Ep #146: Your Summer Running Plan

This is usually the first place that people get hung up in this whole goal process. They say, “Oh, it would be awesome to run a half marathon by the end of the summer,” but then they don’t actually investigate training plans or write the runs in their calendar, or research good beginner races.

And then three months goes by and the half marathon is still a wish and not a reality. But that is not going to be you this summer because you are going to make a plan.

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’re a woman who has never felt athletic but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, a certified running and life coach and I teach women how to start running, feel confident, and change their lives, and now I want to help you.

Well, hello my rebels. Hi. What is happening in your life right now? What is new and exciting for you? And by the way, it’s okay if there’s nothing new and exciting in your life right now. I mean, we’re still in a pandemic. Life has become sort of routine, right?

You’re seeing the same people every single day, you’re doing the same things. So if new and exciting for you right now means that your grocery store got in a new flavor of sparkling water and you got the last case on the shelf, I’m right there with you. It’s totally fine.

And before we dive in today, I do have a quick announcement. So next week, I’m going to be in your ear a day early. So next week’s podcast is coming to you on Wednesday instead of Thursday, and the reason for that is because Wednesday, June 3rd is Global Running Day. Global Running Day is the first Wednesday of June every year and I just decided I wanted you to have a fresh podcast to listen to when you go running on Global Running Day.

So make sure that you look for the early episode next week and plan on it for your training run. And Global Running Day is a day that we celebrate around the world, we celebrate the sport of running in all of its forms. So when you’re planning your schedule for next week, make sure Wednesday is one of your running days because it’s our day.

It’s a holiday just for us. And I want you to get out there and celebrate, even if it’s just a 10-minute run. And I love that Global Running Day is right at the beginning of the summer. It’s a great way to kick off the season. And speaking of running in the summer and just as an aside, for those of you in the Southern Hemisphere, I get that you’re heading into winter.

I wish we were all in the exact same season at the exact same time, but we’re not. But you can still follow the instructions in today’s show for whatever seasonal goal you’re working towards.

So the summer months, I define summer in my mind, it is the time between Memorial Day in the US, which is usually at the end of May. And if you’re listening to this podcast, it just happened a few days ago. So that’s the beginning of summer for me. And then the end of summer is Labor Day. It’s that first or second weekend in September.

We all have a long weekend here in the US. And that’s sort of the end point. And so it’s roughly three months long. Maybe a little longer. Maybe it’s more like 14 weeks, that distance between Memorial Day and Labor Day. But in my mind, it’s a great container for a project or a goal.

So that means that today is an awesome day to start planning. That’s right. I’m challenging you right here, right now, I’m throwing down the gauntlet. I want you to pick a goal for this summer and make it happen. Now, that is exactly what we’re doing right now in Run Your Best Life and I’m basically inviting you to join in the fun with us.

So there’s four steps to our process. I’m going to tell you what they are and then we’re going to go through each one in detail. So the four steps are, number one, obviously, pick your goal. Number two, make a plan and schedule it. Number three, track your progress. Number four, and this is the unpopular step, nobody likes this step, coach yourself when you want to give up.

So let’s start with the exciting part. The picking of the goal. So I want you to pick something you can accomplish in roughly 90 days. Maybe a week or two more or less, whatever. But roughly 90 days, roughly three months. Something that lights you up. Something juicy and fun that you feel all goosebumpy when you think about it.

Or maybe you don’t feel goosebumpy but you feel like seriously badass and proud. You’re like, I did that, that was me. So imagine yourself accomplishing this goal, and if it gives you all the fun feelings, then that is probably your goal.

And so it might be training for a half marathon. If you’re already feeling super comfortable with those 5Ks and you’ve done maybe a four-mile run and you’re like, hmm, you know what, four miles feels pretty good too, you might be ready to train for a half marathon.

