Ep #118: Why It’s Worth Doing Uncomfortable Things

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 118 of The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. I’m your host Jill Angie, and today we’re talking about feeling proud and why it’s worth doing the uncomfortable things to get there. Because you guys, it is. It so is worth it.

Now, I am recording this show on November 7th and two days ago I did my longest training run ever. 20 miles. 20 fucking miles, you guys. And I learned so much. I quite literally transformed during that six hours and 22 minutes of my life. I came out the other side a different person.

And there’s a big reason that this run was so transformative, and that’s because I applied all of the stuff that I taught in last week’s podcast, and actually what I taught in podcast 114 and quite a few before. It’s all sort of been building all summer and all fall. But really, I took what I taught you guys last week and applied that.

The podcast where I basically took everyone’s favorite mantra, I can do hard things, and stomped all over it. Because last week, it was episode 117. We talked about how telling yourself you can do hard things might actually be slowing you down and I think it’s more direct to just figure out how to believe it’s easy instead.

And that’s exactly what I did with this run. I just decided it was going to be easy and you know what? It was. It really was. Now, I’m not saying that I felt like I was floating on air the whole time or that nothing hurt, or that there weren’t moments where I thought it would be way more fun to just sit down for a moment.

And we actually did stop at a coffee shop real quick for a pee break. The trail that we were running has this cute little coffee shop for cyclists, and we said let’s just stop here and pee instead of in a Porta Potty. I went in and I legit wondered like, how long can I sit here pretending I’m peeing so I can get a little extra rest?

And we’ve all been there, right? But really overall, this run actually was super easy and I’m going to tell you exactly how I made it happen. But before I do that, this happened just a little while ago today. I have to share what my Garmin had to say about my fitness level.

Now, I just bought a new Garmin. I got the Forerunner 245. There is a link to it in the show notes. Honestly, it’s the one I recommend to pretty much everybody at this point. People ask me all the time, which Garmin should I get? The Forerunner 245. Either that one or the 245 Music. Either one. Those are the ones that I think are the best combination of features and battery life and ease of use and cost.

I mean, it’s not cheap. It’s not an inexpensive running watch, but it’s kind of like in the middle, as far as cost, but I think it’s really packed with features. And I completely love it. But this morning, I kind of gave it the side-eye because I ran 20 miles on Tuesday, and this morning I got an alert on my Garmin that my fitness age is 79 years old and my VOT max is in the bottom 10% for my age.

And I’m like, really? I doubt that. I don’t know, Garmin, I think we may have a difference of opinion. Now, I have to look into what that data really means because I’m no Usain Bolt obviously, but I think I’m at least an average fitness level for my age. Anyway, it kind of made me laugh but also I was just like, that’s not right. That’s not right, Garmin. We need to have a discussion.

But let’s talk about this 20-mile run and why it felt so easy. Now, the night before, Monday night, I had just come home from five or six days, I can’t even remember how long we were there, but at least five days in Savannah, running a retreat for my Run Your Best Lifers.

And so we had two days of really intense coaching and then two days of races and celebrating. It was just super fun. I came home Monday morning, I was wiped out. You guys, I hadn’t slept more than six hours maximum any of the nights I was there. It was more like five hours of sleep most nights.

And I was tired, and I was just not looking forward to this 20-miler. I had so many thoughts. I kept thinking about the 18 miles that I’d done two weeks earlier and how I had to walk the last four miles because my heart rate was spiking and I was getting a little dizzy. And then I was like, obviously the same thing’s going to happen with 20. Maybe it’ll even be worse.

So I just did not want to go on this run. It did not sound like fun and I love the fun and I was anticipating. I was feeling these feelings in advance. I was anticipating feeling very embarrassed and very ashamed about not performing and I just went to the place of this run is going to go terribly, I’m not going to be prepared for race day. I should just quit.

My brain was already failing in advance Monday night. And I started looking for excuses to quit. I was like, I think I might have a sore throat. That’s the beginning of a sore throat. I’m probably going to wake up with a full-on flu tomorrow. I should probably call Amy right now and just let her know I might be sick, don’t be surprised if I bail on you tomorrow. I can’t do 20 miles if I’m sick. That would be irresponsible.

