367: How to Evaluate and Improve Your Running Outcomes

"You either get what you want or the lesson that you need."

In episode 367 of Real Life Runners Podcast, we follow up on last week's discussion about committing to the process by focusing on how to evaluate training outcomes. Regardless of whether you achieve your desired results or not, there's always significant learning to be gained. We talk about the importance of listing training variables such as mindset, consistency, strength training, nutrition, sleep, and stress management and give you a structured approach to assess and improve your training for better long-term results.

00:10 Evaluating Outcomes: Success or Lesson

07:31 The Importance of Mindset in Training

11:42 Consistency and Training Plans

16:11 Nutrition and Its Impact on Performance

20:59 Life Stress and Its Influence on Training

25:45 Exploring Self-Care Beyond Running

26:24 The Importance of Sleep for Performance

29:05 Evaluating Training Results and Making Adjustments

34:48 Sustainable Changes vs. Enhancements

43:00 The Role of Mental Strategies and Coaching

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Transcript

Angie: 0:01

Welcome to the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 367. On last week's episode, we talked about how to commit to the process and to stop second guessing yourself. This week, we want to talk about how to evaluate the outcome, because as we like to say, you either get the result that you want or the lesson that you need. People often say that success is a crappy teacher, but really, it comes down to how we choose to evaluate the outcomes, so that we can either learn how to replicate the success, Or how to change a variable to get a more favorable outcome. So if that sounds interesting, stay tuned. What's up runners. Welcome to the podcast today. We are back with another connected episode. So last week, if you haven't listened to episode three 66 yet, please go back and listen to that one, because this is kind of a continuation of that thought. You know, we were thinking about what we wanted to talk about this week. And, you know, last week we talked about how to stop second guessing yourself, because it's something that I think a lot of us fall into that trap, um, very often. It's hard to sometimes commit to the process. So that's what we really talked about last week is really choosing, making a decision, you know, gathering enough information so that you can make a good decision, making that decision and then sticking to it and not constantly second guessing yourself because that's going to massively slow down your progress.

Kevin: 1:42

Right. So this week we're moving on to what to do once you've actually made that decision, you have a result, and then we need to actually. Take a moment and and stop and look at the outcome and see what we can do with that. You point out in in the intro that you know, we like to point this Drop this this cliche that success is not a great teacher that people learn a whole heck of a lot better from failures this is Honestly, it's one of the things that I do inside of my math class during the school year is I've had these kids that have gone throughout middle school math and they get hundreds on all of their tests and they're pretty confident that They're phenomenal test takers and suddenly they get a test for me and it's not a hundred and I'm like, this is great They're like, but I didn't get a hundred. I didn't do it perfectly. I'm like, yeah, you finally figured out some small weakness In your math skills, like all this is going to do is strengthen you. You've never been challenged before. The, the bar has never been set high enough for you, for you to find a weakness that you actually need to work on. And if you don't work on these weaknesses, if you just keep only clearing really low bars, you think that you're phenomenal at something. Instead, if you have even like success, but small, like small difficulties, these aren't kids that are suddenly getting like twenties. These are kids that are getting 95s and panicking over it because they're used to hundreds. If you can see the small errors and build those, you're going to become a heck of a lot stronger in whatever field.

Angie: 3:06

Yeah. And I think that, you know, oftentimes we do tend to evaluate things when they don't go our way, right? Like when we do. don't, when we don't get the result that we want. So in that case, they didn't get a hundred, right? So they're like, Oh my gosh, what happened? What went wrong here? Like, I think that that's kind of the natural tendency of our brain is to figure out what went wrong if we didn't get the result that we wanted. And so we're going to talk about that today for sure, and how to look at the data and look at what happened to help you evaluate that, but we're also going to go through what happens if you did get the result that you wanted, right? Because I think that. We oftentimes don't debrief whence we, if we actually get the result, we're like, okay, great, that worked, you know, but then we don't go any deeper to kind of figure out, well, what part worked and like, if I want to get better, how do I get better? And so we're going to kind of look at both sides of that coin today. And so whether or not you get the result that you want or that you don't, you can still take that information and that experience to help you get better in the long run.

Kevin: 4:12

Excellent. So it's, it's a good lesson regardless of result is kind of how we're going to steer this particular podcast.

Angie: 4:19

Right. So the first thing that we need to do, like any time we have a result now, we as runners, like one of the easy examples for us to point to would be a race, right? There's a lot of people that race and they have a goal for a race and there's a very clear goal Starting point and ending point. Like you cross that start line, you cross that finish line and you have a result. You have a number. So races are pretty easy. Um, and we're going to be referring to those in today's podcast, but those of you out there that maybe don't do as many races. There's other ways that you can start to apply this information to your life as well, because you don't have to race to be a runner, and I think that's really important, and that's really, so many of you that have reached out over the last couple of weeks after our last few podcasts have really, um, echoed that, cause, you know, I shared with you a couple episodes ago how that's not my thing, Focus currently is, is it's my focus is not on racing and just like getting faster or running longer distances. Like I have a different focus for my running and, but I still think it's important for me to, to track and make sure that I'm moving in the direction that I want to, that my body feels the way that I want it to feel. Um, you know, so there's different things that we can look at, so it doesn't just have to be based on races. So anytime we're looking at an outcome or results, what we first need to do is we need to list the variables. We need to kind of. Take a step back, zoom out for a minute and see the whole picture. Because if we don't see the whole picture, then oftentimes it takes us longer to make progress because we don't see all of the different things and all of the pieces that are contributing to that result that we're getting,