Or you might want to work towards running a mile without stopping. That’s a goal that a lot of people have and they say, “Intervals are great and I love doing them for a longer run like a 10K or half marathon, but I also want to see what it feels like to run a mile without stopping or maybe run a 5K without stopping.”

So that’s a fun goal that you could work towards. Or maybe you want to take a few minutes off your 5K time, so you want to get all up in the speed work over the summer. You could work on a consistency goal. There’s roughly 13 weeks in the summer, so you could decide you’re going to run three times a week for 13 weeks.

Or you’re going to strength train twice a week for 13 weeks. Or you could work on accumulating miles. One of my summer activities, one of my fun challenges is I’m doing the One New York challenge where you run or you walk 500 kilometers, about 310 miles, which is roughly the distance from Buffalo to Albany.

They call it the Throughway Challenge, and for those of you that aren’t from New York State, the Throughway is the interstate. I guess they call it an interstate if it’s within the state. I don’t know. It’s I90. And it runs from Buffalo all the way down to Albany and then I don’t know where it goes after Albany because honestly, I’ve never taken it past Albany.

But they call it the Throughway Challenge for this particular purpose because they’re going the Buffalo to Albany distance. Anyway, there’s also an option to do 1000 kilometers, which is Buffalo to Albany and then down to Long Island and then all the way out the end of Long Island, which is about 1000 kilometers.

And then I think there’s even a team challenge where you run the perimeter of New York State. It’s kind of crazy. But those are kind of fun because I know, alright, between May 15th and August 31st, those are the dates for the container for this challenge. I have to cover 310 miles.

And so every day I go out and I run or I walk and I come back and I track my distance that I completed, and I can see now I’m about halfway between Buffalo and Rochester at this point. So whatever it is that you choose for your challenge for this summer, I want you to make it very specific and measurable.

So it’s not like, I want to get out there and run more, that’s my challenge. It’s like, no, I want to get out there and run three times a week for the full summer. Put some numbers around it. Have a very clear measure of exactly what you want to accomplish and then you’ll know when you’ve achieved it. So that’s a goal. So set a goal, make it fun, make it specific and measurable. Know exactly how you’re going to evaluate your success.

Now that you have your goal – and by the way, here’s what I would love for you to do. Post that goal on Instagram and use the #nyarsummergoal. Use that hashtag. And always use the #notyouraveragerunner because you guys, I follow the hashtag and then sometimes I see your posts when they come up in my feed and I can be like, oh, look what Elizabeth did, that’s awesome.

But for this particular one, I’d love to have you use the #nyarsummergoal and let’s just put it out there. Let’s let everybody know what we’re doing and then you guys can follow that hashtag, you can see what other people are doing for their summer goal.

So now that you have it, it is time to plan it. And this is usually the first place that people get hung up in this whole goal process. They say, “Oh, it would be awesome to run a half marathon by the end of the summer,” but then they don’t actually investigate training plans or write the runs in their calendar, or research good beginner races.

And then three months goes by and the half marathon is still a wish and not a reality. But that is not going to be you this summer because you are going to make a plan. Now, I want you to carve out 20 minutes. You don’t have to do it right now. You can come back after you finish listening to this podcast.

Come back, carve out 20 minutes, sit down with pen and paper, set a timer for 20 minutes and then brainstorm every little tiny detail you think you will need to do to accomplish your goal. Like, buy new shoes, get a fitness tracker, find a training plan, book a babysitter, write stuff in your calendar.

Write your runs in your calendar. Do laundry so you have clean clothes. Maybe get an extra charger for your Garmin so you never have that moment of like, oh crap, I can’t find my charger and I have to run later. Every tiny little thing that’s going to support you in your goal, the actions you have to take towards the goal, the supporting actions, all of it.

Write it all out, and then start scheduling that shit on your calendar. Be as detailed as possible so there’s no like, oops I forgot moment. First of all, you can’t get those moments back. So make sure you’re pretty clear on what you need to do and when.

