episode and I know if you’re listening to this right now, you’re probably either out running or listening in the car, so here’s what I recommend. Listen to the full episode first and then go back when you get a chance, download the worksheet, and then go through all the steps in writing.

So you can do them in your head while you’re listening in the car or running, but I want you to actually take the time to go back, download the worksheet, and go through all the steps in writing. And you can grab the worksheet at notyouraveragerunner.com/77worksheet, and of course the link to that will be in the show notes as well.

Alright, ready? Let’s do this thing. So there are three steps to full-ass your training, and we’re going to go through all three of them. We’ll start with number one because we like to do things in order, and number one is you can’t full-ass your training with a half-assed plan.

Now, I know this sounds obvious. It’s basically saying if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. It’s the old adage. But it’s so true, and it’s probably the best advice you’ll ever receive if you can take it. A 10K half marathon, full marathon, those races do not happen by accident. If it did, you wouldn’t be listening to me right now.

So think about it this way; when was the last time you went out for a run and you just got so caught up in the moment you didn’t stop until you’d been out there for like, three hours? It’s pretty rare. I can’t think of a single person I know. You’re not Forrest Gump. Most of us have a lot going on in our lives. We can’t just drop everything at a moment’s notice to do a long training run when we’re in the mood or when we feel like it or when it’s super convenient.

And our bodies aren’t conditioned to just drop everything and go 13 miles unless you’ve done the training. So you need to slowly and step-wise build up to that distance and spend the time to make it happen. So here’s the problem; unless you’re independently wealthy and you have nannies and housekeeping staff, unless that’s you, you probably have a job, you have a family, and maybe your job is your family, in which case it’s more than a full-time job. It’s pretty much 24/7.

But regardless, you have a job, you have a family, you have a house to take care of, you have relationships to maintain. Maybe your spouse, maybe friends and family. You might want to have a little downtime here and there, and you definitely want to sleep. So you’ve got a lot of activities and responsibilities to take up your time.

And so you’re not just sitting there with all this time on your hands so you can just wait until the spirit moves you, wait until you feel like it to go and take a long training run. You need to decide ahead of time when it’s going to happen, to make sure you’re ahead of the game and to make sure you are prepared and that you’ve carved out the time so that it doesn’t get to Saturday and you look at your calendar and you’re like, oh shit, I’ve got a 10-mile run and I didn’t plan ahead for it.

So here’s what I want you to do. Whatever training plan you choose, whether it’s mine or one you found in a book or on the internet, whatever it is, whatever training plan you choose is going to have you running a minimum of three times a week plus some strength training and possibly cross-training.

Now, my plans require three runs a week plus a minimum of one day of strength training for 18 weeks. This is what I consider necessary for beginners. And there’s extra stuff in there if you want bonus points, but those are the bare minimum, those four things a week. So before you start training, you’re going to get to know your training plan.

You’re going to look through it and understand how many training runs do I have to do to get from point A to point B, how many times do I have to do strength training, where am I going to get my strength training done, where am I going to get my running done, am I going to do a treadmill couple days a week or am I going to do all of it outside, can I just walk out my front door and start running or do I need to drive to a trail?

You need to remember all of this stuff. And then I want you to decide the exact days every week that you’re going to run. I want you to create a routine that you can stick to and we’re doing this the week after we talked about the habits with Gretchen Rubin in last week’s podcast and really, creating that same time same day every week is one of the keys to making a habit stick.

Now, for you it might be Tuesday and Thursday mornings before work and then Saturday mornings for your long runs, right? It might be Wednesday after work for your strength training. Whatever it is, you know your schedule best. I want you to think about your regular schedule right now and decide what those three running days are going to be and what is going to be your day of strength training and then where you’re going to do these things for the most part every time.

And also, here’s the other piece that a lot of people forget. I want you to figure out how much buffer time you’re going to need. And I’ve done this before. I get my hair done, it’s a 30-minute drive to where I get my hair cut and so I’ll put the appointment in and I won’t schedule in the buffer time, I won’t schedule in that 30-minute drive. And then something happens and I forget in my mind that a 9am appointment is actually – I need to be on my way by 8:30 and I’ll schedule a time and then I end up being late.