Kevin: 5:55

right? And so many of them are connected to each other. Like this is, it's very rare that you can point to one very specific thing and be like, Oh, that was the exact cause because one variable influences another variable. It influences another one. So being able to list out. things that are having some sort of impact, you can then try and play with them and see like which one might be impacting you more or not. If you get a negative result, we tend to blame what we would like to blame rather than necessarily looking at all of the possible things that could have gone either right or wrong. So list out all of them in a very, very simple way. Objective, very non emotional way. Not hoping that you were like, Ooh, I hope it's this thing. So I can remove that from a training plan

Angie: 6:38

as objective as possible. Right? Like, I think that that's a really good thing that you just pointed out there is that we oftentimes default to one thing, right? Or maybe two things at most we're like, Oh, well, I didn't get the result that I wanted. So it must be the training plan or it must be. be my mileage or it must be this one thing. Like, I think that it's very easy for us to do that. Um, especially with running, because like we said, it is, it tends to be a very numbers based sport, right? Like there are very clear distances. There are very clear paces and speeds and, um, all of that. So it, it can be easy to start to look at that. So. It is important to kind of see all of the variables at play for your results. So that's what we're going to help you do right now. So if you're not running or driving and you have a pen and you want to write some stuff down, great. Otherwise, you can come back and save this episode for later and come back to it. You could also, if you wanted to, hit pause and write us a review on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify because we would love to hear your thoughts after you listen to this episode or, you know, Just your thoughts on the podcast in general if you want to hit pause right now but anyway going into the variables number one is mindset and some of you might be surprised to Hear that. This is what I mentioned first. Those of you that know me well are not surprised at all. Others

Kevin: 8:00

of you are recognizing this is not your first episode. And you're like, of course you went to mindset first,

Angie: 8:04

especially the people in the academy that, you know, those are our current clients that know, I always kind of tend to go here, um, not always first, but it is the driving factor for every single thing. That we do in our lives. So if you are having issues with motivation or consistency or having a hard time pushing yourself on your runs or having a hard time going easy enough on your easy runs, all of that is related to how you are thinking about your training. And so, a couple easy questions that you can ask yourself, so let's go ahead and take a race, for example, right? Like, where might mindset show up during this race? Okay, so number one, did you give up partway through the race? Like, mentally, did you kind of check out of this race? Did you stop pushing yourself at some point in time?

Kevin: 8:52

Right. Which tends to be somewhere around two thirds of the way through the race. If, even if things are going well, cause that's usually like your hardest point, you're not quite to the point that you're like, Oh, I'm close to the finish line, but everything is really, really hurting. And it's, you know, roughly two thirds, almost regardless of the distance. That's when it starts getting really, really hard. If it's super hard before halfway, it is super likely that you gave up partway through that race because you're not even at the halfway point. And you're like, this is harder than it's supposed to be. So it's really tough to hang on then.

Angie: 9:21

It really is hard to, you know, that, so that doesn't mean there's anything negative and nothing wrong with you there. I mean, it just makes it much harder. Right. Um, another question to ask is, are you lacking motivation or are you fighting yourself on most workouts? Like, do you notice that it's just a struggle for you on a daily basis to get out the door? You know, like what. Mentally is holding you back from getting out and doing your training or from doing all of your training that's on your plan and not just your favorite things. You know, those of you that might skip certain things, like I know that, you know, I've done that before to, um, you know, not, it's just something that happens sometimes, right? Like we don't, we're not here trying to judge you or tell you that you're bad for doing that, but like, just ask yourself that, like, do I tend to skip certain things in my training plan? Uh, tend to favor other things,

Kevin: 10:13

right? But I mean, it could go even further than that. Like, are you struggling to get out of the door on almost every single workout? Like, have you made it to a point where other things in your life are getting really, really big and it's just difficult to drag yourself out the door and get in any sort of run easy, hard run strides. Like whatever the thing is, you're just like, Oh, I don't know if I can do that today. Cause it could get to that point.

Angie: 10:33

It could. And the other thing that you want to look at is, do you believe that your goal is achievable? Because it's going to be hard. To get the rest of your training on board. If your mind is telling you that the goal is unrealistic or that you're not enjoying it, or you don't want to do it because that was going to lead to self sabotage, you know, like there's so many different ways that we can either talk ourselves into something or talk ourselves out of something. And so if you don't have a strong reason behind what you're doing, it can be very easy to kind of backtrack and. Not do the thing that you want to do.

Kevin: 11:08

I mean, this is one of my favorite points that you've hit here. We have so many episodes on goal setting, but setting the appropriate difficulty of your goal is critical to get your mind on board. If the goal is too easy, you won't bother putting in the training because you're like, ah, I'll be able to take care of that goal without really trying all that hard. And so. You won't. And if the goal is too hard, then you will see it as ridiculous. So why even start the effort? Because the goal is just so big and ludicrous that your mind can't come up with it. It needs to be just right. It's, it's the Goldilocks goal is what you're aiming for.

Angie: 11:41

Exactly. And so then the next thing, you know, besides mindset and this is related is consistency, you know, are you actually following your plan? So if you get a result, if you run a race, You can ask yourself if you did, you know, get the result, or even if you did, did you follow your plan? Right? Because that is one of the variables in there is your training plan. That is in your training plan has multiple pieces that we're going to get into now, but just asking yourself, how consistent was I with the plan? You know, did I pick and choose? Did I skip things regularly? Did I skip the same types of things regularly? Right? Like how consistent was I with all of those things? The next thing you're going to look at are your runs, right? So for runs, you can look at what was your weekly mileage? How many speed sessions did you do? What, What was the, what were the quality of those speed sessions, right? All of these right now are just variables that we're looking at because these are things that you can change. And by changing these variables, you may get different results,

Kevin: 12:40

right? I mean, these last two are really connected. You're consistent with the plan and what your runs actually look like. So many people, especially if they don't get the result they want, they're like, ah, that training plan didn't work well. Maybe that training plan would have worked if you checked off more of the boxes. And that doesn't mean that you have to follow every plan exactly to the letter. But if you missed a good chunk of it, it might not have been the issue with the plan. So this whole thing of like, Oh, let's look at what the runs are and how many speed sessions, not on the original laid out plan, but on how you actually executed it.

