Ep #23: What Is a Rebel Runner?

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.

You are listening to episode number 23 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today’s topic is all about what it means to be a rebel runner. But first, in Ask the Curvy Coach this week, I’m going to be sharing some funny listener running stories and featuring a rebel rockstar runner that wrote a great iTunes review.

And then make sure you stay tuned to the very end because my latest obsession this week is super fun and I made something just for you. So whether you’re a brand-new runner, an experienced pro, or maybe even just contemplating it because all of your crazy friends are doing it, you are in the right place.

Today on Ask the Curvy Coach, I’m actually featuring a few listeners, Christie, Jess, and Karen. Now, first up is Christie, and she called the Not Your Average Runner hotline to leave a funny story about something that happened when she was running track in high school, and I’m just going to let you listen and laugh along with her.

Christie: Hi, my name is Christie and my funny running story was I was on the high school cross-country team, definitely not a great runner at all. But one day we were having a meet at a [steep 0:01:58.0] hill, it was – our course ran through the woods and as we were warming up by running the course once, I realized I had to go to the bathroom really badly. So I shot off of the trail where we were supposed to be and found another place that I could go to the bathroom. And I had just dropped trou and started to pee and a man and his dog – his dog not on the leash, came out of nowhere and startled me, which wasn’t great because I peed on myself a little bit. And he was very nice and embarrassed and so was I, but then I had to run in my pee pants for the cross-country meet, and because I had kind of gotten thrown off, I didn’t realize that the last probably quarter mile was up this insane hill. So I had not prepared for that at all, I had run the course and in my pee pants, and then the last quarter mile I just couldn’t make it. I had to walk, which is humiliating. I was one of the last people, which was humiliating, I smelled like pee, and then the person who was standing there at the top of the hill was the man and his dog. He was one of the course directors or high school coaches. Definitely one of the most cringe-worthy things that has ever happened to me and I was like, 16 years old and just couldn’t handle it. It was incredibly embarrassing. Thanks. Bye.

We’ve all been there in one way or another, Christie. I kind of feel like you’re not a real runner until you’ve actually had a story that involved having to pee or poop at an embarrassing time. Now, next up is rock star rebel runner, Jess, from the Not Your Average Runner Facebook group, who left an iTunes review on the podcast to share a little bit of her story.

Jess wrote, “Although I’m no longer plus size, I was until a year ago, and I still deal with a lot of insecurities from losing 140 pounds and having loose skin. But I love running. It makes me feel powerful and I love that Jill is out there being a role model for people who want to run but don’t fit that mold.”

Jess, I love what you wrote and I love that you point out that weight loss doesn’t necessarily solve all of our insecurities, right? Because we’re – often, we’re still left with loose skin. But through running and just generally working on your mindset, that doesn’t have to be any kind of an impediment because as you know, I love to say, none of those things are flaws, right? They’re just characteristics that we have. So I’m glad that running makes you feel powerful and I’m so glad to have you in the community.

And finally, we have Karen who left not just one, but two stories on the hotline. Now, just a little bit of backstory. I’ve known Karen since 2015 when she saw an ad on Facebook that said I could teach anyone to run and she basically said hell no, and she hired me to prove me wrong.

Well, now it’s 2018 and I’ve lost count of the number of half marathons she’s done, and she actually ran the Chicago Marathon last fall. So she’s definitely an example of what is possible if you work hard and she’s always out there running and having adventures. She did share a couple of them on the hotline that I’m going to play now.

