Ep #105: Feeling Self-Conscious about Doing Run/Walk Intervals

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 105 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and today we are talking about feeling self-conscious and specifically about doing run-walk intervals, and I know you feel me here. So whether it’s in your training or on race day, I know that there are some of you out there who feel uncomfortable with them.

And I don’t mean physically. I mean mentally uncomfortable. So we are going to dive into that today and I’m going to help you understand exactly why you feel that way and what you can do about it. And I am so proud to say that it is 5:42am on the day that my podcast is due and I am getting it recorded before I go out running.

And the reason this is such a victory for me is if you listened to my episode a couple weeks back on procrastination, I think it was episode 103, and I talked about how that’s something I’ve really been working on lately and I’ve been employing the techniques that I taught you in that show to my podcast and to my work. I’ve actually been working with a coach myself.

And for the past couple weeks, I’ve been getting up by 6:30am at the latest every day. Today I was up at 5:15 and I’m just like, kind of blown away at what I can do when I really focus hard on the reasons why I procrastinate and then work to change those things for myself. And of course, when I say things, I mean my thoughts.

So I just want to celebrate myself a little bit this morning and say yay me for two weeks of not procrastinating, getting up and getting out of bed, and I wanted to share with you the model that I’ve been using in my mind, the CTFAR model and that is basically the circumstances, whatever it is on my schedule, and the thought that I’ve been having for myself is I’m practicing becoming a disciplined person.

And when I think that thought, I feel a little curious about I wonder what would happen if I actually did this thing instead of procrastinated. I feel kind of excited because I think I’m becoming a disciplined person, yay, and I feel a little bit determined. And that combination of things has me much more likely to follow the schedule that I’m setting out for myself rather than saying fuck it, I’ll do it later.

So when I hear my brain say I can do this later, I can do this tomorrow, I say wait, we’re practicing becoming a disciplined person so we got to practice this. I’m also not expecting perfection from myself and I think that’s a big shift because what I’ve done is I’ve created every day, instead of a to-do list, I take every activity that I plan to get done on my list and I put it on my calendar like it’s an appointment.

And so today, one of the things on my list was get my podcast scheduled, so I actually made an appointment on my calendar from 5:30am to 6:15am to sit down and record my podcast, and then at 6:15, the next appointment I have is get dressed and go for my run and so on. And so when I actually sit down and schedule out each of the activities I want as if it’s an appointment with myself, which really it is, then I get to practice that thought, I’m practicing becoming a disciplined person every single time my brain has resistance.

So instead of just having a list of shit that I think I’m going to get that done today, I say no, I’m going to get thing one done at 5:15. I’m going to get thing two done at 6:15 or whatever the timing is. And so that practice for me has been super helpful to keep me on schedule and keep me from procrastinating things that are really important to me. So I thought I’d just share it with you.

And before we get fully into the content of this podcast, I wanted to let you know, if you have ever wanted to just sit down with me and get your questions answered, and maybe you’ve listened to a podcast and think, oh, I really want to talk to her a little bit more about this, or I have another question about that topic and I would love to know what she thinks, I’m actually doing a free ask me anything coaching session next week.

And that is August 21st. So if you’re listening to this episode on the day – in the few days after it comes out, I’m doing this session on August 21st. so whatever your questions are, whether it’s about your intervals, or how to stay motivated, or how to stop procrastinating, or where the fuck Andy gets all his running hats, it’s all fair game.

And the session itself, like I said, it’s on August 21st at noon Eastern and all you have to do to get in on it is sign up at notyouraveragerunner.com/freecoaching. You can also click the link in the show notes, but if you go to notyouraveragerunner.com/freecoaching, you can sign up there.

And once you sign up, once you send us your email, we will email you all of the information on how to join, how to submit a question in advance if you can’t be on live, and we understand that there’s going to be people that can’t make it live. It’s at noon on a weekday, but really if you can do it at all, if you can make the effort to be on live, I will be doing something super special for those of you that are there.

So that’s sort of your extra incentive to make it happen, to get on the call live. But we will be doing a replay, so if you’re signed up for the class but you can’t make it when it actually happens, that’s totally fine. You can listen later. And like I said, you can submit questions in advance to be answered on this call. We’re going to do our best to answer as many of them as we can. Again, the link to grab your spot in this free coaching session is notyouraveragerunner.com/freecoaching.

