327: Redefining Running: From Hobby to Lifestyle

What's the difference between a hobby and a lifestyle? Step into our world where we view running as more than just a physical exercise - it's a whole way of life. We're breaking down barriers and challenging conventional ideas about what it means to be a runner. It's not about times, distances or medals; it's about the mindset, grit and determination that comes with identifying as a runner.

Have you ever caught yourself scoring your performance, feeling defeated when the metrics don't meet your expectations? We're flipping the script on that! We're championing effort over results and showing you why the journey is just as important as the destination. Plus, we're tackling the silent hurdles that could be affecting your performance – from stress management to lifestyle choices. We're shedding light on how you can lead a balanced life that optimizes your running performance without straining your mental or physical well-being. 

Then there's the question of food. Are you eating for health or performance? These two goals may not always align, and we're here to guide you through it. We're talking about how to fuel your body with the right nutrition to meet your running goals. And in the spirit of embracing a multi-faceted identity, we're not just inviting you to identify as a runner. We're encouraging you to explore how running can feed into your other identities and how it can enrich your life experience. So strap on your running shoes, it's time to redefine what it means to be a runner and start living the running lifestyle.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 327. Running isn't just a hobby. It's a lifestyle. If you're looking for ways to bring more joy into your running and you want to be a physically and mentally stronger runner, you're in the right place.

Speaker 2: 0:21

This is the Real Life Runners podcast, and we're your hosts, kevin and Angie Brown. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Now let's get running.

Speaker 1: 0:31

What's up, runners? Can you believe it is already October.

Speaker 2: 0:35

Yes.

Speaker 1: 0:36

You can.

Speaker 2: 0:37

Yes.

Speaker 1: 0:38

It's so hard for me to believe that it's October already, but welcome to October everybody.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Two weeks until the end of the first quarter. As a teacher, I know what date we're on at all times.

Speaker 1: 0:47

You're very happy that it's October.

Speaker 2: 0:48

You're almost wrapped up with the first quarter.

Speaker 1: 0:51

I just it's so crazy, and I know that in other areas of the country and other areas of the world it's probably starting to cool down right now, but down here in South Florida we still have some pretty warm weather.

Speaker 2: 1:01

No, no, no, we're totally experiencing fall. This morning on my run, it was the upper 70s before it climbed into the low 90s. Later in the day, the low 90s, I believe that's our fall.

Speaker 1: 1:10

The thing that's crazy is that there is now Canadian wildfire smoke all the way down here in Florida. I can't believe that that is happening.

Speaker 2: 1:17

It cleared out. Because it did, philippe pulled it away.

Speaker 1: 1:21

Okay, well, excellent, well, we're glad you guys are here Today. On the podcast, we are going to be talking about the running lifestyle and the fact that we believe that running is more than a hobby it's a lifestyle.

Speaker 2: 1:33

Yeah, it is.

Speaker 1: 1:34

And so we want you to kind of understand what that means and how you can think about running a little bit differently in your life, if you don't already think of it this way, because a lot of times we see runners that just think of running as something that they do. Running is just a hobby, it's just something that I do, and if you think about running that way, a lot of times it can lead to inconsistency or a lack of commitment in some people.

Speaker 2: 2:01

Yeah, totally, because it's just a thing that you do for a small period of time during the day, which then makes it much easier to be a small period of time every once in a while, because it's just, it's a thing that you do sometimes.

Speaker 1: 2:14

Right. But if it's more of a lifestyle, if you accept that running is a lifestyle choice for you, then it becomes a lot more a part of who you are and how you choose to live your life.

Speaker 2: 2:24

Yeah, I feel like I need that on a t-shirt. Running not a hobby, it's a lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 2:27

Oh, I think we should there we go. Are you guys in? Do you guys want that t-shirt? I can make it happen.

Speaker 2: 2:32

Yeah, you can.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Let us know, All right. So the first thing that we want to address is this idea of what it means to be a runner. And do you even want to have the runner's lifestyle? Yes, I do. I'm in Sign me up Episode 327,.

Speaker 2: 2:50

I am fully committed to this.

Speaker 1: 2:52

I would like to be a runner. So if you want to be a runner, you can be a runner. You are a runner if you want to be Like. A lot of times I think that there are ideas in the running world or amongst people who run that believe that some people are runners, some people are joggers, some people just run, some people run for fun. People like to put qualifiers on the status of runner a lot.

Speaker 2: 3:24

I think people like to put status on their own running, but they look at others and they're like well, they're runners. They have a large group of people that they accept are runners, but sometimes they put a qualifier on themselves. In general, I feel like the running community is pretty inclusive, inviting, welcoming, I mean. I encourage the inclusivity.

Speaker 1: 3:44

It's a very interesting topic and I feel like that might be a good topic for another podcast of just highlighting inclusivity, exclusivity and some of the stuff around that. But here at Real Life Runners, we believe that if you run, you are a runner and running doesn't need to be just something that you do. But I think a lot of people think that running is just something that I do. It's not a part of who I am and, again, this can lead to lack of full commitment in a lot of ways. If you are a runner, especially a runner that wants to improve, we think it's very important for you to identify yourself as a runner, to really take on and own that you in fact are a runner, Because being a runner is simply a choice. If you run and you want to call yourself a runner, you're totally allowed to call yourself a runner. There are no qualifications. There are no times that you need to hit or distances that you need to hit. There's zero qualifications to be able to call yourself a runner, other than you choosing to do so.

Speaker 2: 4:46

Right. Yeah, it's really something you can take on immediately. If you run, you're a runner. You're like oh well, I just got into it, I just started running, Congrats, Now you're a runner. That's the fun part of running is, as soon as you start it, you're now a runner. And then, even if you're like sidelined for an injury or something, I think even during that period sometimes people get a little questionable on this of like am I still a runner if I'm hurt, if I'm injured? Yes, still a runner at those times as well.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Right. And why is this sense of identity? Why is it so important for you to label yourself as a runner? We believe and this is through lots of years of research and coaching and life coaching and personal development and all the things that I've been studying for pretty much all of my adult life is understanding that identity who we think we are, who we say we are our identity is where everything flows from in our lives. On this podcast, we talk a lot about how our thoughts create our feelings, our feelings drive our actions and then our actions give us the results that we have in our lives, and how we can control those three things in our life in order to try to get the results that we want. All of those things ultimately come from our sense of identity, our sense of who we are, because who we are determines the thoughts that we have about the world. And if who we are determines our thoughts, it then determines our feelings, our actions and our results.