And I was like, I should probably just drop out of the marathon right now so that I don’t have to embarrass myself on race day and I’ll just try again next year. And I just watched it all escalate and I had to take some time to really coach myself through it.

I shared my whole process with everybody in Run Your Best Life. All my doubts, and then what I was going to do about it. Because I think that sometimes people have this vision of me and coach Jen and that we just coach ourselves once and our brains are good to go. That we just change how we want to think and then it’s easy peasy after that.

And it’s really not. It requires continual effort and continual attention because the old habitual thoughts are always going to creep back in. And maybe they don’t creep in quite as often as they used to, but they’re still there, especially when we’re tired or maybe I didn’t get the result that I wanted last time and so now I’m thinking oh well, what makes me think I can do better this time?

So that kind of thinking is always there. It’s just what you do with it that is so important. So it’s not the fact that I still have these doubting thoughts come up once in a while. It’s the fact that I don’t let them fester because if I let them fester, I would end up being worried and anxious all night long. I wouldn’t sleep well. I’d be cranky. I would not show up for my run and my running buddy the way I really wanted to.

And by the way, my running buddy Amy took the entire day off from work so we could do this run together. We were supposed to be doing it over the weekend but of course I was in Savannah with my Run Your Best Lifers and I couldn’t do 20 miles.

I had other obligations and so I decided to move my run to Tuesday, and she’s just so awesome that she took a vacation day from work so we could do our final long training run together. And so not only did I want to show up for myself, fully engaged and ready to rock this out, I wanted to show up for Amy like that as well. I wanted to make sure that I was as supportive as I could be.

So the night before the run, I spent a solid half hour writing out all of my concerns, all the things that I thought were going to go terribly wrong, what I thought I was going to feel. I just went there, to the whole worst-case scenario and then I said okay, how do I actually want to think about this now?

Because how I think about this run tomorrow, how I think about it now, how I think about it all night, how I think about it as we’re driving to the trail, that is going to impact how I perform. And so I looked at everything I’d written down, and I noticed a few patterns.

And one of them – this is so funny. So I was kind of like, I realize that when I’m out running and I feel like, an ache or a pain, I think to myself often, oh, I’m probably hurting myself. This is an injury that’s developing. I should probably stop before I cause permanent damage and I’m never able to run again.

I mean, I go from look, my shin hurts, to I must have a stress fracture and if I take one more step, I’m going to have my leg amputated. I really have watched my brain go there pretty fast. It’s kind of funny when you say it out loud. When it’s in your brain though, when you’re not saying it out loud or writing it down, it seems very real. But then when you put it on paper, you’re like, oh, for fuck’s sake. Is that really how I want to think?

So I know that that’s where my brain goes when I’m running, so I had to kind of get ahead of that and say, alright, come on. That’s not going to happen. You’re not going to permanently damage yourself. You’re not going to create a situation where you can’t run anymore. Bodies heal and overuse injury will always get better with time. And if your recovery is done properly, you come back stronger.

And here’s the best part; this time last year, I was not running because my knee was really, really not functioning properly. I could barely walk on it. And my doctor was saying that I needed surgery. He was saying you have a torn meniscus, you need to have surgery, running a marathon next year is a terrible idea. You should really not even consider training for it.

And that’s where I was 12 months ago and I went to – I got a second opinion and the new doctor said I don’t think you need surgery. I think you just need to really work – do the appropriate PT and really go all in on it. So I said okay, I’ll do that. And you know what? I came back stronger.

I have a torn meniscus and I have bone on bone arthritis in both knees and I don’t have knee pain when I run, you guys, because of the physical therapy, because I had an injury and I did all of the work that I needed to come back from the injury. And now I came back stronger and now I’m training for a marathon and I’m feeling great.

So the thing is that I’ve realized, the pains that I have when I’m doing runs longer than 10 miles, yes, they definitely hurt while I’m running. But the next day, they’re gone. And so I really know that I’m not doing permanent damage and I don’t have to give any space to those thoughts in my brain when they come up.