So I don’t want you to do that for your workouts because I mean, it’s easy for me to just go to Wegmans and get a box of hair dye. Hopefully my hairdresser is not listening to this, but it’s easy for me to do that and touch up my roots on my own but missing your workout, missing your training run means you have to go and reschedule it and it puts you behind the eight-ball. I don’t want you to do that.

So figure out how much buffer time you need. For example, if you’re going to do 45 minutes on the treadmill at the gym on Tuesdays before work, you need to remember how much time does it take you to drive to the gym? How much time does it take you to set up your gym bag? Maybe you do it that morning, maybe you do it the night before. If you’re going to do it the night before, block out that 20 minutes the night before so you don’t forget.

If you’re going to be working out on the treadmill at the gym before work, you’re also going to factor in how long does it take you to drive to work, how much time will you spend in the locker room getting ready? 45 minutes is just the time you’re spending on the treadmill. You might want to schedule in 10 minutes of stretching afterwards too or maybe you do your strength training then.

But however you figure it out, figure out the buffer time as well because that is just as important to make sure that you’re not late getting to your workout or late getting to your next appointment and I don’t want you getting in trouble at work because you didn’t calculate properly. So make sure you block out all the time you need. Really brainstorm all the things that need to happen so that you can do that workout.

Schedule it in alongside your training run. So if it’s a 45-minute training run but you’ve got 90 minutes of prep time, buffer time, driving time, then really you need to block out two hours and 15 minutes for that workout to make sure you get it all done. Or you could figure out a way to get it done faster in the morning. It’s also an option. But you know what I mean.

Now, here’s the thing. I know there’s going to be weeks where you need to adjust and flex, and that’s the reason that we plan this all ahead. So maybe you’ve got vacation coming up, maybe you’ve got a work trip coming up. Maybe your work schedule, maybe you’re someone who works third shift one week and first shift the next week or on the first week – if you’re like Andy, he works Tuesday through Friday then he has off on Saturday and Sunday and he work Monday to Thursday, then he’s off on Friday, then he works on Saturday and Sunday, then he’s off on Monday.

So his schedule every single week varies, and so if you know how your work schedule is going to be changing, then you can decide your basic running days and then look at your schedule for the next two or three months and then go ahead and adjust and move those workouts around now based on what you know is coming down the pike for you.

So it’s totally normal for you to have to adjust and flex your workouts, but I want you to start with a standard template and then only adjust it as necessary for your schedule. We do not adjust it because we wake up in the morning and we think, “I don’t really feel like getting up today, I’m too tired. I’m too warm in bed and it’s negative four outside,” which it is literally negative four outside right now. I don’t know if you can hear the wind in the background but it is howling.

Anyway, that’s the flexing based on things in your schedule that are required is normal but the next step we’re going to talk about why we don’t flex our schedule based on bullshit excuses. And so step number two is to be ready for your bullshit excuses.

So you’ve done step one, you’ve taken all of the workouts, you’ve put them in your calendar, you’ve scheduled all of them, and if you’re doing my training plan, there’s 53 training runs and then of course your race. So you’ve gone and you’ve scheduled in 53 training runs, 18 strength training workouts, you’ve put it all on your calendar so you know it’s there.

Step two, be ready for your bullshit excuses because this is what’s going to happen. You know when you’re going to run, you’re looking at your calendar, you can see it all, it’s beautiful, you’re just imagining crossing all those workouts out, you’re super excited right now because you’re imagining how awesome it’s going to be when you’ve finished your race, right?

And that thought is making you feel determined and excited and motivated and those feelings are going to carry you through the very first few weeks of training with ease. But there’s going to come a day when your alarm goes off and you don’t feel like getting up. Your mind is going to come up with a bunch of bullshit excuses and you need to be ready.