Speaker 2: 6:17

Right. So if you accept identity of runner, then you immediately have the feelings and the actions of runner. They naturally flow out of it, but it starts with the statement of I am a runner, which is very big inside of the real life runners community.

Speaker 1: 6:30

It is, and I know this very well myself because I did not used to identify myself as a runner. I think you always pretty much have right.

Speaker 2: 6:38

I have identified myself. I also identified you as a runner before you identified you as a runner.

Speaker 1: 6:43

That is true. I was definitely in the camp of I run but I'm not a runner, or I just go for jogs, Like the difference between a jogger and a runner there actually is no difference is what I believe. Now Some people.

Speaker 2: 6:57

I fully embrace the term jogging on easy days.

Speaker 1: 7:00

I have no problem with it.

Speaker 2: 7:01

Without throwing a negative to it.

Speaker 1: 7:03

I used to have a negative no problem with the word or the term jogging, but is there a difference between a jogger and a runner? No, that's what I mean, right?

Speaker 2: 7:12

But I used to like in my head I feel like I identified of how people could tell that they were a jogger instead of a runner, and I totally disagree now Because I never really thought there was a big difference. But I understood people who said I'm a jogger, not a runner, because I would watch them. They didn't have, they had one effort every time they went out and it was nice and comfortable and I never like at the time, I had one effort when I went out and it was harder than it was supposed to be. So, as we got into learning all the benefits of easy runs and varied effort levels and the importance of L2, easy running well, sometimes you need to go out and jog and that doesn't make me a jogger, so I'm still a runner at that, and I feel that if all you want to do is easy running, if that brings you the joy, then you're still running.

Speaker 1: 8:01

Yeah, and speaking of easy running, I talked a lot about effort level training and easy running in a free class that I just did this week and if you want access to that free class, you can still get access. If you go over to realliferunnerscom forward slash class, you can still sign up and you can catch the replay of that class today. So we're going to be taking that down in about a week or at the end of the week. So make sure, if you want to see that, you head over to realliferunnerscom forward slash class, put your name and your email in there and it'll take you right to the replay of the live class that I did this week, all about effort level training.

Speaker 2: 8:38

Excellent and if you're catching this replay on some time in the future and you go to that website, it's probably going to take you to a different class that Angie's giving Still a good website to go to.

Speaker 1: 8:46

Still a good link to go check out what I'm going to be teaching you, whatever month you're listening to this Exactly. Because I love teaching and I love coaching and I love helping people live healthier lives. It's like an identity, it is. It's almost like I'm a coach and a teacher and a runner.

Speaker 1: 9:04

But back to a little bit of my story quickly. I never thought of myself as a runner and therefore I was not consistent in my running. There was a very clear in my mind and the actions that flowed from that place of I didn't believe I was a runner. So therefore, why would I just go out and run consistently? I always did think of myself as an athlete I was always an athlete growing up, but specifically not a runner and I think that that led to me not being as consistent as I would have needed to be in order to actually start to get the results that would have helped me identify as a runner, which I now know that obviously our results don't create our thoughts and don't create our identity.

Speaker 1: 9:51

I think that that's something I used to think, but it doesn't really work that way. I think that that's where a lot of us go wrong is we think that we need to have the results first before we allow ourselves to be identified in a certain way, in this case, runner. So once I run a 5K, once I run a half marathon, once I run whatever time it is, then I'll be a runner. We kind of have these made up things in our head that don't actually exist.

Speaker 2: 10:16

Right, because you have to put in the work first before you can even get the results. But then it works on this beautiful loop of. Then you get the results that reinforce your thoughts.

Speaker 1: 10:23

Right. And so once I actually decided, and just made the choice to call myself a runner, then I found OK, well, if I'm a runner, then I've got to start thinking like a runner and doing the things that runners do. I have to start acting like a runner, which then, like you said, starts to give me better results, which then reinforce this idea that I in fact am a runner. But going back to our identity, that is driving these results, what we're hoping that you can hear from this podcast is that you can simply make that choice right now, today, to call yourself a runner and to believe that you are a runner, and you will see that just by doing that, your actions will start to shift because you will start thinking of yourself differently. And that takes us into part two, which is your lifestyle determines your success in running.

Speaker 1: 11:17

And once you identify as a runner and you say, ok, I am a runner, so I need to start living like and acting like a runner. Now, what does that lifestyle look like? What does a runner do? How does a runner choose to live their life? And I think that a lot of times, especially when we're early into running, especially if we get into running with a weight loss mentality or trying to use running as a means to an end, and I think a lot of us get into running that way. I know I sure did. I got into meet girls, yes.

Speaker 2: 11:53

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it was How'd that work out for you at the All-Boy School. You know, I don't need your judgment over here.

Speaker 1: 11:59

Well, when you guys raced in cross-country meets, though, was it always with co-ed, like other schools were co-ed, or did you race against All boys schools, or?

Speaker 2: 12:08

depended on the meat. So when when we had league meets, we would go against the all the local Catholic schools, but it was only boys. There were other every once in a while. There would be like a combo meat that also had girls there, but usually it was just the boys. It wasn't all boys schools we were racing against, but it was just their boys teams. Okay we're in the league that we were part of.

Speaker 2: 12:26

That's so strange but then we will go to invitationals and there would be girls in Sports bras, which is why I signed up for the event excellent.

Speaker 1: 12:35

But I think that a lot of times especially those of us that get into running later on in life, we often get into running and think that running is going to help us make up for some of our other lifestyle choices. For example, I'm running to lose weight, so I want to run to burn off calories. I'm trying to run off those calories. Or I'm trying to run to burn off some of that stress. I'm trying to run off stress. So some of these other things that are happening in our life. We're trying to use running as a way to to control some of those other areas.

Speaker 2: 13:08

Yeah, the whole like I Run, so I run for the cookies, I run for this, or I running is my therapy, like one of these aspects of going at it which does not really necessarily set you up to have the greatest success in running, because you're using running to To sort of mask other areas.