Karen: Hi Jill, this is Karen Bowen in Kansas with a new running story for you. It’s funny. Tonight, I was out running with Dupree, my doggie, and we were out actually going for a walk, I was wearing sandals because it was going to rain and it was just going to be a short walk. Dupree is not a small dog. At 90 pounds, he’s a pretty big fella so I don’t worry about much, however tonight we were out and a larger dog showed up with a broken harness and the dogs were arguing back and forth kind of growling, I was a little bit worried, I thought there might be a dog fight. Dupree normally is very cordial, but whenever I am threatened, he does get a little bit more assertive. So they were growling at each other, I was trying to get Dupree to go on ahead but this other dog kept following us and so they finally stopped, they were having a stare down. And when I get nervous, I can’t be still, and so I was swinging my hands. And in my hand, I had my little blue poop bag that was full of Dupree’s poop because he had pooped on the run. And I noticed this dog with the harness was watching the bag and then he would look at Dupree and then he would look at the bag. And so I started swinging it a little faster and he started watching the bag. And so finally yes, I launched the poo bag in the other direction in which we wanted to go and that dog took off to get the poo bag and me and Dupree took off running. I was in sandals still, and Dupree, I told him to come on. He took off so fast I got my pace below nine minutes a mile. I don’t know for how long, until I couldn’t do it anymore, and we got home. So there’s your funny story. Always carry a poo bag full of poo to get rid of stray dogs. Love you, bye.

Karen: Hi Jill, this is Karen Bowen again from Kansas. I am calling with an oldie but goodie funny story. I believe I was doing marathon training, and I run in rural Kansas in a small town, and I usually run during daylight in my neighborhood. So it’s a pretty safe place. But I run by myself, so you know, you always worry something weird is going to happen, and usually if something weird is going to happen it’s going to happen for me. Well, I was out running up and down the same little path trying to get my miles in, and I noticed a car go by. An old beat up green car with a man in it that I did not know. Then I noticed it pass me again. And I was getting a little bit worried but I didn’t think too much about it. I just kept running. And he pulled up ahead of me and went down a little cul-de-sac and turned around where I was trying to go, and he stopped his car and he got out of his car and he opened up the back door of his car and said, “Come on sweetie, get in.” Well, I was just quite indignant. Here I am running in my short little sparkle skirt, I’m an old woman, I’m kind of pudgy, you know, who does he think he is? This is small town USA and you just don’t do that. So I became assertive and I said, “Listen, I don’t know who you think you are, I don’t know who you think I am, but I am not your sweetie and I’m not getting in the backseat of your car.” Man looked at me for a minute and he said, “Um ma’am, my dog’s name is Sweetie and he’s been following you for the last several miles and I can’t get her to come home.” I was quite embarrassed but Sweetie loaded up in the car. The ending to this story is Sweetie still runs with me quite a bit but I haven’t seen her owner again. I think we’re both glad. Bye.

Do you want to be featured on the podcast? All you have to do is leave a review on iTunes or leave a message on the hotline, or email me at podcast@notyouraveragerunner.com. And all that information is in the show notes. What I’d love for you to do is tell me about how running has changed your life, share a funny story, or tell me how the podcast has impacted you. If I feature you on the show, I promise I’ll send you a Not Your Average Runner car magnet.

Alright, so onto our main topic for the day. Now, you’ve heard me drop the term rebel runner a lot over the past couple of months, and partly because it’s just super fun to say but there’s also a lot of meaning behind it.

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time studying successful plus size runners and analyzing what they all have in common. Everyone is unique, of course, and there are lots of ways to be successful. But after a lot of review, I realized that there are three main areas in which these women really excel. So I took all that data and I created a formula, which I call the Rebel Runner Formula, and I believe if you master these areas, you’re pretty much guaranteed to be a badass.

And the cool thing is very little of it has to do with having perfect running form or the perfect shoes or any stuff like that, and absolutely none of it has to do with the speed or distance that you run, or whether you do run-walk intervals, or if you run straight through. None of that makes you a rebel runner.

I think this formula is so rock solid that I’m going to start teaching it to everybody I know. And I’m actually going to start right here, right now, on today’s podcast.

So what exactly is it that makes somebody a rebel runner? First, I think we should go over my definition of what a rebel runner actually is, and obviously, this is a woman who’s a runner. That’s the starting point. And she’s also a rebel – I’m cracking myself up here. I haven’t had enough coffee today.

Anyway, why is she a rebel? Because she defies what the fitness industry wants her to think. That she’s not a real runner unless she looks a certain way or runs at a certain pace or weighs under a certain amount. And if you’ve been listening to my last 22 podcasts, you know I think that that’s total bullshit.