Angie: 13:12

Right. And you say that it might not be an issue with the plan. I would argue that it is, it could be an issue with the plan. Maybe that plan was wrong for you, right? Like maybe that was a plan. Maybe you bit off more than you could chew. And that plan was way over your head. And so you had to take a lot more rest days because you were exhausted from the workouts, right? So right now we're not evaluating whether or not Things were good or bad were simply listing out the variables. Okay, so for this part, I just want you to kind of try to do your best to kind of remove judgment and just let's objectively get what are these variables that we're looking at. Okay, so after you get your runs and your mileage and your paces and the quality of the speed sessions, all that stuff. The next thing you're going to look at is strength training. Did you a, did you perform strength training? You know, were you doing strength training on a regular basis? If you were, how often, how long were your strength sessions? What kind of exercises were you doing? Were you using resistance and weights? Were you using bands? Were you just doing body weight types of activities? Um, were you also incorporating any mobility in your training? You know, like, were you really focused on the quality of your movements or were you just like getting in there and trying to. Thug it out, as our teenager would say, and, um, you know, just get it done and not really thinking about the quality of your workouts. I

Kevin: 14:32

can't believe you went there. That's fantastic.

Angie: 14:34

She listens to this episode, so I can't, you know, uh, embarrass her too much by it. No,

Kevin: 14:38

no, no. She will have no idea that you said that, but she does like to say that phrase. I don't know, six to a thousand times every day. Um, um, But I mean, you've really got it nailed down here. And I'm, I think most people who've been listening to more than one episode are surprised that Jim put strength as number two, because we all know it's mindset. And then how powerful are your glutes as a physical therapist here? Um, but it's, it's not just, did you do the runs, but it's what type of runs? It's not just, Oh yeah, no, I did strength training. Check the box done. It's what type of strength training, what were the exercises? What was the regularity of the exercises? Where's their mobility added to it? It's not just, did you do the runs, but what type of runs were there? What was the intensity distribution? The details matter and it's not right or wrong at this point, but it's a matter of objectively really trying to lay out the picture of what your training looked like.

Angie: 15:28

Yeah. It's getting that full picture because once we lay out the variables as we're going to continue to do right now. Once you get those all laid out, then when we get into part, part two of like, I got the results that I want, or I didn't get the results that I want. Now you have. Levers to pull essentially, right? Like, cause there's so many different levers to pull. There's so many different variables. You might be listening to us right now and thinking to yourself, Oh my gosh, like that's a lot of detail. Like I have to write out like the exact exercises that I was doing. Like you don't have to write, but that will give you more details. And that will give you more levers to pull to help us understand, like, Were you training enough? Were you not training enough? Like, where were you on that spectrum? Um, okay. Next thing that we want to look at is nutrition. Okay. Your nutrition has a huge effect on how you feel and how you perform. So the first thing you want to think about is your overall daily nutrition. Are you getting enough food? Are you getting enough calories? Are you getting too many calories? Again, we're not doing judgment right now, and you don't have to know the exact number of calories that you ate every single day. That would be ludicrous, but But are you getting, for the most part, on a regular basis, are you getting enough food? Are you getting enough protein and carbs? Do you tend to be, you know, underdoing it, overdoing it? Maybe you're not quite sure about that yet, um, but just kind of having an idea of how much you eat on a daily basis. Um, the other thing you want to think about with overall daily nutrition is your use of sugars, artificial sweeteners, and processed foods. Are you eating a diet that's filled with a lot of processed foods, or Are you eating a diet that is more Composed of natural types of foods like fruits and vegetables and lean meats and dairy if you're if you eat dairy You know like what is? Composing comprising your diet posing.

Kevin: 17:21

I think both the words would work in that case and again This is as much detail as you want to put down there. You know, you said that you don't have to count all of your calories, and there's a lot of issues with trying to count all of your calories, but on a regular basis, are you feeling hungry for the last three months? Because you might not be fueling enough. Like, that is, that's a level that you could take it to, of simply like, how hungry am I on a regular basis? Because if you are, always hungry, you're probably under fueled on a regular basis

Angie: 17:51

or not fueling with the right things.

Kevin: 17:53

Yes, which I would argue is still under fueled. If you're not putting the right, the right fuels in like you can't feel your life on pixie sticks. You're going to feel under fueled all the time. No matter how many calories you've got.

Angie: 18:03

Very true. Very true. So after you look at your overall daily nutrition, the next thing you're going to think about is. Fueling around your workouts and your runs. Okay, so this includes before your runs during your runs and after your run. So like in the, in that, you know, one to two hours before in the one to two hours after that's kind of the window that we're looking at here. So. Number one, are you eating before your workouts? If so, what are you eating? How much are you eating? Are you fueling during your runs? If so, with what and how much, and are you eating, like how quickly after your workouts are you eating it? And again. How quickly, how much are you eating and what is that eating comprised of? Because it matters, you know, it's really important, especially if you are a woman over 40 and you're getting into perimenopause, maybe your post menopause and your hormones are different than they were when you were in your twenties. Fueling, the way that we, the food that we put into our body and the choices that we make becomes a lot more important. All right. And like, the same goes for men. It's just a lot more important, I think, for women based on the research that I'm doing. And that's because that's the research that I'm doing right now. I'm doing research on women over 40 in this menopause transition. And the more and more I read and that I understand, it's just becoming so much more important. So very obvious that like both the timing and the quality of the nutrition that we put into our bodies is absolutely critical and that's True for any age. It just becomes even more important as we get older.