Speaker 1: 13:24

Essentially, right, and that's why I think thinking of it this way of using running to make up for other areas or make up for other Lifestyle choices that maybe you're not as proud of. In whatever way, maybe you know that you should be eating healthier and you're not eating healthier, so you're like well, if I run, then that will kind of counteract and and offset an offset yes some of those other quote-unquote bad choices.

Speaker 1: 13:48

I've dug this hole, but I will run my way out of it exactly, but oftentimes, if that's the way that you're thinking, it will again lead to overtraining, it will lead to not making progress and it leads a lot of runners to getting hurt because you're just trying to run more and run Harder to try to burn off calories or to burn off stress or to use running as a way To make you not feel as bad for some of the other choices that you're making in your life.

Speaker 2: 14:12

Yeah, or to just not feel period.

Speaker 1: 14:14

Yeah, and I think that that's a slippery slope. I think that that can be a dangerous place. I think that it can work a little bit for some people at the very beginning, but I think that once you start to see running as a Something that you want to improve, it's a very dangerous way to think about it if you want to see something running as an area that you can improve, then, to quote it a different podcast I listen to, running is running and therapy is therapy.

Speaker 1: 14:40

Yeah, like, and that that's a good message to have to absolutely, and so what we want you guys to understand is this idea of how, like the way that you live your life, your lifestyle is going to determine your success in running. There's gonna be people that want to argue with this, and that's fine. I'll how. I'll happily argue or debate or discuss.

Speaker 2: 15:00

I should say you will happily discuss. You will not happily argue. I don't, yeah, it does not bring happiness to you.

Speaker 1: 15:06

No, I don't like arguing for the sake of arguing, but I do like to discuss and debate and have a conversation discuss.

Speaker 1: 15:12

So there's a couple different areas of your lifestyle that we want to look at here as things that will help to Determine your success, and things that you might want to Kind of take a look at in the way that you're choosing to live your life and see if there any of these areas you want to make Changes if you would like to find more success in your running. However, you define it right, because for some people, they might just define success as being able to run longer. Some people might define success as being able to run faster. There's a lot of different ways that you can define success in your running, so when I say success, it's whatever that means for you.

Speaker 2: 15:47

Yeah, that's very individual, so let's think about.

Speaker 1: 15:50

How you think Determines your success. Okay, so mindset is not was one of the number one things that we talk about inside the real-life runners Academy Because, like we mentioned already, your thoughts create your feelings, which drive your actions, which then give you the results that you have. So how you think Determines your success. So one of the first things that we like to look at here is where is your focus? When you go out and run, or when you are thinking about your running, what are you focusing on? Are you thinking about how much it hurts or how bad it sucks, or are you focusing on how strong you are, or the fact that you got out the door today, or the fact that you chose to set your alarm and get up? Are you focusing on the things that are going to reinforce your identity as a runner and reinforce you being successful in your running?

Speaker 2: 16:41

Yeah, you phrase things a little differently here. You've said focusing on how strong you are or how much it sucks, and I think Sometimes saying that that runs socked is not the worst statement, but saying, wow, I sucked when I went out and ran today, or I was so weak it hurts, I got so tired in the middle of it. I always get tired in the middle of it.

Speaker 1: 17:07

You know, we've got that's I mean, that's really talking about going back to like our identity, yeah, and, and separating our identity as of a runner versus what's actually happening in our running, and seeing Runner and identity as something separate from what's actually happening, the action of running right.

Speaker 2: 17:26

But to the point here of Where's your focus? Are you focusing on the negatives or are you focusing on the positives? Are you focusing on things that are pulling you back? Because if you keep focusing on how much it hurts, then that's all your brain's gonna go to. It's gonna find new spots in your body that are hurting, like, oh, you think that sides to Churts. What about this spot on your foot? Like it's just going to drive you that direction. If you focus on how strong you are, how good you feel as you go, how happy you are that you were able to get out and run today, even if it's not feeling great, if you can focus on the gratitude for being able to get out and Move today, that tends to help the the run start feeling a little bit better.

Speaker 1: 18:03

Yeah, and I think that, again, I think that is a good thing for you to separate out also is like how you are and the way that you talk to yourself as a runner versus your thoughts about that Specific run or that specific training cycle. You can separate, like I know, earlier in the episode we said that if you run, you are a runner, and that people we don't want people to always think about running, it's just something that you do, but sometimes it is helpful to think of running as something that you do. It is helpful to think of yourself that I am a runner. Running is also something that I do and Every single run does not define me as a runner right there.

Speaker 1: 18:43

There there can be some separation. We did an episode about that relative. I think sometime this year about that, about like separating the actual run from our identity as runner.

Speaker 1: 18:54

Yeah because that's where it gets a little slippery. We're gonna be going into that idea a little bit later in the episode here today as well. But going back to how we talked to ourselves, this was really interesting because we had a cross-country meet yesterday with our high school kids and so today we were doing a race recap and I had all the kids grade themselves on their race performance yesterday, specifically on the instructions that we gave them. So Before the race yesterday we told them the goal of this race is not to get a good time. The goal of this race is not the outcome. We are only focusing on the process of this race. We had a race on Saturday and then one, like you know, they had Sunday. We had a practice on Monday where we did strength training so we knew that they were gonna have tired legs and then another race again on Tuesday.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Plus it was homecoming weekend and plus all the Canadian fires are dumping their smoke on top right so we knew that just all of the outside Circumstances were not setting the runners up for much success on this race. But we're gonna go out and do this race for race experience and for a very specific purpose, and so we had them focus on the process and not the outcome, and the goal was to run negative splits, to try to get faster as the race progressed, to go out Easier than they normally do, and then try to make each mile faster and end with the last mile being their fastest Mile. That was the whole goal. The time on the clock was completely irrelevant, other than we want to try to make you.

Speaker 2: 20:27

You know we want you to push Hardest on that third mile and try to make that third mile your fastest right which is really funny, because then all the kids start asking Me you were an athlete yesterday, but the number that asked me, coach, how, how fast do you think I'm gonna cross the finish line? Yeah, like, exactly how fast should I be for the opening mile is like we want you to take it out in control. It's not an easy run, but it's not as fast as you normally take out a mile. Okay, but like, what does that mean? Well, it means what I just said. Like it's gonna depend. I'm not sure. I I can't feel how tired your legs are, so I'm not sure exactly what that means for you.