What’s actually happening is I’m stretching beyond my current abilities when I feel that discomfort and that’s how we grow and that’s how we get stronger and that’s how we become better runners. In the moment, I’m like, danger, danger. I know you know the feeling. You’ve gotten the same one.

In that moment, I think it’s dangerous but really, the truth is that it is just simply me going beyond my body’s current capabilities and that’s what it feels like. It feels uncomfortable.

Now, I am not saying that running through pain that comes on suddenly or is very clearly an injury, like a pulled muscle or a stress fracture, I’m not saying to do that. But if we are honest with ourselves, we know the difference. We know. We know.

You can tell if there’s a tear or a pop or sudden onset of pain. That is usually something that means stop. But if it’s kind of like a little ache that you usually feel when you’re running and then it kind of comes and goes and for me, that happens a lot. This feeling I get on the top of my feet every so often it feels like somebody’s jamming a knife into the top of my foot and I’m like, that does not feel good. That is not fun.

But it comes and goes throughout the run. And interestingly enough, when I don’t pay attention to it, it kind of disappears. And when I start looking for it, it comes back. So I know that that’s really – who knows? Maybe it’s a little bit of tendonitis developing but for the most part, I think that’s just my feet getting used to running this distance. That’s my feet getting used to being weight bearing for this long.

It does not mean that I’ve broken my foot. We know the difference in our heart of hearts. I actually have a tool that I teach in Run Your Best Life to help people do an assessment and decide whether or not to stop. We are going to be teaching it in the Rebel Runner Roadmap as well.

But if you listen to episode 114 of the podcast, I talk about physical discomfort in that episode as well. You know that one of my mantras when the running starts to feel less than easy is these are the miles that I came for. Because anyone can do the easy miles. Anyone can do it.

But the miles where you’re pushing your body beyond its current capabilities are where the work gets done. That’s where the growth happens. That’s where you get stronger. Well actually, technically, you get stronger in the period after you’ve pushed beyond your comfort level when your muscles repair themselves. That’s literally when the growth happens.

But the mental growth happens when you are in discomfort and you want to stop and you keep going anyway because you’re thinking to yourself, these are the miles I came for. This is what’s going to make me evolve and I’m all about the growth and the evolution that happens to your mind, to your body, but also and more importantly to your mind when you are doing the uncomfortable stuff, but you can’t get to the uncomfortable stuff until you make it through the stuff that doesn’t challenge you.

So you have to start pushing up against what you think are your limits and just see how far you can go. And that mantra for me has really been a game-changer and I can’t wait to use it on race day, but I’m also using it everywhere in my life at this point. In my business, just everywhere.

So the final thing that I decided, the mental shift that I made – is that the last mental shift that I made? No, I’m sorry, there’s one more after this. But here’s the mental shift that I made. I just decided, just like I talked about in last week’s podcast, this run is going to be easy. 20 miles, 50,000 steps. I was just going to take one step right after the other. A single step is easy. A single run interval is easy.

I just broke the whole thing down into teeny tiny little actions that are easy all by themselves. I didn’t think about mile 11 when I was in mile 10. I just thought about mile 10. I ran the mile I was in and only that mile. I didn’t let my brain worry about a different mile because I wasn’t there yet.

I’m like, when you’re in mile 10, run mile 10. Do that mile. Don’t get all worried about what happens in mile 15? Oh my god, I hope I can make that far, I don’t think I can do it. Fuck that shit. Just be right in mile 10 when that’s the mile on your Garmin.

And actually, an interesting side note because I said I’d been using this mantra sort of everywhere in my life. Last September, a couple months ago, I was in Dallas for a life coach mastermind event that Brooke Castillo puts on every year for her certified coaches.

And you guys, if you’re not listening to Brooke Castillo’s podcast, it’s called The Life Coach School Podcast. If you’re not listening to it, you should be because she teaches the stuff that I teach, she teaches related to stuff that’s not running, but the same concepts. Her stuff is just mind-blowing. It’s amazing.

