Ep #99: The Real Reason You’re Struggling

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 99 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host, Jill Angie, and if you are struggling to stick with your running routine or your strength training routine or any other thing that you want to be doing, well, this is the episode for you because I’m going to break down the real reason you’re struggling and spoiler alert, your mojo didn’t just up and disappear, and then I’m going to help you figure out how to get back on track.

And of course, I’m going to start with a real-life example from my own adventures. But real quick, I have a couple things. So first of all, I have a fun story to share with you. Every once in a while, I will meet a podcast listener out in the wild, and the first time it happened I was at a race and I was talking and I’m loud, you guys. I’m loud when I’m out in public.

And I was talking to my friend Karen who was running the race with me and I think Andy was there, and all of a sudden, this woman came up and she said, “Are you Jill?” And I’m like yeah, I am. And she’s like, “From the podcast?” And I said yeah, that’s me. And she’s like, “Oh, I thought I recognized your voice,” and that made me laugh.

And then another time, I was on a flight and I had my laptop open, I was writing up some podcast notes and the woman sitting next to me said are you Jill, and she recognized the Not Your Average Runner sticker on my laptop and said I’m a listener and we chatted and so forth. So anyway, almost any time that I meet somebody kind of out in the wild like that, they say to me, “So, besides the podcast, what exactly do you do for a living?”

And I’m like, well, I coach women on how to start running, how to get better at it, and eventually do things like maybe half marathons or marathons. Definitely gain confidence along the way. I love my job. And then one time after giving that answer, the woman I was talking to was like, yeah, but I mean what do you do for a living during the day?

And I’m just like, okay, maybe there are people out there that think this podcast is just my hobby and that coaching women is just something I do for fun. And for sure, it is super fun. I would not do it if it wasn’t, but it’s also my business and there’s so much more than me just showing up in your ear for an hour once a week.

So just for fun, this morning I got up and I thought I’m going to do an Instagram story about my entire day from waking to bedtime and so I’ve been taking pictures of everything along the way just to share what life is like in the life of an online running coach. And I’m actually going to save it as a highlight called day in the life, and you’ll actually see me recording this podcast as one of those highlights.

I’m going to save it as a highlight on my Instagram in case you want to see just what it is that I spend my days doing, and you can find that. My handle is @notyouraveragerunner. It’s on Instagram, and I love new followers so head on over there and say hi.

So obviously, another thing that I spent time doing today is putting the final touches on all of the materials for the half marathon course that is starting on July 15th, and I’m getting it all ready for Erin who’s our designer. She’s going to make it look pretty because you know, if she was not part of the team, you guys, everyone would just be getting a bunch of really sad spreadsheets. That’s as far as my abilities go.

But anyway, we’ve been putting all the final touches on it. The first couple weeks are going to be all about getting your running form in perfect shape, working on run-walk intervals, getting them figured out before we start building mileage. Then in the next couple weeks after that, we’re going to start talking about what is the gear that you need.

What exactly do you need to run a half marathon beyond just a good pair of running shoes? What do you need to have to make sure those long runs go really well? And then we’re going to move into fueling and nutrition as the runs start to get longer and along the way, every week we’re going to be covering mindset, especially as it relates to long distance running.

And seriously, that’s just the first six weeks. So if you’re not in that class, are you crazy? But honestly, if you’re not in that class and a half marathon is something you’re planning to do this year, you just need to join us. We have so much fun. We just started a photo album for our pets, which cracks me up. It’s called Pets of RYBL because everybody in the last class that we did, the 10K class, everyone’s dogs and cats kept showing up on the video calls and we decided they all needed to be honorary members of the group.

And Maddy is doing this incredibly adorable thing right now where she lays next to the front door. So we have these steps right next to our front door that go to the loft and she lays on the bottom step and rolls over on her back for belly scratches any time we come up to the door to go anywhere. It is the cutest thing ever, so of course that’s the first photo of her that I picked for our furry rebels album.

And so if you want to be part of the half marathon class, if you want your pet to be represented in the course, you can join just by heading over to notyouraveragerunner.com/hm or you can just go to notyouraveragerunner.com and then if you’re on your phone you’re going to click those three little lines that are near the top of the page and the link to train for a half marathon will pop up.

If you’re on your computer, you’ll actually just see the link automatically when you go to notyouraveragerunner.com. And that’s going to take you to the sign-up page. The class itself is $156. It’s a 16-week class. Comes with full access to Run Your Best Life the entire time you’re in the class and it’s amazing.

So we do though – I need to tell you we do have limited space. The course is filling up pretty quickly so you got to make sure to get your sexy butt over there now to sign up. It’s 16 weeks, like I said. You get access to Run Your Best Life for the entire course and if you have a furry friend or a feathered friend or a friend with scales, whatever it is, they’re also welcome to join. We love pets.

So alright, let’s dive into why you have not been running or strength training or stretching or journaling or whatever the fuck it is that you’re struggling to stick with. Now, I want to start by saying that everybody has this issue from time to time, you guys. And for me, most recently it’s been strength training. So I put it on my calendar, then the time would come and I’d have a million excuses.