Speaker 1: 21:01

Right, and that's what so many of us do. We want to have those very specific numbers to tell us if we're doing a good job.

Speaker 2: 21:08

That if we're doing it right right and this.

Speaker 1: 21:10

That was that's what was so interesting about talking to the kids today and having them reflect on how they did yesterday. And I went through and I said, okay, what went well yesterday, journal about it, what did not go well yesterday and what is something that you want to take away from this race for the next time? Right, and they all went and they Journaled about it. And then I said, okay, now what I want you to think about is what we told you to do was to go out and take the first mile Easier than you normally do and make your last mile the fastest. How many of you went out there and tried to do that, and how well do you think you did with that task? So I'm going around the room and Some kids are giving themselves bees, some are C's, some say D's, a couple F's were in there and I was Kind of confused.

Speaker 1: 22:02

We did not have a single a there was not one a, which I found was very interesting, right, and so I Went around and I said okay. So those of you that gave yourself F's, what you're telling me is that you didn't try at all to do what we told you to do, and they were all like wait, what no?

Speaker 2: 22:19

that's not what I mean. No, no, no, that's not the grade I meant to give myself. No, I tried. I definitely tried, coach, I tried.

Speaker 1: 22:24

Well, that's the thing is that I said that. But if you grade yourself as an F, what I'm asking you to grade here was your effort. Did you try to accomplish the goal that we gave to you? Did you try to run in the way that we asked you to run? And some of them said, yeah, I did try, but I didn't do a good job. And I said I'm not asking you to grade the results, I'm not asking you to grade your outcome of whether or not you were actually able to do it. I'm asking you did you try, grade your effort in trying to achieve that goal?

Speaker 2: 22:59

But they're all sitting in. Several of them are sitting in the same desk that they sit in when I have taught them math or am currently teaching math, and they're like no, no, no, he doesn't grade on effort. It doesn't matter to him how many hours I put into studying. He's going to check and see if I got the right mathematical answer. It's like no, this is not what we're grading. They're so used to grading based off of school, where there's a right and a wrong, but when you're grading effort, it's did you give it a shot? Not, did you give it a shot and it worked out correctly for you, but did you actually give it a shot? And many of them were able to proudly raise their grades.

Speaker 1: 23:33

Yes, and so that's what I asked them. After I said okay, this is what an F means. Is that still the grade you want to give yourself? And so we went around the room again and most of them raised their grades to a B. Still, no one gave themselves an A.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Well, you didn't ask any of the kids who gave themselves a B the first time if they would raise it.

Speaker 1: 23:50

I didn't specifically say their names, but I said, okay, does anybody want to raise their grades? And so that was something that's very interesting too, about how we tend to want to downplay our effort as well, I think, especially in the high school setting.

Speaker 2: 24:05

I mean I think that it's in all settings we like to downplay our effort of well, I gave it a shot. It wasn't great, but I gave it a shot. I tried really hard, but then I didn't get the results I wanted. So I'll give it a C. Then you're basing your grade off of the results, not you really really trying.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Right, and I think that that's because it's a hit to our ego If we decide that we are going to that we actually did try our hardest. I'm going to give myself an A for effort but I didn't get the results, then that's telling me that I'm actually not capable.

Speaker 2: 24:38

Yeah. Then you have that disconnect there and you're like, oh, does that mean that I can't do it? Does that mean physically I'm not going to be able to ever get these results? And then you start snowballing that direction.

Speaker 1: 24:49

Right, because if we protect ourselves and we protect our ego, saying okay, well, I'll give myself a, b, which means, like I tried, but I didn't give it everything I had. I could have tried harder. Therefore, since I didn't get the results that I actually wanted, that's why, because I didn't actually give it an, a effort.

Speaker 2: 25:09

Yeah, I mean I think that a lot of people just have a really difficult time completely eliminating results from grading their performance. I think that's a big issue of it, but I think the ego connect, the ego protection, is a very interesting way to look at it. I had not thought about that when they were grading themselves, but that's that definitely falls in there.

Speaker 1: 25:29

Yeah, and that goes back to like how we think determines our success, if we put all of our feel good apples in one basket, let's give a weird analogy to use right now, but like if we if we determine that our success, our outcomes, our results are what tell us that we did a good job, which is that's how we were trained in school.

Speaker 1: 25:53

Right, that is, you got an A if you got the right answer to the question that the teacher asked If you did the job that the of the project the exact way that the teacher wanted you to do. This is the way that we are conditioned in our society. We are not conditioned on effort. We are not conditioned to give ourselves a good grade for effort if we don't get the outcomes and the results that we want. So we, as runners, if we are basing our success just solely on the results and the outcomes, it makes sense that we would not feel as good about our you know, we would say that we're not as successful as we want to be because we don't yet have the results or the outcomes that we want.

Speaker 2: 26:38

Yeah, I know it's something we have to practice in school. I think it's tough, tougher as we get older, but that's where something like like the arts come in. Like I had a great teacher in high school. My art teacher had us all given art project on day one, so he kind of knew what our baseline was. This is, this is where the kids working from. So then he knew that if it looked like you put in effort or you didn't look like you put in effort, I really like that.

Speaker 1: 27:02

But you know, the arts is one of those things that really like gets me, gets my blood boiling a little bit too, like the fact that you're grading on art. I'm sorry, that's a big no for me.

Speaker 2: 27:12

So he was very big on grading on effort. That's why we had this very simple project at the beginning. So he kind of had a rough idea of what drawing skills you were bringing to day one.

Speaker 1: 27:22

I like that. I'm okay with that. I'm much better with that than like grading objectively on art, like I just have a major issue with that because for so many reasons. But I think that that's one of the things that's so important for us as coaches to be able to emphasize this point to our kids, that it is not just based on this time on the clock. That is not what makes me proud of you. That is not what makes this season successful. Like us, having that very specific time is not our only determinant of success.

Speaker 2: 27:53

No, definitely not.

Speaker 1: 27:55

And I think that's one of the things that's so important about running even for us as adults, as recreational runners and most of us, you know, in our 40s, 50s and beyond are we still defining our success purely based on outcome? And if you are, take a look at that.