And a rebel runner rebels against that paradigm too. She is not willing to accept what other people tell her she should do. She just goes out, she runs in public, in tight running clothes because they’re actually more comfortable, and they help her run better, and because she’s proud of her body and she doesn’t believe she needs to hide it from anyone.

Her inner mean girl might have things to say about it, but she knows it’s all lies and she doesn’t allow any of those voices to slow her down. She sets challenging goals for herself and she is not afraid to fail along the way because she knows that failure is actually the path to success.

A rebel runner runs however the fuck she wants, at whatever speed and whatever distance makes her happy. Now, that might be 20 seconds of running and three minutes of walking for 20 minutes. Or it might be running 15 miles without stopping. Whatever she does, it’s all good. She is not concerned with what other people are doing because she’s so focused on becoming the best runner that she can be, and that means running in a way that feels good to her and her alone.

Now, she definitely practices her skills, she takes really good care of her body, and more importantly, she doesn’t give up on herself when things get hard. A rebel runner also shares her running with others. And this might be in person, like with a running group or running buddy, but it also means that she tells other people about what she is doing and she lets them know it’s possible for them too.

She’s literally an example of what is possible to everyone around her. She inspired and she cheerleads and she tells the truth about her experience. In short, a rebel runner is a badass who loves her body unconditionally and believes that she can do pretty much anything she sets her mind to.

Now, I personally think that sounds really amazing, and when I think of the women I studied to come up with this framework, they all sort of meet that description. And I bet you know quite a few people like that and you look up to them and you think, “Damn, I wish I had her confidence,” or, “I wish I was as strong as her.”

Well, the good news is you can be. The Rebel Runner Formula covers everything that you need to be that badass that you want to be. Now, there’s way too much in it to cover in just one podcast, so what I’m going to do today is just go over the three main steps that I think are necessary to get yourself to rebel runner status.

And those are consistency, confidence, and community. Now, each of these things is pretty important to becoming a rebel runner, and first of all, consistency is where you become a technically proficient runner. So this is all about the skills of running, learning to stick to a training plan, fueling your body for peak performance. Consistency is super important because without it, you won’t improve.

It’s the sort of like, the base layer of – it’s like the underwear of running. It’s like the thing you have to put on before you put your clothes on. Now, unless you’re a commando runner in which none of that applies – I’m really cracking myself up today. Okay, so that’s consistency.

Now, confidence is the next one, and this is where we build. We’re building on consistency with confidence, and this is where you become an inspirational runner who other people admire. It’s all about loving your body and yourself unconditionally. Believing that you are not flawed at all, no matter what you look like, right? Whether you have loose skin or whether you’re still carrying that 140 pounds, that none of that is a flaw. Believing that you are a kickass human, right?

This is where we knock that inner mean girl down to the curb and we stop believing her lies and start realizing how amazing we are. So that is confidence, and that is fun. When you have confidence, life really starts to take off, and so does your running.

Now, the third piece, the kind of cherry on top of all of it is community. This is where you help lift others up so that they can be their best selves too, so that they can be the best runner possible for them. Community is being an example of what is possible. It’s helping new runners who might not have the confidence they need yet, it’s teaching others how to show up for themselves, and it’s celebrating your own victories and wins along with other people.

Now, each one of these, consistency, confidence, and community is amazing on its own and super important. But when you start combining then, you really start to get somewhere. First of all, if you take consistency and you add confidence, mastering those two, combining them together makes you a badass. Community plus consistency helps you learn how to love your body unconditionally. And then confidence plus community give you the belief that you’re capable of anything.

And when you have all three of those, when you combine them all together, it makes you a rebel runner, a total badass rock star who loves her body unconditionally and believes she is capable of some pretty epic shit. I mean, come on, that’s a pretty cool state of being, right?

So here’s what I want you to do. Think about those three areas that we just talked about that make you a rebel runner. Decide which one of them is your strongest area, and then which one you think you need work in. So what I want you to do is literally write that shit down. Write down what you need to work on, then make a plan and then work on it every fucking day.

That is your challenge this week. So that’s the rebel runner framework. We are going to be covering all of the details and bits and pieces and everything that’s part of that over the next – I don’t know – 500 episodes because I plan on keeping this podcast going for a really long time. So buckle up, it is going to be a really fun ride.