And I’m not talking if this happens, I’m talking when, because you’re human with a human brain, and your brain thinks it’s dumb to exert the energy to run if you’re not hunting food or being chased. And at 5:30 in the morning, it’s going to say things like, “You can do it after work. Just five more minutes of sleep. It’s too cold, you can do it tomorrow. Just missing one run won’t hurt anything.”

But here’s the deal; every choice you make is important. Every choice matters. And if you make enough of them, enough choices that do not support your race goal, you will not be finishing that race. So it is not enough to just make a plan for the days that you want to run. You need to create a plan for how you’re going to manage your mind on those days.

So here’s how you’re going to do it. You’re going to take five minutes to brainstorm all the things your brain says to you when you skip a workout. What are all the excuses that you’ve used in the past? And when I say excuses, I mean things that are legitimate, and I’m using finger quotes around legitimate as well as total bullshit, because honestly, you do think most of it is legit, at least in the moment.

And by the way, that is what your brain is supposed to do. It wants to keep you nice and comfy. This whole thing about if you’re not hunting food or being chased, you shouldn’t waste your energy on running, it’s a real evolutionary thing in your brain. So it’s going to come up with some really clever and convincing things to keep you from wasting energy on a run.

So I want you to list all of your bullshit excuses, all of your legitimate excuses, all of it out on your worksheet. I’ve given you space for five. I know that there’s probably 25, so what I want you to do is if you run out of room, turn the page over, use the back if you need to. And then once you’ve done that, this is where all of the planning comes in.

So I want you to know the excuses will come up. It’s not if, it’s when. They will do it. Your brain will give them to you, and you need to be ready. So you can’t just expect that your brain’s going to say, we don’t feel like it, and somehow you’re going to have this magical willpower that gets you out of bed in the morning. What willpower is is the planning ahead that we’re doing right now.

You’re creating the willpower ahead of time. So what we’re going to work on are all the rebuttals that you’re going to come up with for all of your brain’s excuses. We’re going to work on what you’ll say to yourself every time your brain gives you a reason not to run. So for example, when your brain says, “We can do it tomorrow,” you tell yourself, “Hey, every choice matters. Skipping a run is reinforcing a negative habit.”

And again, we talked about this last week with Gretchen is that our lives are just a collection of habits. We think they’re not, but really we do the same things every day for the most part, and if you are engaging in a behavior like skipping your run whenever you don’t feel like it, that just means that you have the habit of giving in to yourself. So every time you skip your run you get better at that habit, you reinforce that habit.

And so you need to kind of slow your role there and say hey, every choice matters and getting up and doing my run right now is enforcing and building and strengthening the new habit that I want to make. And you’re going to have to have these rebuttals and conversations with your brain a lot before it becomes automated. That’s fine. Nothing has gone wrong here, that’s how brains work.

So when your brain says we can do it tomorrow, you just tell it, “Hey brain, every choice matters. Skipping my run is reinforcing the old habit, getting up and doing it is reinforcing the new habit.” It’s like when you want to improve the strength of your biceps, you have to do a ton of reps and each time you do a rep, you get a little bit stronger. That’s exactly what I mean when I say every choice matters.

Okay, you can also tell yourself how proud you’re going to feel if you get up and do it. You can say, “I’ve never regretted doing a workout, I’ve never regretted getting out of bed and going for a run, but I always regret sleeping in.” So there’s a lot of options and I want you to really think through your excuses and what do you want to be thinking instead, because that’s what your rebuttals are basically are the beliefs that you’re trying to practice instead.

So take five minutes or 10 minutes if you need to, as much time as you need, to go through all the excuses. Write a rebuttal for every single one. Bonus points if you take that list and then laminate it and keep it next to your bed because you’re going to have to have them ready when – remember not if – when you hear those thoughts in your head because you want to have those responses ready to go right away so that you don’t have to think about it.

Don’t think. You never want to think about it and have a logical argument in your brain with your inner mean girl. It’s now how it works. You’ve got to just shut it down and say, “Listen, we’ve already decided this is what we’re going to do.”