Speaker 2: 28:13

Yeah, that's a real good one, I mean, and so many people they run a race and what is the first thing they tell you about the race? Or flip it the other direction. Someone tells you they ran a race. What's the first thing you ask them oh yeah, how fast did you go? People say, oh, I ran a race, this was my finishing time, like they immediately put a number out there and then, depending on what you know about that person, if you know nothing, what are you comparing that time to? Comparing that time to the person who won it? Like, oh, I ran a marathon, I did it in four hours. Oh, what did the winner? Do it in Two, 12. So you weren't anywhere near the winner, so great. But what if that four hour was your best marathon ever, because you had previously run a 425, it's 25 minute PR, but compared to the 212 and the Super Shoes, maybe it wasn't.

Speaker 1: 29:00

Well, when I talk to people about races, like if I ask people how our race went, my first question is usually how did it go? That's a very open ended question in my mind of like how did it go In your opinion? How did the race go? Are you happy with the results? Are you not happy with the results? It's not just time based anymore and I think that even when I say that, a lot of people offer their time because they think that's what I'm asking which is not actually what I'm asking.

Speaker 1: 29:31

I'm asking like, how did it go? Like, are you happy about it? Are you good? But anyway, let's move on, all right. So how you think determines your success, absolutely okay. Another lifestyle factor that determines your success in running is your strength, and when I say strength, I mean both your physical strength and your mental strength. So we won't go into mental strength too much, because we just went into that a lot, right?

Speaker 2: 29:54

We're gonna grab a hold on that one.

Speaker 1: 29:55

Which is good, but ultimately, if you are stronger, you are going to find more success in your running. You are going to be able to accomplish more if you're physically stronger and if you're mentally stronger, and that's because when you are stronger, you're going to be able to run more Like your body's going to be able to tolerate more. If you have the muscle strength to support yourself, if you have the mental strength to keep going and to push through and to persevere when things get hard, you're going to be able to accomplish more in your running.

Speaker 2: 30:25

Yeah, I mean from a purely running side. This is like, in order to get better at running, you don't just need to run more miles. You actually have to build some strength, some actual physical strength, with some weight training and stuff like that, in order to then start increasing the mileage, in order to be the best runner possible. Part of that lifestyle is, in fact, strength training, not just more and more mileage.

Speaker 1: 30:45

Absolutely. Another lifestyle factor that affects your success in running is stress and your level of busyness. Okay, stress affects you and stress is stress. We've said this before. We're going to keep saying it as long as you listen to this podcast. Because, going back to what we were talking about earlier, about how sometimes people try to run in order to deal with stress and to run off stress, a lot of times people that fall into that camp they have a really stressful day or they're going through some stressful things, so they need to go out and they need to push themselves really hard in order to run it off and just sweat it out.

Speaker 2: 31:27

Yeah, that's a bad combo.

Speaker 1: 31:29

Right, and what we want you to understand is that all stress is stress, and running is a physical stress on the body, and the more mental, emotional, psychological stress that you have in your life all of that has an effect on how you perform. So if you have a lot of psychological stress in your life and you then go out and push yourself really hard during all of your runs, you're then adding physical stress to your body. All of those are activating the stress hormones in your body, which is setting off a whole host of processes in your body, and a lot of the stress hormones don't set off processes that you really want happening in your body.

Speaker 2: 32:12

No, and they're also like if you're getting the emotional stress and then dropping physical stress on that, you finish the physical stress, you pick up your phone and you're back in swimming in emotional stress. You never have time to recover from any of it, and you need time to recover, certainly, from physical stress, but you need time to be able to recover from the emotional stress also. So you combo these things and put running on top of a deeply emotional thing in your life and you're just, you're burning the candle at both ends. I think is the metaphor I'm going for there.

Speaker 1: 32:44

Yeah, and I think that running can definitely be one way to deal with stress, because there are there's a lot of truth to the idea that running helps us process things mentally and emotionally and psychologically, and there's a lot of feel good hormones that are also released during running that can help our mood.

Speaker 2: 33:06

As long as you're running at an appropriate level for your current level of stress, like if you are overwhelmed with stress from life and then you're trying to knock out a really physically taxing workout that you're not sure that you can even get through and you're like grinding out the last couple of reps. That's mental stress and physical stress on top of your emotional stress.

Speaker 1: 33:28

Right, and so what we want you to understand is that if you do have one of those harder workouts and you do find that you're in a very stressful period in your life or week or day, sometimes you might not perform as well in that workout as you think that you should or as you would have hoped to, which can then add to mental more like psychological stress, because then you're thinking, well, I'm not in as good of shape as I thought I was, and maybe I'm not prepared for this race, and then we can start to go down a rabbit hole that way as well.

Speaker 2: 33:56

Yeah, I did that one a few days ago.

Speaker 1: 33:57

Did you Mm-hmm?

Speaker 2: 33:59

Yeah, I mean I'm still, I think, ultimately coming back from sickness a few days, a few weeks ago, and I'm not back where I wanted to be at this point in time, and my training at end of September didn't go the way that I wanted it to go, and so it's tough to picture me getting ready and being ready for the next race that I would like to accomplish.

Speaker 1: 34:20

So how does that make you feel?

Speaker 2: 34:22

Frustrated.

Speaker 1: 34:23

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:24

Very frustrated all the time.

Speaker 1: 34:26

So do you feel like other life stresses are affecting how you're showing up in your running right now?

Speaker 2: 34:33

I feel like running stress is showing up how I'm showing up in other places.

Speaker 1: 34:38

So you're stressed around your running performance currently.

Speaker 2: 34:42

Not the physical stress of running. The emotional stress of my current running performance, I think is affecting me outside of running.

Speaker 1: 34:49

Which is interesting, because all that is is the way that you're thinking about your current running ability, yep.

Speaker 2: 34:56

Yeah, I know the mental tricks, but it's still sometimes at 5.30 in the morning when it's hitting you. I'm not awake enough to get my mind wrapped around it properly. So it's tough, it's messing with you.

Speaker 1: 35:08

Yes, yeah. So I mean that shows you that even though we are coaches and we are runners and we know all these things, sometimes we still fall into some of these traps. It doesn't because we're still human.

Speaker 2: 35:18

Yeah, still human.