Kevin: 19:36

Yeah. You've been doing a whole heck of a lot more research in this area, but I mean, from all the studies and things that I've, I've heard, I'm not diving into the research myself on the, on the male side, but testosterone peaks in like your late twenties and then it's really just sliding downhill from there. And it's a matter of how steep it's sliding downhill. But one of the studies that I've heard recently is making sure that you're fueling enough literally does. lessen the slope of the fate of testosterone. So making sure that you are fueling before, during, after that you are, especially after harder workouts, really making sure that you're able to provide your body, not just protein to build back muscle that you've broken down, but carbohydrates so that it has the energy to actually use the protein to build back the muscles,

Angie: 20:18

right? So what does your feeling look like around your runs? Okay. The next thing you want to see is alcohol intake. You know, are you someone that drinks alcohol? If you are great, if you're not great, just kind of write down or kind of understand how much are you drinking on a daily basis on a weekly basis? How much are you drinking? Like on your hard workout days, right? Like maybe you're someone that just goes out and has a drink on the weekend. Maybe you're someone that has a beer or a couple beers every single day, whatever it is, take a look at it, right? Like again, because alcohol can't affect how we feel and how we perform. So that is another variable to take a look at.

Kevin: 20:55

Yeah, I mean, just keep it in there. Alright, let's keep, keep things moving. Life stress. This is connected to all the other things. Because you just have to keep track of this. Perhaps at the beginning of a training cycle, you looked at your life and you're like alright, this is the training plan, it's gonna work for me, all this is gonna work out fine. And then life stress changed. This doesn't mean that things are good or bad, but simply monitoring what the level of life stress is. How many other big things you had going on in your life. Did you have Unexpected occurrences popping up on a regular basis, you know,

Angie: 21:28

If you have kids, the answer is yes,

Kevin: 21:30

no matter

Angie: 21:30

what age they are.

Kevin: 21:31

That is quite true. You know, but how many big events just showed up? Were they planned? Did they come out of nowhere? Monitor your stress level throughout because it's probably going to affect all of the other things that we've knocked off here too. So again, when you're just evaluating this, put down on a, as objective as you can be what your life stress levels were.

Angie: 21:51

Yeah. Like what else is going on in your life? And this includes. Both positive stress and negative stress. I think that a lot of times when we hear the word stress, we automatically go to the negative almost every time, right? And then you think about it and you're like, well, I don't really have a lot of stress. I know that I've said that before. People are like, well, how stress you? I'm like, I don't have a lot of stress. And you look at me like, are you serious? You know, cause there's a lot of just things going on, things that I'm responsible for, you know, roles that I play in my life. And A lot of those I'm very happy about. Like I love my role as mom, as you know, um, to, to my girls, like it's a huge part of my life, but while most of the time it's a very positive. Stress. There's also negative things that pieces that go along with it. There's things that happen, right? But either way, my brain is constantly thinking about my kids and like, you know, signing them up for camps or making sure that everything is registered and ready for them to start school in the fall or like all these other things. So it's not just, you know, what are the negative things happening in my life right now? It's. What are all the other things that are taking up brain space in my life right now?

Kevin: 22:57

Yes, things that are taking up brain space, other things that you have to be constantly perpetually thinking about. And you point out kids, that's just, that's a constant, constant level at some point.

Angie: 23:08

Yeah. And I'm sure it's, I mean, our kids are tween and teenagers. We have a 14 year old and 11 year old and it's definitely, you know, people always tell you how fast it goes and how things shift. And I think that even if you have adults. Children, even if they're not living in your house anymore, as a parent, you're still thinking about them and you're still wondering how they're doing and you're still concerned at some level. Maybe it's not like an everyday, every hour type of thought anymore, but you're still concerned about your kids at some point. I

Kevin: 23:39

think life stress, my, my metaphor for this is juggling. I can juggle three balls pretty easily. Easily I could kind of walk around and do that So if you give me two to juggle technically, you're not even juggling you're just passing the objects from one hand to the other That's just what you're doing. I could do that and carry on a full conversation do other things But there's no way that I could juggle two objects and cut an onion like it's not It's, it's such an easy task that I don't really have to give it a whole lot of thought, but as soon as I try and start doing something else, it's suddenly like, oh wait, I'm busy doing this task. I don't have free space to do something else with my hands. Your brain works the same way. You're using mental capacity on something, even if it's been there for so long that you're like, oh I don't even think about that anymore. It's still taking brain power to, to, Have those thoughts going.

Angie: 24:28

Yeah. So take stock of like all the things that you've got going on in your life right now, and understand that those things do have an effect on your training, on the results that you have. And the last thing that we want you to think about is sleep and recovery. Now, if we forgot anything, I would love for you guys to shoot me a DM or an email. If you think of other variables that might be at play here, but going into sleep and recovery. You know, how much sleep do you get on a daily basis or on a, what's your average amount of sleep? Like sometimes we, we all have those nights, especially if you're a woman in perimenopause and you guys know that sometimes like insomnia is a very common symptom, um, or

Kevin: 25:05

perhaps you're sleeping next to a woman in perimenopause.

Angie: 25:09

Do I affect you that much?

Kevin: 25:11

On occasion,

Angie: 25:12

on occasion, but more than I used to like 10 years ago. Well, I mean, 10 years ago we had little kids though. So we were like up and down no matter what. Um, so. Yeah. I mean, how much sleep, you know, are you getting on an average day? Um, how much recovery are you getting? Do you take rest days regularly? Do you take light, easy days regularly? Are all of your training days hard? How are you taking care of yourself? You know, do you take baths sometimes or why does everybody always go to baths? It's like self care

Kevin: 25:43

was not going to be my method, regular

Angie: 25:45

massages, meditation. What, what do you got?