So are you ready to talk about your feelings about run-walk intervals? Let’s do it. Sphere is what most of my clients have to say about run-walk intervals. Now, they understand completely why they’re a good idea. They help you get started with running when all you can do is run for 20 seconds, so they get you up and out the door and give you a little bit of confidence. They help you go farther, they help you run longer, actually do some distance without having to build up that endurance to run without stopping.

So they give you a place to start really. They also help you manage your mind around running because it’s much easier to manage running for – imagine that all you have to do is do it for 20 seconds or all I have to do is a minute or even five minutes at a time, the brain finds it easier to think about doing shorter amounts instead of thinking, oh gosh, I have to run for three miles without stopping.

So my clients are all in when they realize that this interval approach is so beneficial to them. And actually, it can even make you faster if you’ve done it correctly. And so when they see I can run a minute per mile faster if I take targeted walk breaks, yeah, for sure, let’s do it.

So with all of those benefits, why does anyone ever feel self-conscious about it? You’d think hey, this is a good thing, it’s good for me. And a lot of people do go right to that spot. They’re like, I don’t really care what anybody else thinks. But there are some clients that struggle with it and the reason why is because of their thoughts. Duh.

I mean, you’ve listened to this podcast long enough. You knew I was going to say that, right? So you feel self-conscious because you have some beliefs about run-walk intervals. And here are some of the beliefs that you might think. First of all, that’s not how real runners run. If you want to be a real runner and someone sees you taking a walk break, they’re going to think you’re not serious. People might look at you and think you’re a beginner. Horror of horrors. They might think that you’ve just started running.

Or they might think you’re giving up and they do that – we’ve all had this happen in a race where we’re – this happens to me usually at mile 11 of a half marathon and the whole time I’m doing my run-walk intervals and I get to mile 11, there’s always some guy there and it’s never a woman, by the way. It’s always a guy. So guys who are listening, tell your friends to stop doing this.

But there’s always this person there who says – he sees you stop to walk and says, “Don’t stop now, you’re almost there.” And I always want to turn to that person and say I’m not stopping. I’m walking. There’s a difference. I’m still moving forward and this is part of my strategy, but I just smile and wave and keep going because they’re well intended. They’re just trying to cheer us on.

But we think when people say that, we’re like, oh my gosh, they think I’m giving up, oh my god, a stranger thinks I’m giving up, oh no. Or sometimes if you’re at a race and everyone else is running and you can’t see anybody in your immediate field of vision doing run-walk intervals, you think oh my gosh, I’m going to annoy everybody who’s not doing intervals. I couldn’t possibly annoy other people so I better just run all the way through.

Or you’re embarrassed because you think you’re annoying other people, even though you’re still doing run-walk. Sometimes we think I should be farther along by now, I’m failing at running because I should be able to do it without stopping because the goal should be running without stopping, right? If that’s what you believe, then anything else isn’t good enough.

And sometimes we think stopping to walk is a sign of weakness, if you can’t do it without walking, you shouldn’t even bother. And what I want you to know is that everything I just said to you, if any of that resonated with you, if you’ve had those thoughts, it’s just a bunch of opinions. Opinions, thoughts, and beliefs that you have. None of it is real.

You know what’s real? Gravity is real. The earth is round. Not flat. That’s real. The laws of physics are real. But opinion, beliefs, cultural expectations, even the commandments Moses gave us, none of those are facts. I want you to just take a moment and realize that all of that stuff is just opinion, thought, belief, cultural expectation.

Gravity exists whether we believe in it or not. It’s a natural law. Your opinions about run-walk intervals are for sure totally up for debate. But I mean, I think that we hold them so strongly that we believe that they are law, we believe that that’s just how things work. And so let’s talk a little bit about where they come from.

Most of the time, you’ve been taught to believe those things by somebody else. I mean, not that somebody sat down next to you and said okay, these are the beliefs you should have. Run-walk intervals are only for people who can’t go the distance, or run-walk intervals are for weak people, or run-walk intervals are cheating. It’s not like somebody sat down and taught you that.

But when I say you’ve been taught to believe them by somebody else, you’ve heard other people express their opinion. You’ve read things online. Maybe your parents taught you like, if you can’t succeed, if you can’t do 100%, you shouldn’t even try. Whatever your belief systems are, they’ve come from someone else.