But anyway, at this event, I was honored because my business, Not Your Average Runner, earned over $100,000 in revenue last year. That’s the fourth year in the row that we’ve done that as a team, but I’m super proud of that accomplishment because I built this company myself from the ground up with literally no experience on how to run a company. I had no idea.

I’d been an employee in a huge corporation for many years but I had never started my own company. I didn’t know how to do anything. And I figured it all out and here we are, six, seven years later, and we’re pretty successful. I’ve been very successful at running a company. I’m really excited about that.

And the work that I do, the work that we on the team do is helping women all over the world feel better about themselves, so now just have I and have my team created this business that has hit a beautiful revenue milestone, but we’re doing it in such a way that we’re helping people, we’re helping women everywhere – not just women.

There are a few men that listen to the podcast and have written in and said hey, this is a good change for me. But we’re making a difference in addition to building a business. And so I’m super proud about that and so anyway, kind of getting off topic here.

But Brooke asked each of us that was receiving an award at this event to share a few words to the other life coaches and entrepreneurs about how we created our businesses and how we got to the success level that we’re at. And I said, I just say to myself, run the mile you’re in.

In other words, focus just on the task in front of you. Do your best at that task and you will continue to make forward progress. Stop getting into all the drama about where you need to be in six months or a year, how you’re going to figure out your email marketing system and your Facebook ads, and blah, blah, blah.

Stop worrying about all of that stuff. Just focus on the task that you’re in in the moment. Focus on being the best version of yourself right now rather than oh my gosh, who do I need to be in six months. Just be the best version of yourself right this minute and the progress will come.

That’s how I run my business and that’s how I run my running. So if you simply run the mile you’re in, it becomes a lot easier because you don’t have to run mile 20 until you get there. And this is appropriate for all of your training.

And sometimes people come to me and they’re like, I just had my six-mile training run and I don’t think I can do 13 miles. I’m like, well, you don’t have to do 13 miles. You just have to do seven miles next time. That’s it. So don’t worry about doing 13 miles. You don’t have to – that’s weeks away. I want you to focus on how are you going to run seven miles when you just did six miles.

And it just takes all of the weight and the heaviness out of it and suddenly you’re like oh, if that’s all I have to do, I can do that. Shifts your brain so fast. Now, the final mindset shift that I made for this 20-miler is I instituted a very strict no complaining and no whining policy for myself, especially in my brain.

Because I know when I’m out there running and I keep thinking, this hurts, this is hard, I want to stop, when is this going to stop hurting, this is too much for me, when I think all those things, and I know y’all have thought them too, I personally feel defeated and frustrated and unhappy and I quit.

I quit or I just don’t show up for the run the way I want to. It’s because I keep thinking, this is too hard for me, this hurts, I don’t want this to hurt anymore, I want to sit down, I want to stop. I want it to be over. We think that a lot on these really long training runs.

And then we feel shitty and then we quit. But when I say to myself, this is the part where it’s challenging, this is the part where my body starts to hurt, this is the part where I get to see what I’m made of, I can always take one more step, I can always do one more interval. It’s just a little physical discomfort.

When I think all of those things, I feel empowered and strong and determined and I keep going. And that was super powerful because I decided that the night before. I was like, it’s going to hurt and that’s okay. I don’t make the discomfort mean anything other than of course my body hurts, I’ve just come 15 miles. Why wouldn’t it hurt?

And that’s super powerful to shift that to, of course I’m feeling uncomfortable, I’ve just done all of this running and that’s farther than I’ve ever gone before. Of course I feel uncomfortable. Nothing is wrong. This is completely normal. I can keep running.

And at one point – we were probably less than a quarter of a mile from the finish and I just started naming all of my aches and pains out loud. I was like, okay, these are the sensations I’m experiencing right now. I just list them as circumstances.

There was no like, my feet hurt, my back hurts. It was like, okay, the top of my left foot hurts, the instep of my right foot hurts, my left hip flexor is kind of stiff, my right calf feels a little crampy. I just went through all of the sensations and I just started to laugh. I was like, what? All of that and I’m still running.