Kevin: 25:48

I don't know. It wasn't baths.

Angie: 25:50

What is, what is your self care other than running?

Kevin: 25:53

Nope. That's what I got.

Angie: 25:54

You have to have another form of self care other than running

Kevin: 25:58

this podcast,

Angie: 25:59

recording this podcast.

Kevin: 26:00

Yep. That's pretty good. Self care like it's on a regular basis that we have to stop and think about something beyond like immediately what's happening directly in front of me.

Angie: 26:09

Yeah,

Kevin: 26:10

it's a, it's a pause every single week,

Angie: 26:11

a form of therapy in a way.

Kevin: 26:13

Plus we get to sit really close to each other

Angie: 26:14

and share a microphone. There you go. I mean,

Kevin: 26:17

all of these things are positives in my life.

Angie: 26:18

There you go. Um, but having some for, you know, what, you know, what are you doing to take care of yourself essentially? And then a sleep, sleep is a very, very big part of that. Any like sleep is one of those things that no matter what study you read, pretty much, you It doesn't really matter what the researchers are even studying. Sleep is shown to, if you get more sleep, those measures improve. And if you get less sleep, those measures tend to decline.

Kevin: 26:46

Yeah. And it honestly doesn't matter what they're looking at. It really doesn't like let's figure out their speed, their time until exhaustion, their reaction time on anything. Nope. Doesn't matter.

Angie: 26:55

Yeah. Their mental focus, like anything, when it comes to like physical or mental health, your scores improve. If you get more sleep and you're. your scores decline if you get less sleep. So be honest with yourself. How much sleep are you getting? And also note the quality of that sleep, you know, just because you were in bed for 10 hours doesn't mean you got 10 hours of sleep. I know that I laid in bed last night for, I want to say probably at least an hour. Um, we had a bit of a stressful weekend and my brain is spiraling in lots of different directions. And so it was one of those things where, um, um, My body just my brain and my body just wouldn't shut down for the night, right? So even though I was in bed for a certain period of time I was not sleeping that entire time and you know, how many times per night? Are you waking up also, right? Like these are all measures that you kind of want to take a look at because they can Give you information about how your training is going or how your stress management is going or how other things in your life are going There are sleep, you know, you know Is one of those areas that is affected by a lot of different factors, so it can be a window to what's going on.

Kevin: 28:02

Yeah, usually a window looking backwards, though. Usually, like, it's, it's a good way to see what did just happen and the results from it. But you point out that just because you laid down in bed does not necessarily mean that's when you're slipped up. Sleep clock starts. If you're laying there calm and relaxed, it could be when your sleep clock starts, even if you're not actually asleep, it's still relaxing and recovering. If you're laying there running through the stress of the day in your mind over and over and over again, then it's still relaxing. It's definitely not, but if you're laying there and you're just not quite falling asleep for whatever reason, I think that still falls in the category of sleep and recovery.

Angie: 28:39

Well, it can be more like that meditative state, right? That you're just kind of like resting and relaxing before your body fades off into sleep. Okay. So to, to do a little recap on our variable section here, some of the things that you're going to want to look at are your mindset. consistency with your plan, your runs, your strength, your nutrition, your life stress and your sleep and recovery. Okay. So kind of get a picture of, of what all of those things look like. And now we're going to go into what happens if you didn't get the results that you wanted, because this is again, where a lot of us tend to. Start to evaluate or start to, um, take a look at what went wrong if we didn't get the results that we wanted and one of the biggest mistakes that I know I have made before and I've seen lots of people make this mistake. It's mistakes. It's very, very common. Is when something doesn't work and you don't get the results that you wanted, you're just like, well, that didn't work and you throw it all out and start over, right? But ultimately that can take a lot longer to make progress because you might get lucky and you could just throw everything out and kind of start over with a new training plan and new training philosophy and all the things. And then maybe you do get the results that you want the second time around. Great. But in all likelihood. You might not get the results the second time and so then you're jumping to another thing and then you're just jumping from plan to plan or from philosophy to philosophy and you're never actually giving those things time to work,

Kevin: 30:05

right? The bigger the changes are from one plan to the next to the less likely that it's going to make sort of this continuous. It's not linear progress, but it's like, like, Continuous upward steps. If you go to a completely different training style to go from where you were, even if you didn't get the result you want, you're gonna take several steps backwards to start a completely new training style. If you know, if you go go from like speed up to endurance versus you go from endurance down to speed, like very, very different styles, you're going to be starting several steps. backwards. So making just kind of one or two changes at a time is much more likely to allow you to keep taking not necessarily giant steps forward, but steady small steps that are heading you towards the goal that you really want.

Angie: 30:53

Okay. So once you have all these variables listed out and you didn't get the result that you want, I want you to take a look at those variables and I want you to just pick one or maybe two things to change. You don't want to be in such a rush that you change everything because that might not be sustainable. Even if you're like, okay, well I'm not getting enough sleep and I'm not like, I, I've been inconsistent with my, all my plans. So I am now going to follow my plan a hundred percent consistently all of the time. And my nutrition, I'm going to do an overhaul with my nutrition as well. Like I'm cutting out all processed foods. I'm only eating like organic, natural things that come from the earth. Like it just might not be sustainable to go that way. Right. Could you get results from it? Sure. But what changes can you make that you number one have control over, right? Because a lot of times we want to. Make changes of things that we might not have full control over. Um, like a lot of people want to blame the weather. Like we have zero control over that. Well, oh, I just didn't get, get the results that I wanted because of the weather. Well, congratulations. Now you've given all of your power over to something that you have zero control over.

Kevin: 32:01

Yeah, we spent a good chunk of time listing all the possible variables in the first section here. And weather was not mentioned. You got a lot of variables to look at that are not weather.