Or maybe you’ve taken someone else’s belief system and modified it based on other ideas or beliefs you have and you come up with your own. But regardless, thinking that there is something wrong with doing run-walk intervals, especially if that’s the right way for you to be running, if that makes the most sense, thinking there’s something wrong with it creates a problem for you because when you’re running that way, when you’re actually doing run-walk intervals and you’re thinking in your mind I shouldn’t be doing this, I should be doing it differently, I’m a failure because I can’t do it the way I think I should be doing it, you feel embarrassed, you feel ashamed, you feel self-conscious.

And you don’t feel self-conscious because of what you’re doing. You feel self-conscious because of what you make it mean about yourself that you’re doing it. It’s a really important distinction to make. The circumstance for example is you running a race with a run-walk approach and then your thought, those optional thoughts that are not like gravity, they are not facts, your thought is something like I should be doing better than this and then you feel self-conscious.

Or maybe you think everyone else is looking at me and judging me and you feel self-conscious. You wonder what other people are thinking, you get all up in your head about what strangers are thinking about you, and that causes a problem because you don’t show up for yourself really the way you want to when you are thinking you should be doing something differently.

So I’ve got very good news and maybe some bad news. Let’s start with the bad news. So it’s not your walking strategy that is the problem. It’s not that you’re doing run-walk intervals. It’s not your fitness level that is the problem. That is not it. So the bad news is that you think that if I could just change how I approach my race run-walk strategy or if I could just stop needing to walk then I would feel better. And the bad news is that’s actually not the problem.

But the good news is the problem is how you’re thinking about it and the reason that’s such good news is that beliefs are optional. Again, beliefs are optional. Now, we have plenty of beliefs in our lives that serve us well and they’re not facts, they’re beliefs, but they keep society running along fairly well because we all pretty much believe them. Things like don’t steal, don’t murder, be nice to other people.

These are collective beliefs that for the most part all of us believe. There’s a few outliers obviously, but when most of us believe this, we keep our society from descending into complete chaos. They serve us because when everyone believes those things, we all benefit. And if we didn’t, if nobody believed that stealing was wrong, you could be hanging out at home and somebody would drive by your house or walk by your house and say hey, I kind of like that car, I’m going to take it.

And then if you wanted them to not take it, you’d have to fight them and probably get hurt. And nobody around you would do anything because there’s no belief, there’s no collective belief that stealing is wrong, that hey, if I want that thing I just take it even if it belongs to somebody else, if that’s the belief that it’s okay, we kind of have chaos.

So the belief that stealing is wrong, even though it’s not a fact, even though it’s not a natural law like gravity, that belief serves us well. But sometimes we get stuck on beliefs that do not serve us, and especially when they’re beliefs that really have nothing to do with the rest of society, they’re not things that keep us moving forward, they are beliefs that keep us stuck. They prevent us from doing the things we want to do.

So when you have a belief like I’m not a real runner if I do a run-walk approach and you are doing a run-walk approach, you’ve got that sort of conflict in your brain, you feel embarrassed or self-conscious when you’re out there in public doing your thing. Or when somebody asks you about running, you say I’m a runner but I run-walk, you always have this but I, or you have a modifier at the end to show that hey, don’t take me seriously. I’m not a real runner.

So when you think these things and you say these things, you feel embarrassed, self-conscious, ashamed, and you don’t show up with enthusiasm. You don’t do your best. You don’t really own it. You either give up early, you quit on yourself, or this happens all the time, if it’s in a race, you think oh, I don’t want other people to know I’m an interval runner. I don’t want all these people that are at the beginning of the race to know I’m an interval runner because I’m ashamed of that.

So I push myself too hard for the first half mile until the field kind of thins out. So you push yourself really hard to run through all of your intervals and then after that first half mile or a mile, you’re exhausted because that’s not how you’ve trained. And then the rest of the race sucks.

So that’s how we show up for ourselves when we think the thought I shouldn’t be doing this run-walk thing and we feel embarrassed. Or we apologize to everybody around us for not being good enough. Honestly, when people do that, I’m just like, it breaks my heart.