Step number three, when you fuck it up, move on. When I gave this webinar last week, it was so funny because so many people were like, wait what? I can say that? That’s perfect, that’s my new mantra. So you’ve got this beautiful head start on your planning where you’ve figured out when you’re going to work out, you can look and see the entire trajectory of your training, and now you know what you’re going to do when your brain starts arguing.

The third piece is when you fuck it up, move on. And notice again, I didn’t say if you fuck it up. It’s when you fuck it up. You will make mistakes. You will test your limits. You will lie to yourself, you will quit on yourself, you will skip a run because you believed your own bullshit. You’re human, that’s how it works.

So right now you’re thinking – remember we talked about those first few weeks you’re so excited and you’re motivated because you’re thinking, “This is amazing,” right? And when you’re excited and motivated, you do all your training runs. You move hell and high water to make it happen. But then your first thought of like, “I don’t really feel like getting out of bed this morning,” you probably are going to fuck it up that first time.

It’s okay, you’ve got all your plans in place, they might not go the way you expect it to. Then you have a choice, right then and there. So you’ve skipped your training run, you made your plan, you did all the stuff, but in the moment, you did not do as expected and rebut yourself the way you should, and you have two choices now. You can spend some time beating yourself up and feeling pissed at yourself, or you can decide how you’re going to deal with it.

You cannot go back and change the past. Once you’ve fucked it up, you can’t take it back. You’re going to be very tempted to beat yourself up and wallow in self-pity like, why can’t I stick to anything? Why do I always do this to myself? Right? The things that we say to ourselves when something doesn’t go as planned.

I’m not kidding about this. You’re going to miss a run and you’re going to be tempted to beat the crap out of yourself over it, but here is the thing. You focus your thoughts and your energy on what happened in the past, wishing it was different, wishing you had done differently, doing that, focusing all of your thoughts and energy on that is a total waste of time. It doesn’t change the past. It doesn’t fix anything, it doesn’t make anything different, and it prevents you from changing the future. It prevents you from acting differently the next time. It keeps you from moving forward.

So when it happens, I give you permission to say one time, and one time only, “I really wish I hadn’t done that.” You can wallow for exactly 60 seconds and then move on. Learn from it. You’re going to review what happened objectively, review the circumstances, and decide how you’re going to act differently next time.

So on this worksheet that you’re going to download, every single time you miss a workout, I’ve given you four simple questions to ask yourself. And so you might have to answer those questions a lot. I want you to do it every single time you miss a workout. Every single time, if you keep repeating it, it’s going to get a little bit easier. It’s that habit that you’re building of looking at things objectively instead of beating the shit out of yourself.

Also, you may possibly decide you’d rather do your workout than know that you’re going to have to fill out that damn worksheet again. So here are the questions. The first is what did I plan to do and what did I actually do? And I want the facts here. I don’t want, “I planned to get up at six o clock in the morning and I laid in bed like a lump.” I want you to say, “I planned to get up at six o clock in the morning and instead I hit the snooze bar three times and I got up at 7:30.”

Whatever the facts are. There’s no evaluating, there’s no opinions. Then you’re going to write down what are all the thoughts in your brain that led you to do what you did. So hit the snooze button, or to drive past the gym on the way home from work and go home, right? What are the thoughts that led you to do it?

In other words, I’m saying what are the bullshit excuses that you came up with that you believed, which is fine. And if there might be some new bullshit excuses in there that you’re like, oh great, I can add those to the list and come up with rebuttals.

Now, here’s the important part. What are you telling yourself about what you did? And this is where I want you to identify, are you trying to beat yourself up, are you judging yourself and feeling shitty about it because you’re wishing you did it differently? Just be honest. And if you’re beating yourself up, let’s get it on paper so that you can see the shit that you’re saying to yourself.