Angie: 32:09

Yeah. And I mean, whether is a variable for sure, but you don't have control over it. And so when listed, right. And so what do you have control over and how, you know, what can you change that also feels sustainable and maybe it's only sustainable for this training block, you know, maybe for right now you want to train for a marathon. And so you think to yourself, okay, well for this training block, I'm going to. Not go out on Friday nights because I, um, I'm going to wake up and do a long run on Saturdays, but maybe you really enjoy Friday nights with your friends, even sometimes. And so you don't want to give that up forever, but for this block, it does feel like that's something that you're willing to sacrifice because it is sustainable for a short amount of time.

Kevin: 32:54

Yeah. That's a good way of putting out sustainability. Like ultimately I think a lot of people listening to the podcast are going for, um, uh, Lifelong sustainability and lifelong health. But there are sometimes some constraints that we would put on ourselves that you're like, well, this is not going to be long term sustainable for the next 30, 40 years, but it is totally something my, my motivation and my drive says that I can hang on to this for the rest of my life. For the next three to four months.

Angie: 33:21

And that's why we teach the concept of using training cycles inside the academy. You know, like it's important to know your focus for every single training cycle so that you know, okay, I'm willing to sacrifice this area right now because of this goal that I have, but I know that in a couple of months, that goal and my focus is going to shift a bit. So then I can start to incorporate, you know, Other things that I might want to incorporate at that time, so it's not like I have to make this change and this change has to this is it forever. It's what's working for me right now in this phase of my training and in this phase of my life.

Kevin: 33:57

Yeah. I mean, I think the fact that it's, is what's working for me right now prevents you from having any of these variables that we covered in the first part, be such an intrinsic part of your identity that you're unwilling to consider changing them if you're like, Oh, no, no, no. I'm a person that always runs five days a week. And you're going to try and change your training cycle and focus on strength. And suddenly you're, you've convinced yourself that you have to be running five days a week. That might not necessarily work with, with changes in your plan. So. Everything has to be with how is this best going to work with me right now in the current phase of my life that I'm in

Angie: 34:32

exactly. So when you are thinking of things that you want to change, make sure that you don't change everything at one time, because if you change too many variables, you're not going to know what worked and what didn't work. So it's going to be much harder for you to evaluate now. If you go through those lists of variables and you were like, okay, I found a bunch of areas where I can improve right now, it's not a bad thing if you're like, okay, I'm going to get more sleep and I'm going to start feeling my body more and I'm going to do these things because in the next section, we're going to really talk about what's the difference between a change and an enhancement, okay, because that's a really important distinction for us to make. So let's just assume, so that's kind of the thought of like, if you didn't get the results that you wanted. Now, what if you did get the results that you wanted? Sometimes. Repeating the same plan and doing the same thing over again is going to lead to better results. Sometimes you've, you may have heard us say this or other people say this is like, you know, doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of staying. Insanity. But sometimes when it comes to training, if you do the same thing again, you could get better results. You could get the same results or you could get better results because your body just hasn't had the time to reap the full benefit of that training plan or that training system yet.

Kevin: 35:49

Yeah, it's insanity except in the world of endurance training where training theory is still evolving And we're not sure exactly how long it takes to maximize Some of these variables that you're playing with like I really want to maximize my aerobic capacity So I'm gonna be able to run a certain number of miles per week if you're like 30 miles per week, and you're like, well, I have to make sure that I increase that to 35 miles per week. You might not have maxed out on the benefits of 30. It might not be necessary to raise your mileage. Maybe you have. Maybe that's one of the things that you want to change and adjust, but it's really quite possible, especially if your running age is relatively young. Not necessarily your chronological age, but if you're running training age is fairly young, you might not have maxed out on Any of these things based off of your current training level, just repeating the last three months and saying, Oh, I'm going to go through this same training cycle could take you another step or two up the ladder.

Angie: 36:50

Yeah. What we don't want you to do is to change things just for the sake of changing things. Or changing the wrong things to try to get even better. You know, a lot of times people are like, Oh, well, I did it this way. So if I just do more of that, then I'll get better. Like it's this more is better idea. This works, so it'll be even better if I just do more of this. And, uh, In reality, like Kevin just said, you might get better results by just repeating what you just did, because maybe your body hasn't gotten all of the benefits and all the adaptations that's possible, whereas by adding more of something, you could lead to a decline in performance and just kind of beating your body up unnecessarily with no benefit.

Kevin: 37:35

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's. I'm not even going with it. That's exactly what I was going to say.

Angie: 37:39

Yeah. So going back to this idea of like changes versus enhancements. Okay. What is the difference between a change and an enhancement? And I got this idea from my business coach. And you know, we talked about different ways that we promote our, our programs and our products. There's things that we can change and then there's ways that we can enhance it so that we can reach more people and make more of an impact. So changes. You're not really sure. Like when you make a change, the outcome could be positive or could be negative. So examples that I thought of would be adding more mileage, right? This could be a bad thing for some people. It could be a good thing. Like you could be someone that if you are currently running 25 miles a week and you bump it up to 30 or 35, that might be a good thing. You might see an improvement in your endurance. However. person might bump up their mileage thinking, Oh, well I'll get more endurance, but really it's just adding more stress to their body and putting them at a greater risk of injury,

Kevin: 38:41

right? Like you are going to get better adaptation, the more miles you put, but there's an upper limit and everybody's upper limit is different based off of, you know, one, you're training goals, you're training background, your genetics, everything. There are. Olympic caliber athletes that are running the same race. Some are doing 120 miles a week, and some are doing like 60 to 70 miles a week because over the years and working with coaches, they figured out the mileage limit that over that is just too much for their body, that they've got other things going and to maximize themselves and they'll, they'll finish within a week. A minute of each other, but their training mileage is totally different. So more is not always better. More is simply more.