Speaker 1: 35:19

And going back to your idea before of stress and rest, like you said, that if you continuously stress your body and you don't give yourself enough rest and recovery, you're going to keep just grinding yourself into the ground. This is another lifestyle choice that's extremely important with how your running is affected, and that's your sleep and your rest, and I think a lot of times we see people that are staying up late to spend time with their family or get things done, or work, work, work or taking kids to practice or games or all these different things that are affecting what time you're able to go to bed each night and then waking up early to train in the morning, and this is a big hole that you found yourself in.

Speaker 2: 36:03

I mean, that was the 2017 disaster was staying up late because we would get the kids to bed and then we were working on what I was doing schoolwork. I was doing grading and stuff because it's still a little earlier in school and I think I had a new class prep and stuff, and so I was up late trying to prep stuff for school. I think the podcast was going at that point right.

Speaker 1: 36:26

No, we started the podcast in September of 2017.

Speaker 2: 36:29

Oh good, that was good timing.

Speaker 1: 36:31

But we had started kind of the background behind it. We started to coach a couple runners here and there, like some of the people that we knew.

Speaker 2: 36:38

Yeah. So new business venture and small kids and trying to get up at least five in the morning to be able to get in enough mileage before school started, I mean that broke me. Eventually it was a lot.

Speaker 1: 36:50

It was a lot, and so what we want you to understand is that those lifestyle choices are definitely going to affect your running performance. And the last lifestyle thing that we want to talk about in the running lifestyle that you have to think about is nutrition. Do your nutrition choices support your running, or are you using your running as a way to just justify what you eat?

Speaker 2: 37:13

I try and eat as much as I can to make sure that I have fully supported the running. Like that's the thing is you need to make sure that you are getting in enough calories and quality food so that you can go out and perform the way that you want to run, and that, to me, is one of the top's things. Like, once you've got enough sleep, then you need to make sure that you're getting enough fuel into your body of quality fuel into your body so that you can recover from the workouts, you can prepare for the next workout, and you want to make sure that it's of good quality for your overall health, but also so that you don't feel like junk during the run. Like there's so many aspects to this between your overall health and your running performance. I think they overlap nicely in nutrition.

Speaker 1: 38:00

Yeah, I think so too, and I think that kind of what I said before of do your nutrition choices support your running. Is that what your primary goal is here? Is that what you're thinking of, or are you using running as a way to justify what you ate? I think it's important for us to just become aware of this, and I don't think that either one is quote unquote good or bad, because I don't like to assign good and bad to things. That's just not what I like to do. I just think it's important for us to understand which one is your priority and then don't get mad about it.

Speaker 1: 38:31

So if you are a person that is trying to eat in order to support your running and maybe that means you gain a couple pounds, don't get mad about it, because you are trying to fuel your body for your running. You're not trying to lose weight right now, and that's where I think a lot of runners get into trouble too is they're trying to lose weight and think about their body composition and also think about improving their performance at the same time, and those two things don't always match. Those two things don't always mix and, on the other hand, people that are running as a way to justify what they eat. Maybe you don't have the best quality nutrition, maybe you eat out a lot, maybe you eat a lot of fast food. Maybe you don't eat as many fruits and vegetables as you would like to eat. Whatever the case may be, maybe you have a sweet tooth that you're like oh I really wish I could cut back on that sugar, whatever it might be. But then you use running as a way to burn off those calories or to justify or be like well, I had that ice cream cone, but now. So now I'm going to go for a three mile run and try to burn that off.

Speaker 1: 39:38

If that's the way that you're thinking about it, just understand that, because if you're using running as a way to control your weight or to justify what you ate and you're noticing that your performance isn't improving, understand that that's not what you're actually prioritizing. You're prioritizing trying to burn off calories. You're not actually prioritizing performance, because if you were prioritizing performance and trying to improve as a runner, then you have to start eating a little differently. You have to start making choices that are going to fuel your body in a better way, and that is going to include more quality carbohydrates, less processed sugar, more lean protein and vegetables and fruits, in order to help your body just become healthier and become a more efficient machine that's going to be able to run faster and longer.

Speaker 2: 40:30

Yes, but as you said, neither of these is good or bad. There's no good or bad foods. Sometimes the answer is you need to make sure you get enough calories in, and that means sometimes it's not that you need to justify what you eat. Sometimes you can look at it and be like I ran this much. I need to make sure that I'm getting in enough calories. So there's that side of the coin also.

Speaker 1: 40:52

True, and sometimes calories like you are going to have to take in some more calorie dense types of food in order to make sure that your body is getting enough. Like that's one of the things that you often find yourself in. You know, with your body type and the way that your body burns off calories, like you have to eat some higher calorie like, more densely, more calorie dense foods in your diet in order for you to get the proper amount in so that you're not losing muscle mass or losing bone density or those negatives.

Speaker 2: 41:22

Right, which I view as eating to support my running.

Speaker 1: 41:26

Yeah, and that kind of brings up another quick topic that I want to just quickly address, which is eating for health versus eating for performance, that those two things are not always the same. No, those are definitely not always the same, and I think that that's the camp that you fall into a lot, because there's, quote unquote, healthy eating, which I mean. How do you actually define healthy? That's that's a whole nother podcast episode. No, no, no, the answer is definitely on Twitter. It's on Twitter.

Speaker 2: 41:50

Yeah, it's X now, sorry.

Speaker 1: 41:52

So eating for health and trying to eat healthy, nutrient dense, not processed foods in order to help improve your health does not always match with trying to eat for performance either, because, for example, one of the easiest examples of this is the mid run calories that we need to take in a lot of mid run nutrition are the goos and the gels and the gummies and, like all of these, highly processed, highly like very sugar dense, essentially like they're. They're basically pure sugar that you're taking in during the run.

Speaker 2: 42:33

It's a very precisely scientifically calculated blend of fructose and glucose, possibly in the form of maltodextrin, and then something that will liquefy it so that it goes down nice and smooth.

Speaker 1: 42:45

Right, but when you eat for performance and you're taking in some of these calories mid run, you need things that are going to be very easily digested, be easy on the GI system and something that's going to give your body energy right away and that is highly processed sugar.