It doesn’t mean that you’re not going to make mistakes and it doesn’t mean you’re not going to forget things, but stack the deck in your favor, for Pete’s sake. Don’t just rely on your memory, especially if you’re like me. Your memory sucks right now.

So use your planner, use your to-do list, use your digital calendar, whatever it is to make sure that you’ve got a really clear idea of everything you need to do. Don’t rely on other people to remember. Don’t rely on yourself to remember. Get it done ahead of time. Stack the deck in your favor.

So the next thing you’re going to do once you’ve got a plan, and when I say get your plan, you’ve got to get your training plan out and you’re going to write all those training runs in your calendar. All of it. Like, right down to the detail.

So once you’ve got that plan completed, the next step is to track your progress. And this is what’s usually fun for people, right? You can create your own tracking system and I know there are a lot of you out there that love either bullet journaling or Post-It notes or spreadsheets or whatever.

So go to town if you want to, creating your own tracking system. Customize it and make it exactly what you want. Or you know what, you can just go to Target and buy a commercially available fitness journal. Or just a blank notebook. That’s totally cool. I’m not saying don’t do that.

But sometimes it’s fun to create your own system because then it’s exactly what you need and you can maybe have a little bit more fun with it, but there are lots of good pre-made trackers. And there’s great apps to track your progress too.

But whatever you use, I want you to make sure it fits your goal. So you’re going to start out by deciding what am I going to track, and then how am I going to track it, and then you’re going to track it. You’re going to do the tracking.

So for example, if your goal is to run three times a week all summer long, it’s like, 39 runs. So if that were me, I would make a chart with 39 boxes and then I would put an X. Actually, I wouldn’t put an X. I would put a gold star in the box every single time I finished a run because I am just crazy for gold stars.

It’s so nine-year-old girl of me, but I love collecting gold stars. It’s my goofy little thing. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my monthly habit tracker with gold stars everywhere. But for you, maybe it’s something else. So you make your chart with 39 boxes or however many runs you’ve decided you’re going to do and you put a big X through it or you draw a picture in it or you put a sticker of a llama in it.

Whatever it is, make sure when you are tracking that you are doing it real time. So you come back from your run, bam, put it in your tracker. Or if you come back from your strength training you said you were going to do, bam, you put it in your tracker.

With a training plan, I’ve done this before. You can look at your training plan and then for every single run on that plan, you make a Post-It. Give every run a number, put those numbers on individual Post-Its. Put the Post-Its up on a wall and then every time you complete one, you can either pull a Post-It off the wall or you put a big X through it.

There’s a lot of ways to make it visual. But make it visual, make it something that you enjoy interacting with and sometimes, if you’re feeling kind of like, “I’m not making any progress,” look at your tracker and notice like, oh, it doesn’t feel like I’ve done that much but three weeks in and I’ve done my run every single week just as I planned.

And that’s a real boost for your ego, right? That like, keeping that commitment to yourself like, hey, I’m pretty good at this kind of thing. So step three is track your progress, and when I say that, I mean figure out what you’re going to track, decide how you’re going to track it, and then actually track it and review it and look at it and enjoy it and savor it. Super fun.

Okay, step number four. This is the one that everybody wants to skip because it’s not traditionally fun. For me it’s fun I think, but I’ve been doing this for a while. But it is the most important step and that is you have got to manage your thinking every damn day.

This is the only way you are going to succeed. I’m very serious about this. I mean, you can white-knuckle your way through your challenge, but you’re going to get to the end and you’re not going to feel great about it. Because it won’t have been fun.

So I’m very serious about this. Managing your thinking every single day. It’s so easy to ignore the thought work. It’s not the fun part. A lot of my clients say, “I don’t want to know what’s in there. I dread writing down my thoughts because I don’t want to admit what I’m thinking.” You just want the fun part. You want the running, you want the strength training.