Angie: 39:25

Well, I mean, and the girl, there's a, there's a runner right now, Parker Valby. She just was third place in the Olympic trials for the 10 K for the 10, 000

Kevin: 39:33

and fourth in the five. Cause she's going to slide in on the five K. But,

Angie: 39:36

and she also just won NCAAs, right?

Kevin: 39:39

All of the NCAAs, right? Like

Angie: 39:40

she won. Pretty much everything.

Kevin: 39:43

She, she made history. She won five in the same, in the same calendar, well, in the same school year.

Angie: 39:47

And, and by, so she run, she won cross country and track

Kevin: 39:51

at two different events, indoor and two different events outdoor,

Angie: 39:54

which is incredible. Right. So, but everybody looked at her because she doesn't run. This, the same mileage as a lot of people. She does a ton of cross training. Absurd amount. So, well, it's not absurd because her results are showing you that it is not absurd, right? Right, but if you

Kevin: 40:09

showed it to any other, if you showed just her training plan to a coach and we're like, what do you think of this plan to try to win NCAA 10K? They would look at it and be like, hmm. I mean, that's going to create a, a very fit athlete, but I don't know if you can win at the high level at that. And

Angie: 40:26

she said, watch me, right? But that's what she found is that that balance works really well for her. And I just, I find that so amazing and so interesting. And I think like, it's going to be really fun to watch her because a she's super young, she's still in college and. How her body responds over like the next decade. You know, like what is she gonna be able to do when she's 30? If she's still running then like it's just really interesting to me. So more is not always better, right? If you add in more strength training. You could get better or it could just make you more tired and lead to a decline in your performance, right? If you jump to a different training plan or a different philosophy, it might work better, but it might not work for you. If you added more speed work, it might be good. It might not be right. Like there's, these are all things that I would consider changes because for some people, it might be a really good thing for other people. It might not be.

Kevin: 41:18

Yeah. I mean, just the two of us sitting here listening, like, On the, on the podcast right now, both run. We both like, even if we were picking the same goal race, the way that I would train for it in the way that you would train for it, we adapt to things differently. So whereas I can crank up miles and be fine the next day, you are much better cranking out an extra speed day during the week and being able to recover from that. Like you can simply hit higher end speed. Speed and come back the next day and feel fine. Whereas I feel pretty beat up at higher speeds.

Angie: 41:50

Yeah, I, I, and I just enjoy it too. So that's also part of this as well. Like, what are you enjoying? Because if you are going out and doing workouts that you find to be drudgery, that mental. Uh, strain and drain is going to be also a physical drain on you as well, versus if you're going out and doing workouts that you really enjoy and that you really love, you're going to come back feeling a lot more energized.

Kevin: 42:12

Yeah. It looks good on paper. Like the new schedule with all these new plans looks like a fantastic training plan, unless you hate it because you're going to hate running at that point. And then you're dragging yourself through all the workouts and I don't think that you're going to make the same thing. physiological adaptations. This is a jump and I am definitely not a doctor stating this, but I don't think you're getting the benefits from the workout if you hate it the entire time. I just don't think your body's going to reap the benefits. You're going to get all sorts of other weird hormone reactions that won't allow you to gain the benefits.

Angie: 42:41

Yeah. You're not wrong in that. I mean, it's, it's a bit of a, Like, I can definitely connect those dots, but we're not going to do that on this episode. I'm

Kevin: 42:48

hypothesizing. That's why I am connecting those dots. No, I think you

Angie: 42:51

for sure are correct there. Like, you're just going to get better results if you enjoy it more. I think that there's a soup, there's a lot of research that can support that. Okay, now let's talk about what is an enhancement. So when I talk about enhancements, it's that when you do these little things. Changes when you make these enhancements, your results can pretty much only improve. There's not really a downside to these enhancements. So some of the examples that I thought of were more fueling. Okay. It might take your body time to get used to it and to adjust, but it will likely lead to an improvement in performance. If you are fueling your body again, with quality nutrition, like not just saying, you know, go, go eat more potato chips or go eat more ice cream. Okay. Although those can be part of a well rounded nutritional plan for yourself. It's saying like, are you fueling your body well for your workouts? And if you improve the quality or possibly the quantity of your fueling, you will likely get better results.

Kevin: 43:49

All right. And so, When we pointed out fueling before, there was before, during, and after. There's your daily nutrition. Daily nutrition is the low hanging fruit here. Like, there's a lot of people that would be like, make sure that you're fueling, and they're like, alright, I need gels during all of my runs. No, you don't. You could benefit from it, but that's not the low hanging fruit. That's like grasping at final pers like, fractions of percentages. Whereas if you're just under fueled most days, if you're not just taking in enough overall calories, if you're not getting a baseline level of protein, it doesn't matter if you're squeezing an extra goo during your run. Like there can be benefits from fueling during your runs, especially longer runs or harder workouts, but it's much, much smaller percentage than the low hanging fruit of eat enough during the day.

Angie: 44:38

Yeah. And if you are looking at that, Uh, around workout nutrition, eating something before your run, even if it's something that doesn't have to be perfect or improving the quality of what you're eating before you run and refueling very soon after you finish working out can also lead to a lot of improvements. Okay. The next one is more sleep. Okay. We already talked about this one. You are not going to have a decline in performance. If you get more sleep, you are pretty much only going to improve if you get more sleep and more recovery.

Kevin: 45:11

Yeah. Sleep just improves recovery. It improves all of the other variables. Sleep, sleep for the win.

Angie: 45:15

Yep. Um, kind of related to this is recovery and stress management. If you learn how to manage your stress better in your life, you're pretty much only going to notice an improvement in your performance.