Another example, if somebody says hey, I heard you’re a runner, do you want to go for a run sometime? You’re like, oh wait well, yeah but I’m really slow and I run-walk and it’s just going to be hard to keep us together. You probably don’t even want to go with me. So basically what I’m saying is you show up like an asshole to yourself when you think these thoughts that you’re not a real runner if you’re run-walking and kind of feeling that way.

So the result of all of that is you never get any more endurance. You never get stronger. You prove yourself right that you’re not a real runner because you’re not showing up for yourself to get the results that you want to get. So again, the problem is not that you’re doing the run-walk approach. The problem is actually not that you feel self-conscious about it. The problem is that you think you should be doing it differently than you are.

And believing that in whatever words you want to use, whatever thought you have in your mind that basically says I should be different than I am is not a belief that serves you because it keeps you from training, it keeps you from feeling awesome about it. And to talk about beliefs that serve society is thinking that you should be better at running than you are, is that a belief that really moves society forward?

If you want to get out there and do run-walk, is anybody else affected? No. Nobody else. You are not hurting anybody by moving your body that way. There are no rules in running that say you can never ever walk. Or maybe if you’re in the Olympics and you’re doing the 100-meter sprint. But even then, I think you’re still allowed to walk if you want to. You just probably won’t win the race.

So the other thing I want you to think about is if you want to get out there and do a run-walk approach, is anybody else really affected by that? Is anybody harmed by that? No. Nobody is harmed by that. You are not hurting anybody by moving your body in that way. There are no rules in running that say you can never walk.

And I mean honestly, even if you’re doing a 100-meter sprint in the Olympics, I’ve seen people get hurt and have to walk to cross the finish line. They haven’t broke the rules. They just didn’t win. That’s all that happens is you’re just not the fastest.

And honestly, nobody’s really harmed by you getting out there and running and walking, but people are actually affected positively by you doing it. So believing that run-walk is an approach that’s great for you to take is helpful to society because if you get out there and do it, then other people will see you and think maybe I can do that and then they get out there and they start moving their body and they improve their fitness.

So if you have these shitty beliefs like oh, it’s wrong for me to do run-walk, not only are you keeping yourself from doing it, you’re impacting other people by not letting them know that it’s an option for them as well. Is that really who you want to be?

So I’m going to give you some other beliefs about run-walk that might be more helpful to you and what if you believed that run-walk is just one way of being a runner? There’s a million ways to be a runner. You could be a sprinter, you could be a trail runner, you could be a relay runner. There’s a million different ways to be a runner. Run-walk is just one of those ways.

It is a strategy from getting you from point A to point B. Walking is not a sign of failure. It’s not a sign of weakness. It is not a sign of cheating. Believing all of that that I just said allows you to decide that walking sometimes is part of your runner identity, that it makes sense for you, that it allows you to go farther, and sometimes even faster. Yes, it is true that you can go faster.

You’d be amazed at how many of my clients come to me and they say I want to get faster, I’ve tried running more, it’s not working, and I say hey, let’s try running less and boom, they take a minute per mile off their time. But if you believe all of that, that it’s actually valid, that it’s valid not just for other people, because sometimes we think oh, run-walk is great for other people but I have to run the whole thing. We don’t judge other people for doing it but we judge ourselves. If you believe that you could stop judging yourself for doing it, that means you would no longer be embarrassed about it.

And I know some of you out there are thinking right now like yeah, I’m not embarrassed that I do it except other people think it’s wrong and so I have to be embarrassed because they think it’s wrong. So what? So what if other people think differently than you? There are other people that believe different things in the world unrelated to running that you’re not embarrassed about your opinions because other people think you shouldn’t be doing it that way, so why is run-walk different?

I really want you to see that it’s exactly the same. There are other people in the world who have totally different opinions than you about all kinds of things and you’re not embarrassed about your opinions about most of that stuff, but for some reason run-walk is a trigger because basically, what you’re saying is I believe in it for myself but other people don’t believe in it and so therefore I need to be embarrassed.

What I’m telling you is that if you say I believe in it for myself and other people don’t, so I need to be embarrassed, you don’t actually believe in it for yourself. So you just really need to adjust your thinking because there’s always going to be other people who think you shouldn’t run-walk. There’s plenty of them.

And most of them are not runners, but there’s other people that think you shouldn’t do it that way. They think you should be striving to do it their way. But other people’s opinions are really none of your business. Remember that? We talked about it a lot and that’s really important in this example.