Speaker 2: 43:00

Yeah, you don't often see people advertising like the marathon, coming up of what's available at the aid stations along the way of like well, are you going keto? Would you like the salad option? Like we have apple slices. The last time that they served orange slices was, like you know, little kids playing soccer at halftime. That's fantastic. You don't generally see those on the side of marathon.

Speaker 1: 43:23

You might see them at the end.

Speaker 2: 43:24

At the end yes, then you get apple slices and bananas and galore oranges, especially here in Florida. Yeah, lots of oranges.

Speaker 1: 43:30

But the point here is most people would agree that eating a highly processed packet of sugar gel is not the quote unquote healthiest thing to do. Like it's not, that's not healthy eating.

Speaker 2: 43:43

Well, I'm not going to sign up and do it for dinner, but I might break it out at mile four and eight and 12 of a long run.

Speaker 1: 43:49

Exactly, and that's the point is that eating for performance or fueling for performance is not the same thing as eating for health.

Speaker 2: 43:57

Very true.

Speaker 1: 43:58

Like they can be right, because you want to make sure that you're focusing most of your attention on your nutrition should be things that are just going to help support keep keeping your body healthy. But then when you're fueling for performance, it might get into a little diciness.

Speaker 2: 44:12

But making sure that you get enough calories on your run is then connected to your overall long term health. Fasting through a long run and taking in no nutrition because you don't want to take in the highly processed sugar over the course of running for two, three, four hours Also doesn't seem like a great idea for long term health.

Speaker 1: 44:30

That's very true. So if you want to get some more details about fueling your body and eating for health versus performance, we have lessons all about nutrition inside the real life runners Academy, which is open for enrollment this week so you can go over to realliferunnerscom forward slash Academy. If you want to sign up for that, for our program, for our coaching program, you get all of the stuff in the Academy training plans, coaching, all of our programs and we're actually also hosting a workshop at the end of October with a functional health coach and nutritionists. All about plant powered nutrition for everyday athletes is the title of that workshop, and you know she's going to be teaching us the difference between fueling for health and fueling for performance, and how we can incorporate more vegetables and plants into our diet for for health, but also for performance, which is going to be a really fascinating and fun workshop to do. Excellent, and all of that is included. All of our monthly workshops are included with in the membership, so check it out.

Speaker 1: 45:27

Real life runnerscom forward slash Academy. Okay, let's move on. Is there anything else that you wanted to kind of wrap up there as far as like the lifestyle that supports our running? No, I'm good to go, all right, perfect. So the last thing that we want to talk about is, even though we want you I shouldn't say even though okay, so right now we are asking you so far in this podcast, to accept the identity of runner and I am a runner except that that is a part of who you are right and then build a lifestyle that is going to support your running.

Speaker 1: 45:57

If you want to improve your running right Like, you're going to have to build things in your life that are going to help support your pursuit of success in your running.

Speaker 2: 46:07

I am a runner. I ate a healthy dinner. I'm going to go to bed early so that I can get up early, get in some miles, live in the life.

Speaker 1: 46:15

Yeah, and do the things that runners do that are going to lead me to success, all right.

Speaker 1: 46:19

What else we got. What we also want you to think about is that running is not the only thing. Runner is not your only identity, because if you think of being a runner as your only identity, or even as like your number one identity in your life, that that could be a different rabbit hole to go down. It can cause you to sacrifice in all the other areas of your life, which can lead to just especially feeling unfulfilled if your running is not going the way that you want it to.

Speaker 2: 46:49

Yeah, it's like identity fragility I'm going to go with, but maybe that's just because of this slant rhyme, but they're connected. If my only identity is runner on days that I don't run, or many, many hours of the day that I'm not running, then who am I?

Speaker 1: 47:09

But that goes back to the thing is not like, running is who you are and not just what you do. So you can still be a runner even if you're not currently running.

Speaker 2: 47:19

Okay, but what if I get hurt and I can't run for a few days in a row? Then what am I? You start losing bits of pieces of your actual identity, not just a thing that you do, and it's okay, like we are saying right off the bat make running your identity, but not your entire identity. I think is the core thing here is you need some identity breadth.

Speaker 1: 47:44

That's what I'm going with.

Speaker 2: 47:46

A breadth of identities, or just different ones, or multiple personalities.

Speaker 1: 47:50

Multiple personalities.

Speaker 2: 47:51

I have voices in my head.

Speaker 1: 47:53

Do you want to build your entire life around running, like? There are people out there that do this, and we're not saying that there's anything wrong with it. We're saying just make the conscious choice right. What happens if running does get taken away? Who are you outside of running? What else, like, do you have in your life? What else do you like to do? How else do you identify yourself? And I think that running can actually help you build up your other identities as well, because of the lessons and the benefits that we get from running, because I know that, if it all goes away, one of the things that running has taught me, and one of the things that my life as a runner has taught me, is that I'm strong, I'm resilient, I can do hard things, and those lessons spill over into all areas of my life.

Speaker 2: 48:41

I mean I am resilient. Literally is I could deal with it if running got taken away, because I'm resilient and I will find something else Like. That's at the core of that one. That's why that is such a great identity. So is the suggestion that instead of I am a runner like is that still part of my identity, or do I just go deeper to like core values? I am resilient.

Speaker 1: 49:06

I think it can be. I mean, there's so many things that we can go into here and we're obviously not going to be able to address all of them in this podcast.

Speaker 1: 49:17

But we go really deep into all of these things inside the academy too.

Speaker 1: 49:21

We go deep into identity and your why and your core values and how all of that helps you as a human, because ultimately, we want running to help us live better lives. Maybe some of us want to be stronger, we want to be more resilient, we want to challenge ourselves, we want to do hard things, we want to prove to ourselves or accomplish certain things in our life, like I think that there's a lot of reasons that we get into running, and so I think it's important to think of ourselves as a runner and to realize that running is more than just something I do. But at the same time and this is where it gets like really weird we have to also realize that running is just running and that it's not everything in our life, and that we are so much more than just a runner and we do so many other things outside of running. It's important for us to develop ourselves as a whole person, and running definitely helps us with that. Running can help us in so many different ways.