I was like, who am I? Because really, it all comes down to this; you can run and be in a lot of discomfort. If you run, especially the farther you get – if you’re running three miles, you’re probably not going to be in a ton of discomfort. But once you start pushing up against your limits, you will be.

So that’s a given and the choice is either to suffer or not to suffer. The pain is physical. The discomfort is physical. That is factual. All of the suffering is mental. Suffering happens in your mind. Suffering does not happen in your body. Your body just experiences sensations. Suffering is in your mind.

You can label your physical discomfort as suffering or just as a neutral circumstance. So if the circumstance is x, y, and z hurts, and your thought is I can’t stand feeling like this, you’re feeling miserable. You’re suffering. Your action is to stop running early and then the result is the feelings stop because you thought I can’t stand feeling like this, the feelings stop, but you never learn how to handle the discomfort.

So every single time you come back up against that, you think I can’t stand it, I have to stop, and you stop and you never learn how to handle it. And then also, you might have to deal with some disappointment afterward. Now, if we do a more intentional model on this, if the circumstance is x, y, and z body parts hurt, and your thought is, this is normal and I don’t need to stop, your feeling, at least mine is unconcerned.

I’m like, oh, this is normal. Fine. Keep going. Unconcerned. I keep running and my result is that I don’t quit. I finish the run. Because it’s a given. It’s going to be physically uncomfortable. You don’t have to make it mean that something is wrong if it hurts. It will hurt. But you can run when it hurts. You can still move forward.

And again, when I say hurts, when I say it’s discomfort, I want you to hear me that I’m not saying run through the kind of pain that you know in your heart of hearts when you’re like, my body is telling me a clear stop. But if you stop running and you’re just like, I probably could have kept going, that was your brain playing tricks on you.

So make sure you’re absolutely sure. But if you think you’ve got a stress fracture happening, don’t keep running. But if you know it’s just your muscles saying ow, we’ve come pretty far, this is uncomfortable, keep going.

So when Amy and I finished, we actually talked because we’d just done 20 miles, we’d talked about marathon day. And we both said – I was like, I’m pretty sure I could finish the last six. I was not even pretty sure. I know I could do six more miles, even if I have to walk it. I could totally finish this race.

She’s like, gosh, I don’t know if I could have done it. And I said, well, let’s think about this because if today had been marathon day, you wouldn’t have stopped at 20 miles, right? And she was like, no, of course not. I’m like, so you know you can do another six miles. You just didn’t want to. You were just like, this is hard and I don’t want to.

So I think it’s so important to be really precise with the words that you use when you talk to yourself about your capabilities. Because saying to yourself, oh, I couldn’t do another six miles, we always can do more. If your life depended on it, you could finish that six miles. If it was marathon day and that medal was waiting for you six miles down the road, you would go for it, right? You would not call an Uber. You would not get on the sweep van.

So that language that you use when you talk to yourself about your capabilities is super important. Be very precise with that. Now, when we got into the car, we were both feeling like total rockstars. It was just like this rush of pride and accomplishment. It was amazing.

And I looked at Amy and I said, the discomfort that you just felt for the past few hours, so the first three hours were easy, the last three hours we started to feel some discomfort. So that three hours of discomfort is the price that you paid for the feeling you have right now. Was it worth it?

And she’s like, hell yeah. And I felt exactly the same way. Because the pride that I felt as a result of working on my thinking so I could finish that run, the pride I felt was so much more intense than the discomfort. So much more.

The key is just you have to do the work on your mind ahead of time. You can’t just show up for a run like that without a mental plan because your body is going to be uncomfortable and your brain will interpret that as a reason to stop. And if you have not thought about it ahead of time and prepared your brain, you will stop.

But if you stop, you lose out on that beautiful payout. That amazing feeling that comes after you’re done. It’s not just the endorphin rush in your body after you’re done, but it is that mental rush of holy shit, I just did that. It was totally worth every one of those 50,000 steps, every step of that 20 miles to have that feeling afterwards.