Like too tired, not enough time, I just ate and I am full, or I should eat first, and then I’d be too full. Or oh, I’m just not feeling it, or tomorrow is my running day and I shouldn’t do a hard workout the day before my long run. And then one time it was raining and I didn’t want to go out in the rain, which is seriously so lame because obviously I could drive to the gym, or I could have found something to do right in my own living room.

Seriously, you guys, it was fucking ridiculous. So basically, I was doing every fourth workout and I was starting to feel it in my runs, and I did a five-miler a couple weeks ago with my friend Amy, and I was just dragging. And my knee was starting to get twinge-y. Everything was starting to feel hard and I’m like, this is ridiculous, this has to stop.

Strength training is critical to my marathon success, to your marathon or half marathon or even 5K success. It’s definitely critical to my Ragnar success. That’s the first – no wait, I have a half marathon before that. So I’ve got a busy summer. So I’ve got a lot of races lines up this year and to finish them and finish strong and not get injured, strength training has got to happen.

And not just sort of like half ass strength training where I do a push up and a couple lunges and call it good. I need to get my butt in the gym and do the work because not doing it is pretty much asking to fail and you know that my goal this year, I’ve talked about it on this podcast, my goal is to show up prepared as fuck for those races, especially that marathon.

And so resisting doing the very thing that’s going to help me succeed makes no sense, but most of the times brains don’t make sense. So figuring it out is really, really important to me right now and seriously you guys, the excuses seem so real in the moment. So when I find myself resisting doing something that I want to do, I always head to my journal.

I do a thought download and if you don’t know what that is, check out episode 32 which is called How to Coach Yourself or obviously, you can just join Run Your Best Life where we talk about them all the time. But anyway, I did a thought download and here’s what I came up with. I realized that I have this sort of deeply held belief that I am not actually capable of making myself do strength training on my own and that I need a personal trainer to be accountable to.

And you know, the reason I believe this, and it’s a stupid, shitty belief, but the reason I believe it is that the time in my life when I was the most diligent and disciplined with my strength training and correspondingly, the time when I was the strongest, my body was the strongest and most flexible and had no injuries was when I had a trainer twice a week and I just showed up and did everything she told me to do.

And now I don’t have one and I’m not planning to hire one in the near future, so I’m all up in my head about how I can’t do it myself and it’s not fair because I really need it right now and I can’t depend on myself to do it so woe is me. And you know that woe is me feeling, right? When you think oh, you have to have a certain set of circumstances so that everything can go right in your life, and if you don’t have them, then you’re like, screwed and you just feel really sorry for yourself.

And that is self-pity. And this, I started to realize this is a habitual feeling that I have sometimes around certain topics. And the problem is that self-pity is the fastest way to kill your running mojo or your workout mojo or your weight loss mojo, whatever it is. Self-pity and motivation are completely incompatible. They cannot exist together.

So self-pity is the emotion that we feel when we think things like it’s not fair, I can’t do this by myself, nobody will help me, nobody understands me, this isn’t working, everything is falling apart, I’m not getting any better, this is too hard. I know you have said some of those things to yourself at one point or another. I can feel you nodding your head along with me because it’s normal, you guys. It’s human.

And as grown ass adults, we often think that self-pity is something that children indulge in. It’s basically a low-key temper tantrum is what it is. And we think oh, I don’t feel sorry for myself. I run my own life, I’m in charge, why would I ever feel sorry for myself? But we do it all the time. And when I say that self-pity is a mojo killer, here’s what I mean.

So y’all know that we have circumstances in our lives and these are the things that are just the facts and data of our existence. Then we have thoughts about those circumstances and these are the stories we tell ourselves, our interpretation of different events, our beliefs about ourselves and how the world should work. Those thoughts that we have create our feelings and emotions, and our emotions drive our actions and eventually our results.

So when my circumstance is that I don’t have a personal trainer right now and I think something like, I can’t do this all by myself, I feel really sorry for myself. Self-pity. That is my emotion. And you can be damn sure that when I feel self-pity, I am not going out and doing my strength training, or I’ll go but I’ll stay like, five minutes and quit early.

And the result that I get is I don’t get any better at keeping that commitment to myself. I get better at quitting on myself. You guys we get better at what we repeatedly do. So if you practice giving into self-pity, it’s going to become your default. It’s going to get harder and harder to do it differently. Can you see that?

So mojo or motivation is also an emotion. And this is super important for you to understand. So the circumstance might still be not having a personal trainer, but instead of thinking I can’t do this on my own, I could think strength training’s important to me and I’m going to do it no matter what. Now, when I think that thought, I feel motivated, I feel determined and empowered, and when I feel those things, I get my butt to the gym and I work out.

And the next time I have the gym, the strength training on my calendar, it’s a little bit easier because I’ve already practiced doing it. So if you learn nothing else from this podcast, I want you to know that self-pity will take you down. I want you to take a moment and really think about where in your life are you saying things to yourself like it’s not fair, I can’t do this myself, I don’t want to do this, nobody helps me, nobody understands me, it’s not working, I’m not getting any better.

Those things that create that self-pity, you’re saying them somewhere. Unless you have every result in your life that you want, I promise you there’s somewhere where a little part of your mind is like I can’t do it, it’s too hard. It’s too hard, and then you feel that self-pity.