Speaker 2: 50:21

Yeah, but I mean you can also go beyond, like these core values of as a runner, I can find these values inside of me. I am strong, 11 billion. You can just look a little more superficial of the other things that you have as personal identities, like I'm a runner, I'm also teacher, husband, father, I'm a dog walker every night. So there are other identities that I have in time. A podcaster, like there are plenty of other things that I've got besides just runner and I am all of these identities simultaneously. Like I runner is one of my identities and sometimes I lean into it a little bit more, but sometimes I lean into other identities a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 51:05

Yeah, so do you want to talk about the analogy that we've been working out here?

Speaker 2: 51:09

Which one, which one, because we have like 18 of them written down.

Speaker 1: 51:12

Well, so Kevin and I were kind of trying to figure out like a really good analogy to kind of drive this point home of. You know, runner is one of the identities that we have, and so I think what we kind of settled on was a pizza Perfect. So I have one friend that's a mental performance coach and she's fantastic and she describes identity as a pie right Of, like different pieces of the pie.

Speaker 2: 51:34

I had a friend in college that called pizza pie. I'm going to get very confused here.

Speaker 1: 51:37

Exactly, and so and then we have another you know another podcast that we listen to and he thinks about your identity as a house and that we all have different rooms in a house and we have different identities, or each room and you can spend, you know different amounts of time in every room and you go into different rooms, and so that's a great analogy too. So Kevin and I were kind of trying to think about like one of the things like how we like to look at identity, and we came up with pizza because we were like, uh, we tend to do a lot of food analogies around here.

Speaker 2: 52:04

We do a lot of food analogies, but I like this one because it separates a little bit from these other ones. Like in the the room analogy is great, but you can only be in one room simultaneously. And you were saying we need a good analogy that allows you to be multiple identities simultaneously because there's so much overlap. Like when I take on running identity, I'm not suddenly not dad identity. I mean the ultra marathon I ran a couple of years ago. Where I was, I had friend, I had husband, I had father, I had runner going all simultaneously. You know there are strangers out there that I'm now running with. So I also had like took on like random teammate to people that I'd never even met before.

Speaker 1: 52:49

Like temporary extrovert.

Speaker 2: 52:51

Right, yeah, which was super awkward. Like I don't run with people and suddenly I'm like running with people and I don't even know them, so I had to have conversations. Well, I felt like I was going to throw up. Like I feel like I'm going to throw up when I have a conversation with a new person just sitting on the couch. Now, now I'm trying to run down the side of the road. I definitely felt like I was going to throw up. So, anyway, back to small talk, back to pizza, which also helps fuel long runs.

Speaker 2: 53:20

So the pizza analogy is so everybody's got this crust, that's essentially you, and then whatever you put on top of it are all these different identities. But you can have all of these different identities going simultaneously. So if we throw pepperoni or actually let's start with this one sauce when we put the pizza together for our girls, we get a crust, we put sauce on and then greens go on immediately, some chopped up spinach or whatever the greens in the fridge are, they go on the pizza. That's an identity of I'm a healthy eater, okay, but then cheese goes over the top of it. So you might not even be able to fully see that identity anymore, okay, but sometimes the older one can find it and she's like, oh, I see this, and that identity comes back out.

Speaker 2: 54:06

But you can hide identities. You can emphasize identities. Which one do you want to make prominent? Like, oh, this is pepperoni pizza, let's put big pepperonis right over the top of it. You know, maybe I want to lean into my running identity. So let's really emphasize that identity for this time period. Maybe I want to lean into my parent identity. If you have new young kids, that might be a an identity that you want to lean into. And then the the running identity lessons just a little bit. So I like the pizza one because all the toppings are there. But you can highlight different topics.

Speaker 1: 54:36

Yeah, so you can add more cheese Maybe sometimes you don't want to go, you don't want to have sauce, you want to do a white pizza instead.

Speaker 2: 54:42

I never want to do a white pizza.

Speaker 1: 54:43

Yeah, and I never want to do a cheese there's. There are vegans and stuff that eat cheese that doesn't.

Speaker 2: 54:49

That doesn't not make sense to me.

Speaker 1: 54:50

It doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 2: 54:51

It's just bread.

Speaker 1: 54:52

Well, and now the crust. You know, the dough can be cauliflower, I mean, who knows?

Speaker 2: 54:56

So how does this hit your identity?

Speaker 1: 54:58

How does it hit my identity? No, I think that that's that is. The analogy is that we are multiple identities all at the same time, and I think that that's really important and that we have to understand that runner is one of them, but it's not all of them. But we can build a lifestyle around that identity and still incorporate all of our other identities in it as well.

Speaker 2: 55:21

Yeah. So if, if running is cheese on your pizza and cheese goes away because some something happened and you can't run for an extended period of time, if you simply had cheese pizza and suddenly cheese doesn't exist anymore, you don't really have pizza anymore. But if you have a whole bunch of other toppings, it might be an odd pizza. It might not be your favorite pizza without cheese on top of it. But to get to take it directly to running, it might not be my favorite life from day to day. When you fully take running away. I'm going to get over it. I'm strong, I'm resilient, I do hard things. I'm going to figure this out. It's still pizza. I'm still going to eat it. It can still be your personality, as long as it wasn't just cheese pizza.

Speaker 1: 56:08

It can be delicious.

Speaker 2: 56:10

It can be delicious.

Speaker 1: 56:11

And you can try different toppings on. You can take those toppings off.

Speaker 2: 56:14

Yes.

Speaker 1: 56:15

You can have them for a temporary part of time, Like our girls no longer want the spinach on our pizza and so we're like, okay, you know pepperoni and olives it is. And we're going to say, okay, you can have your, your vegetable on the side instead.

Speaker 2: 56:29

And every once in a while you want to do something crazy. You're going to put some like ham and pepperoni or ham and pineapple on it, and that'll be fine, but not all the time. Then the next time you're like, I'll take those toppings off.

Speaker 1: 56:40

Yeah, so you can customize your pizza, make your own pizza.

Speaker 2: 56:44

And make your own life and enjoy it. Put the toppings on. Take the toppings off. Make sure that you are enjoying this. This goes right back to the last one. Enjoy your nutrition as well.

Speaker 1: 56:54

There you go, so if you guys liked this episode, please head over to applecom and leave us a rating and a review so that we can reach more runners and help more people to build the running lifestyle that works for them. And, as always, thank you so much for joining us. This has been the real life runners podcast, episode number 327. Now get out there and run your life.