Maybe some of you don’t, but that’s what you crave. The fun part. But just like strength training, you’re not going to be as effective at running if you avoid working on your thoughts. So why is it so important? Well, here’s the simplest thing. The simplest, most obvious reason is that your mind is going to offer you some thoughts while you’re chasing this goal.

And in the beginning, for the first couple weeks, you’re going to be so excited every time you think about crossing that finish line, or maybe you’re like, “I’m going to buy myself a new Apple Watch if I run three times a week for the whole summer.”

So you’re really excited thinking about the result. But the doing of the goal isn’t going to be exciting every single day. It’s just not. You’re going to have thoughts like, “It’s okay, you can do it tomorrow. Skipping one day won’t hurt. You can do it later.” Or these are some of my favorite thoughts, “This is a dumb goal. Why did we sign up for this?”

I’ve had that thought during almost every single distance event that I trained for. My first half marathon, my second half marathon. Actually, I don’t think I ever had that thought during any of my triathlons because I really, really enjoyed those. But definitely during marathon training last year, I had the thought, “This is a dumb goal. I don’t want to do this anymore. This is way harder than I expected. I’m in over my head. I should just quit.”

So you’re going to have those thoughts while you’re chasing your goal. It’s not a matter of if it happens. It’s not a matter of like, oh gosh, I hope my brain doesn’t go to those dark places. It’s a matter of when. It’s going to happen. It’s like, it’s a done deal.

And so now that you know it will happen, you can be prepared. So part of your summer goal isn’t just to run all the miles. I want you to do me a favor and yourself, more importantly do yourself a favor, commit to doing daily thought work every single day this summer.

And maybe it’s just for five minutes a day. You can minimum baseline that shit if you want to. But if you commit that every day for five minutes I’m going to sit down and write down everything in my brain, I’m going to notice, I’m going to pay attention, I’m going to question when I say shitty things about myself, I’m going to look at that and be like, that’s a thought, that is not a circumstance, that’s not true, that’s my opinion.

If you can do that for five minutes a day, you’re going to notice – first of all, after 90 days of that, you’re going to be a different person. But what’s going to happen is there’s going to be those days when you don’t feel like running and if you do that work in the beginning of the day and you prepare yourself and you say, “My biggest challenge today is probably going to be getting my shoes on and getting out there for that run. Here’s how I’m going to handle it.”

Plan ahead to feel not in the mood and then plan ahead for what you’re going to tell yourself, what you’re going to do when that happens. So if you’re prepared for when you don’t feel like running because you’ve been doing your mental work, you’ll be prepared. It will be so much easier to keep that commitment to yourself.

And then the next time you set a goal, you’re going to be like, “Oh okay, the last time I set a big goal, here’s what I did. This is what made me successful. Alright, part of every goal from now on is going to be daily thought work.” It’s so powerful, you guys.

And again, in Run Your Best Life, I’m not just challenging them to do a summer goal. I’m challenging them to do 90 days of thought work as well. Every single day without fail.

So I want to know what your summer goals are. Again, use that #nyarsummergoal. You can put it on Instagram. I definitely want to see it on Instagram. But if you’re a member of our free official Not Your Average Runner Facebook group, you can go ahead and post it in there. Tell me all the things. Let me know what you’re doing.

Be proud of what you’re doing. You might find that there’s other people out there doing the same thing with the same goal. You can create a little Marco Polo accountability group or something like that. And if you haven’t joined that group, we’ll have a link in the show notes to get you into that Facebook group.

But really, this is it. This is your four-step process to really rev up your summer, pick that goal, plan it, track it, and then manage your mind around it. Alright, my friends, I love you. Stay safe. Get your ass out there and run and I will see you next week for Global Running Day. You ready? I’m ready. Let’s do this.

Oh, and one last thing. If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you have to check out the Rebel Runner Roadmap. It’s a 30-day online program that will teach you exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you’ve always wanted to be. Head on over to rebelrunnerroadmap.com to join. I’d love to be a part of your journey.