Kevin: 45:27

But this one's tough. You stick it under enhancements and you're like, Oh, well, I'm just gonna manage my stress better during the next four months. Stuff comes up and there are still going to be hiccups along the way. And well, it would be great to just suggest I'm going to have blanket across the board, lower my stress levels throughout the next training cycle. That's a great plan. And that's a good longterm health plan. Also, I'm just going to, in general, try to work on reducing my overall anxiety throughout the day. That's a win, but you can't expect, and you can't panic when that happens. a stressful event when something unforeseen shows up, it's still going to be there. So yes, try to generally reduce it, but don't freak out when something shows up.

Angie: 46:10

Well, and that's why I said stress management and not stress reduction, right? Because sometimes you can't reduce things that are, that are there, right? But you can always control Your response and your reaction to them. You can control a lot of how those things affect you. Maybe not at first, right? Like if you got, if you kind of get blindsided and hit by something, which I mean, this has just happened recently to us, you know, kind of getting, getting, Getting blindsided by something that initial reaction might be pretty high level, right? But then it's about okay now How am I going to choose to react to this thing the first reaction might not be most ideal It might not be exactly the way you plan to or wanted to handle something, right? But you can always kind of pause and decide at some point in time. How do I want to manage this? What do I want to think about this? How do I want this to affect me? How do I want to show up in this situation, right? So it's not necessarily about just reducing stress. It's learning how to manage yourself in times of stress and how to manage the stress in your life which is extremely connected to the next enhancement that I wanted to talk about which is mental strategies. There's a lot of mental strategies that you can use to For this exact thing that I was just talking about learning how to manage your thoughts and your beliefs and your feelings, um, and really starting to connect with yourself more there because all of those things, your thoughts and your feelings are the things that drive all of the actions in your life, right? So when you have better mental strategies on how to cope with life and with stress in general, that is going to lead to an improvement. And then there are also specific mental strategies that you can use during running, right? Like. learning how to better improve how you handle pain or how you handle discomfort during a run or during a workout. That's not going to lead to a negative training effect. That's pretty much only going to help you. If you understand and develop other tools that you can use to help you manage those periods of discomfort.

Kevin: 48:12

So we've all had this situation in the race where we've got that tool in the tool belt that we go to like, Oh, when things get tough, I, I say this mantra, but sometimes it doesn't work. And if that's the only tool that we've got, suddenly you're in the middle of the race and you're out of tools. You're trying to put a screw in the wall and all you're holding is a hammer and it's just not going to work that well for you. So the more tools that you can develop, the better off it's going to be, which goes right into your next enhancement of Working with a coach because coaches can really help you develop some of these strategies and when and how you can implement all the different strategies. Cause if all you've heard of is, well, let's go to a mantra. There is a whole lot more options out there of ways to kind of make your mind work toward like for you and not against you in the middle of a run.

Angie: 49:00

Yeah. And either a coach or a community. Right. And I want to add a caveat here because. When you start working with a coach, part of what makes it an enhancement and not a change is that if this coach still kind of has the same training methodology and philosophy that you have already been following, right? If you start working with a coach with a different training philosophy, that would be noted as a change and not just an enhancement.

Kevin: 49:24

Right, which hopefully goes positive. And sometimes If things are going really poorly, maybe you want a big change. Like this is one of the things that we didn't really cover, but it's possible that you're looking at the results and you're like, I want to try a drastic overhaul, it might make you go backwards because that definitely falls in the category of change, not enhancement, but maybe that's what you need. Maybe you need something very different to just kind of like shake things up a little bit.

Angie: 49:46

Yeah. And I think that again, it's, if you do end up working with a coach that does do things differently than what you have been used to it again, You're going to need time to make sure that those, to, to check and see if those things are working. So this would be a great time to then use the tools that we taught you in this podcast and kind of list out those variables and decide, okay, what's working, what's not working. What do I want to change here? And then having an expert coach to help guide you through that process can be extremely valuable. Um, especially if it's like, it's a coach that you like, that you connect with. I mean, I work with coaches all the time, you know, like I have my own coaches. Coaches need coaches too, because somebody else can see things in a way that we often can't because we're too close to it.

Kevin: 50:30

Yeah. I mean, that's a really good take on coaches. You also mentioned working with a community around you. And I got to say one of my favorite studies where they had people run up a By themselves, they just like ran up the hill and they asked him afterwards. What do you think? The grade was on the hill and then they had them run up the exact same hill but with a friend And they said what is the grade on it? And they all came up with like two to three percent lower when they were doing the exact same activity But it was with somebody else as long as you were with other people and all kind of working on the same thing It seems like it Later, it's sort of like oh well the more people you love to go with the carrying a couch and then we have to go with the friends reference of pivot, but If you have more than one person carrying the couch, not only is it easier, but just thinking that there are other people around you doing the same difficult activity, it just automatically feels easier, not even because of the physical challenge is reduced, but the mental challenge is lessened.

Angie: 51:29

Yeah, and there's research that has shown that. Improvements in performance just by running with a group and just by running with other people. So, yeah, the research is there to, to provide that. So, we hope that this episode was helpful for you guys. So just kind of take a real look at all the different variables at play in your training and then to decide. If you want to make changes, if you want to just go with enhancements, if you want to seek out more guidance, if you guys need any help with your training, we have a group coaching program. We have one on one coaching. You guys can shoot us an email. You can reach out to us on Instagram at real life runners. If you are looking for any guidance or any help with your training or have any questions. And as always, if this episode was helpful, please share it with a friend, leave us a review on Spotify, Apple podcasts, whatever your favorite podcast Podcast player is and share it with somebody that you think might find it helpful as well so that you can help other people benefit from this information. And you can help us grow the podcast so that we can help more runners out in the world today. And as always, this has been the real life runners podcast, episode number 367. Now get out there and run your life.