Now, I just want to move on real quick to what I am currently obsessed with because I’ve actually been obsessed with it for a while. It’s an app and the one I’m going to talk about is for iPhone. It’s for iOS, so iPhone and iPads. But there are similar apps in Android that do almost the exact same things.

And so the one I’m talking about for iOS, for iPhone is called Clips, and then the ones that work really well for Android are Funimate. So it’s spelled like animate only with the word fun in front. Quik, which is spelled q-u-i-k, and then Magisto, which is m-a-g-i-s-t-o. And I’m going to have links to all of those in the show notes.

Anyway, I’m going to do my best to explain the magic that is Clips and the similar apps, but I really strongly implore you to just download one and try it yourself because they’re super fun. So basically, Clips is an app that allows you to make short videos on your phone and there’s tons of apps out there that do that, but Clips is extra cool because it’s really easy to use, A, and B, it has tons of fun features like you can make a montage of your favorite photos and then add stickers and text to them and then mash it together with some of your favorite music without it taking up a ton of memory on your phone.

It’s actually kind of like making an Instagram story but it’s easier, and then it downloads to your phone as one whole file instead of showing up in these little three second clips that have this little, you know, space in between them. So what I’ve been using it for is making pictures – like, grabbing a bunch of pictures with quotes that I love and then stringing them together while a great song plays in the background.

And honestly, one of my favorite songs right now is Good as Hell by Lizzo. I just cannot stop listening to that song, and so that’s been the background for a lot of my little Clips videos. But here’s why I love it so much: because I can make little videos with different themes and then I can play them whenever I feel like an extra shot – like, I need an extra shot of motivation.

For example, if I am – you know, if I’m having one of those weeks where I’m like, not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, I have this little clip, you know, this like, minute or two of video that I can watch that’s got all kinds of like, reminders for me about how to stop quitting. And of course I put it to some pump up music that like, just basically gets me out of bed.

So I actually made one just for the Not Your Average Podcast listeners, and it’s full of mantras to help you keep running and stop quitting, okay? So if you listen to the How to Stop Quitting episode on the podcast a few weeks ago, you actually know exactly what I mean. Like, that whole concept of quitting on yourself and how it really slows you down.

So I made you a Clips video to play for yourself. So you can actually watch it over on the show notes for this episode, which is www.notyouraveragerunner.com/23, and you don’t even need the app to watch the little video and you can watch it on iPhone or Android or wherever you want. Just head over to the show notes and you can see it for yourself.

And here’s the other thing that I want to ask you. If you decide to make one for yourself, if you fall in love with it the way I have, I want to see your Clips. I want to see your Clips movie or your Funimate movie, or your Magisto movie. So please, post it on Instagram or Facebook and then tag me.

If it’s on Instagram, tag notyouraveragerunner, if it’s on Facebook, just tag Jill Angie, okay? I want to see what you come up with because I think this is like, the most fun tool to keep everyone motivated and excited and engaged.

Alright, that is it for this week my rebellious runners. Everything I mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes at notyouraveragerunner.com/23. And if you’ve been listening for the past 23 episodes and you finally decided that you are ready to get started with running, if today is that day that all my talking about it has just tipped you over the edge, I want you to head over to notyouraveragerunner.com/start to grab your free jumpstart plan.

And here’s what’s super fun. Grab that plan, join the Facebook group, and then hop in and start running and like, tell everybody in the Facebook group. Most of them have already gone through the six-week plan or maybe they’re like you and they’re just starting right now, and so you’ll have lots of buddies over there that are doing the same thing, or people that may be a few weeks ahead of you and you can ask them how they’re doing.

So grab your free jumpstart plan, I’ll send you the plan through email and you’ll get a link to join the Facebook group through email, and it’s going to be amazing. It’s such a party over there, I can’t even tell you how much fun it is.

So that is it for today, my rebellious runners. I will see you next week on the podcast. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you liked what you heard and want more, head over to www.notyouraveragerunner.com to download your free one week jumpstart plan and get started running today.