And then the fourth question is what do I want to do next time this happens. Does that make sense? Those are your four questions, and so this is what you’re going to do. If you fuck it up – sorry, when you fuck it up, you’re just going to fill out these simple questions. Take you like five minutes and you can learn from it. It’s going to put your brain into solution mode instead of being angry at not keeping your commitment because you can’t fix that. You can’t go back and change what you did. All you can do is learn from it and move forward and that’s where I want all of your energy going.

Alright, so I’m really hoping that you can see from today’s podcast the importance and the value of planning ahead to make your race happen and not just planning when you’re going to run, but how you’re going to get yourself out the door and how you’re going to react when things don’t go your way.

So this concept of planning, literally just the tip of the iceberg, just one of dozens and dozens of tools in the Rebel Runner Formula that I’m going to be teaching all of the rebels that are doing half marathons with me this year. So here’s the deal, we are starting up another round of training very, very soon and I’m offering free consult calls to anybody who thinks a half marathon is on their bucket list for 2019.

What we’ll do on these calls is help you understand what your biggest obstacle is. Most of the time I promise you don’t even realize what it is. You think it’s my weight or it’s my pace or I don’t have enough time. In reality, it’s your thinking most of the time that’s holding you back.

Sometimes we believe, “I’m just a born procrastinator,” or I don’t know, whatever it is that you think is just a character flaw of yours, we think that’s the obstacle when in reality, you just haven’t learned how to honor your commitments to yourself, or you just haven’t learned how to plan properly, or you just haven’t learned whatever it is, proper running form, how to adjust your intervals. Whatever it is, the obstacle that you’ve got, we’re going to help you figure it out on these free calls.

And then if it seems like something the Rebel Runner Formula can help with, we’ll talk more about how to break down that obstacle, make a plan, and get you across the finish line. So you can sign up for your free call at talktojill.com. Again, we’re going to help you figure out what that one big obstacle is that’s getting in your way, and then we’ll figure out if we should make a plan to break that shit down. So you can sign up for your free call at talktojill.com.

Okay rebels, are you ready for my latest obsession? So as I’m recording this, it’s actually negative four degrees outside. It is windy as fuck. I can see the trees are just swaying like 10 feet in either direction. So today’s obsession is sort of perfect and I’ll be using it later.

It is the Toasty Cheeks skirt from Skirt Sports. And this is a running skirt, yes, but it is made of a very thick wind-blocking fabric and then it’s lined with fleece. And it doesn’t have tights attached. Instead, it’s actually meant to be an extra layer over your hips and butts to go with whatever else you’re wearing.

And seriously, it is completely amazing. I also have a pair of Toasty Tights and a Toasty Vest, so they’re made from that same wind-blocking material. And it’s vented so if you get warm and sweaty, there’s venting for your body heat to dissipate so you don’t get overheated, but the wind-blocking is over the parts of your body that are going to get kind of cold right away.

And so the Toasty Tights and the Toasty Vest are super amazing. The Toasty Vest has a hood on it too, which I love. It’s like a vest hoodie, a voodie, I don’t know what you call it. The skirt is made from the same stuff. It’s cute and it’s warm, you can use it over any tights or pants, and it basically covers your butt and your hips and like a little bit below your butt. It’s not like a long knee-length skirt. It’s maybe like mid-thigh length, depending on how tall you are, but it gives you that extra layer of warmth on the parts of your body that get cold.

And your glutes can get cold and they’re the biggest muscle in the body. They’re also the muscle that powers your runs so you need them to stay warm. So this is a great, great option for winter running. And of course, as promised, you can get 20% off your entire purchase if you use the code NYAR20. Use that code and you can get 20% off your purchase, and I think they have some free shipping deals going on right now too if you order a certain amount of stuff, like $100 worth of stuff. Don’t quote me on that, but you can get free shipping as well.

Okay, so skirtsports.com, use the code NYAR20. Go get yourself a Toasty Cheeks Skirt and make your cheeks toasty. Okay rebels, that is it for this week. Everything I mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes at notyouraveragerunner.com/77, including the worksheet, including the link to Skirt Sports, and including the code that you need to get 20% off, and that’s it for this week. 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.