And you know what? We finished that 20 miles in just four minutes longer than it took to do 18 miles. What? That was so fun. Now it’s two days later, my legs are tired. They’re a little stiff. They’re not sore, which is awesome. They’re just kind of like, if I’m walking around if I’ve been sitting for a while and I stand up, I can feel like, I definitely can feel it.

But all things considered, I’m pretty pleased. I honestly could not be happier about how this run went. This is possibly one of my favorite runs that I’ve ever had in my entire life because of the transformation that occurred in my brain was a result of the work that I did.

And again, that discomfort that I felt for 10 miles, for the last 10 miles is pretty much gone now. But the pride is still here. It’s like, more than 48 hours later and I’m still – I keep remembering I did that and feeling this rush of pride. I woke up this morning and my first thought was I ran 20 miles two days ago.

And it’s not – honestly, it’s not really the distance so much that I’m so happy about. It’s the fact that I was able to do this thing I never thought I could do because I allowed myself to feel discomfort and not quit. And I just cannot put words – I mean, I just gave you half an hour of words about it, but really, it’s hard to put words to what that feels like.

It is just everything. That’s the thing that we’re chasing all the time is we want to feel those emotions, and we chase after those emotions with everything that we think is going to be the fastest way to get there and what I learned this week is that taking the long way is so much more satisfying.

When you do the work on your brain to really earn that feeling, it is everything. And I feel like I took myself to a whole new level of achievement, and I don’t mean distance-wise. I mean my ability to manage my mind in a whole new way. It’s just really fucking awesome.

And now I know I can pretty much do anything I want. I’m just so certain of it. Whatever it is, if I want to do it, I can do it. And that certainty in my brain right now, I feel like Captain Marvel. I feel like I could fly. It’s awesome.

So you know what, I don’t even have an obsession to share with you guys this week other than me being obsessed with my own awesomeness, which by the way, you should try being obsessed with your own awesomeness. It feels really good.

But what I do have to tell you and I’m a little obsessed with this thing as well is that in just a few days, we are opening up a brand new running course and it’s called The Rebel Runner Roadmap, and it’s a 30-day online class where you’ll learn my four pillars to becoming a rebel runner.

And these are the foundational skills that help you run with a strong body and a strong mind. So we teach you foundational running skills but we also teach you and give you lots of ways to practice and learn how to shift your thinking so that you can experience the kind of stuff that I have been creating for myself as you have been watching me go through this journey of becoming a marathon runner.

All of these tools, I’m distilling them down. We are going to be teaching this kind of stuff in The Rebel Runner Roadmap. And it is like the podcast on steroids. It is a crash course in becoming a badass runner that believes in herself so hard she feels unstoppable.

So this is a running course unlike any other because most running courses are like, okay, this is perfect running form and these are the minutes that you should run and this is the speed you should run. They tell you how many miles to go and we do a little bit of that. We do a lot of that actually, but what most running courses don’t teach you is how to manage your brain so that you stay motivated and focused and feeling really awesome about yourself.

And that’s what we excel in here at Not Your Average Runner, and that’s what we’re bringing to The Rebel Runner Roadmap. So we’re going to teach you how to run in a whole new way so that you are successful and feel super proud of yourself. Doesn’t that sound awesome? It sounds awesome to me.

So the course is launching very soon. If you want to get notified when it happens, as soon as it’s open and get some early bird bonuses that we’re planning for the first, maybe, 50 people, I’m saying this now. My business manager is going to be like, why do you do this?

Sometimes she finds out about business decisions on the podcast because I think of them while I’m talking to you guys. I’m like, oh, we should do that, I’ll put it in the podcast, we’re going to make it happen. But the first 50 people that sign up for the class itself are going to get some really awesome bonuses that we’re planning.

So if you want to be notified as soon as it’s open and be one of those first 50 people, make sure you get on the list at rebelrunnerroadmap.com. All you have to do is pop in your name and email and then the second it’s available, boom, we are going to let you know and you can just sign up right away and get some of those awesome bonuses.

So my rebellious friends, that is it for today. I will see you next week or I will be in your ear next week and I hope you have a good one.

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.