Because what you’re doing is letting other people decide what is best for you and that is a lot of power to give away. The only time you want other people deciding what’s best for you is A, if you’re unconscious or otherwise incapacitated and the other person is a qualified advocate, like a doctor or a paramedic who can save your life. In that case yes, I will let somebody else decide what’s best for me because I cannot make that decision for myself.

And then the second example is maybe if you’re a toddler and you’re about to put your hand on a hot stove, and mom’s like no, that’s not in your best interest. I’m all in for that. But any other time really, you are the most qualified to decide what is best. Not some guy who’s like, walking is cheating, don’t stop now, you’re almost there, and he’s not even an actual runner. He’s some guy who doesn’t run and thinks that running is always running with no walking.

Don’t let that guy decide what’s best for you. You decide. You do it. And I suggest you choose a belief system about run-walk that works for you, whether you’re using it as a path to running a 5K without stopping, which is fine, or if you plan to use it indefinitely, which is also fine.

When you think thoughts you should be doing it differently than you are right now, you feel ashamed. People who are ashamed do not bring their best selves to their running. So I want you to choose thoughts that make you feel determined or empowered or confident. That is how you’re going to run your best and that is how you can use run-walk intervals as part of a very healthy strategy to be the best runner you can be.

Okay rebels, it is time for my latest obsession. Now, y’all know I’m in training for the Philadelphia marathon and my long runs are getting real. They’re in the double digits now. And that means when I am done with my long run, my legs and feet are tired. They are. And I really want to take off my running shoes the second I get home and get a foot massage.

But of course, if Andy’s not there to rub my feet, which he does, which he’s so sweet, but if he’s not there, I have to do the next best thing, which is these recovery sandals that I’ve been wearing. And they’re by OOFOS, and I know there’s a bunch of you out there that have heard of them, but if you haven’t, they’re called OOFOS.

It really is early, you guys. I can’t even speak this morning. So OOFOS recovery sandals. They come in a bunch of different colors and styles. The ones I wear kind of look like spare tires. They are not pretty. But I do not care because they feel so freaking good. I originally got them to just wear around the house, so that I wouldn’t be walking on hard surfaces in bare feet to keep my plantar fasciitis under control.

So that’s why I originally got them but now that I’ve noticed how good my legs feet after I do a long run when I put those sandals on, I’m wearing them a lot more. In fact, on a long run day, I come home, I take my shower, I stretch, I take my shower and I put those sandals on and I wear them for the rest of the day running errands. I wear them out of the house no problem because they feel that good.

They’re making a huge difference in how my legs and my body feels later on because they have a lot of cushion, they have a lot of arch support. They have these little nubbins. Not like big nubbins, just barely there nubbins that kind of massage your feet a little bit and they’re super squishy. They’re just magic.

So we have a link to them in the show notes. I highly recommend the ones that actually have a wide strap across the foot instead of the sort of thong style between your toes. And the reason for that is the thong style ones, when you’re walking, you kind of have to scrunch your toes up a tiny little bit to keep them on and that’s how it works with any kind of thong flip-flop. It’s not just these sandals but any kind of thong flip-flop, your toes have to do some of the work to keep the shoe on your foot.

But with the kind that have a strap across the top, it’s a very wide strap. It just stays on your foot without your foot doing any work. And so I think, at least for me with the flip-flop kind, sometimes I get a little bit of cramping in my toes after a long run because I want my toes to relax and they’re not relaxed when they’re in the flip-flop style.

So I recommend the kind with that wide strap. They look like – they’re similar, if you’ve ever seen Adidas shower shoes or whatever, they kind of have that similar style. Like I said, they’re not the prettiest thing ever but once you put them on your feet, you’re like, oh my gosh, the world has just changed. But we’re going to have a link to them in the show notes and I hope you give them a try because they are amazing.

Okay, rebels, that is it for the week. I want you to make sure that you sign up for the ask me anything free coaching session at notyouraveragerunner.com/freecoaching, and of course you can find that link in the show notes as well along with the transcripts and links to the OOFOS sandals at notyouraveragerunner.com/105.

Or you can just go to the Not Your Average Runner website, click on podcast, and you will find the episode there as well. So hope to see you at the ask me anything and that is it for this week. I’ll talk to you later.

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.