And when you’re feeling sorry for yourself there is no room for motivation. They just cannot coexist in the same place. Self-pity is poisonous to runners, or really to anybody, but if you’re listening to this podcast, you’re a runner and if you’re trying to get a running or a strength training routine started and you’re constantly thinking about how unfair it is that your life is so difficult or so busy or that you’re not getting faster or that nobody in your life respects your running, I promise you motivation ain’t going to be your primary emotion.

It’s not going to be there. It’s going to be off way in the distance, maybe not even visible. You guys, our feelings drive our actions, so if you want to take the action of running, or the action of strength training, you need to create the appropriate emotion for yourself. So what thoughts create motivation? What thoughts create determination?

Well, I’m just going to give you a bunch that you can take, or you could come up with your own. But for me, the thought I can do this, I’m going to do this no matter what, I might suck at it, but I’m doing it anyway. This is going to get me to my goal. This is going to make me stronger. This is going to keep me from getting injured. I want to do this. Doing hard things makes me stronger. I can do hard things.

Those are all pretty motivating thoughts, and when you think those thoughts, you don’t feel sorry for yourself. You can’t. When you practice thinking those thoughts every time you’re tempted to skip your workout, it gets easier and easier to do the thing you want to do instead of quitting. When you feel that power, powerful, determined, motivated feeling, when you feel that way, you get shit done.

Does this make sense? Okay, now I also want to make sure that you’re not judging yourself for having the self-pity thoughts, because sometimes we think like oh, I should be over this by now or I’m too old for this, or damn it, I’ve been working on this so long, how come I still have these same thoughts?

And then we feel self-pity for ourselves for feeling self-pity. So I want you to know that having those thoughts that we’ve been talking about is completely normal. You’re human. You have a brain. That’s how it works. The problem comes when you decide to grab onto those thoughts and go for a ride.

So I’m going to let you in on a little secret that we have in Run Your Best Life. It’s called the purple scribble dress. And it all started, gosh, months ago when one of our members posted a picture of herself when she was feeling a little pitiful. And she used the scribble function on her phone – you know when you edit your photos you can pick the marker or whatever and you can scribble over things.

So she used the scribble function to cover her body from the neck down. She drew over her body with purple lines. And she posted the picture and I’m like, why are you wearing a purple scribble dress, Sarah? I was like, what is that? I was like, I think your other outfit was a lot cuter. And so after that, the purple scribble dress kind of became synonymous with feeling that way, that pitiful, oh woe is me sort of way.

So here’s the deal; the next time that you are feeling self-pity, I want you to give yourself a fixed time period to wallow. Maybe it’s 10 minutes. You go put on your purple scribble dress, have a pity party, wear a party hat, throw streamers, silly string, get really deep all up in that pity, let it go. And then when the time is up, you’re done.

You got to take off the dress, put on your big girl panties and get to work. No more purple scribble dress. So give yourself time to wallow. Allow it. Just be like alright, this is how I’m feeling right now. I’m all in. And then be done with it. Put on those big girl panties and move on.

So I’m giving you a little homework this week. I want you to take some time to look really carefully at where in your life you are not showing up how you want, wherever it is. And then ask yourself why. Now, if you make plans to strength train and you skip it most of the time, what’s going on?

Because you’re not too busy. You’re not too tired. It’s not because you don’t have a personal trainer. I promise you, those are BS excuses. They’re making you feel sorry for yourself, and then the result is you’re not getting any stronger.

So really take some time and look at that, and I would love if you’re in our Facebook group, the Not Your Average Runner podcast community, share where you’re feeling self-pity. Let us know. Come out of the closet with your self-pity. It is time. And my half marathon students are going to work hard on this stuff in the class that starts July 15th.

We are leaving no excuse left unturned because you cannot start training for a race of that distance and expect to half-ass it. You have to full-ass it. And you can’t full-ass it if half your ass is throwing a temper tantrum. So my advice is just take a moment and sign up for the class. If you have questions about it, please email Cher, our support team at support@notyouraveragerunner.com and Cher will answer, maybe Megan, maybe even me because sometimes they let me answer the emails.

Anyway, one of us will help you with whatever you need to know, but really, just join the class. So you go to notyouraveragerunner.com/hm to sign up. I will be waiting for you. I’m watching you, okay? Alright rebels, that’s it for this week. Short and sweet. You can find the transcripts for this episode, the links to join the half marathon class, and all the other good stuff at notyouraveragerunner.com/99.

Oh, and by the way, next week is episode number 100 and we have something really, really special planned. We’re going to do a big giveaway so you’re going to want to make absolutely sure that you listen like, the day the podcast comes out because it’s going to be a really short-term giveaway. So if you want to get in on the contest, you’re going to have to listen Thursday, maybe Friday at the latest because it’s very time sensitive.

But make sure that you join us for episode 100, for our big celebration for making it – gosh, I cannot believe it’s been almost two years that I’ve been doing this podcast. It has been an honor and a pleasure and I just want to say thank you for riding along on this journey with me, and that’s it. I will see you 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.