Real Life Runners with Angie and Kevin Brown

381: 5 Reasons Running Is Feeling Harder Than It Used To

• Angie Brown

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In episode 381 of the Real Life Runners podcast, we dive into why running can feel more challenging over 40, and provide actionable strategies to counteract these challenges. We discuss the importance of tailoring your training to your current abilities and debunk myths about needing expensive gear like carbon-plated shoes. Emphasizing the critical role of proper sleep for recovery, we offer practical tips for managing insomnia and nighttime disturbances, especially for women in perimenopause and beyond. Our conversation highlights the benefits of cross-training, proper fueling before and after runs, and scrutinizing scientific research, noting the underrepresentation of women in exercise studies. We also explore stress management, the 80/20 training principle, and the value of easy runs to optimize performance and prevent burnout. Finally, we advise incorporating strength training, plyometrics, and speed sessions to maintain coordination and muscle strength. 


00:37 Nostalgia and the Reality of Running Over 40

03:31 Adjusting Training as You Age

06:13 The Importance of Sleep for Runners

11:48 Recovery: More Crucial Than Ever

17:41 Fueling Your Runs Properly

22:56 The Importance of Fueling Before and After Workouts

23:11 Gender Disparities in Exercise Research

24:08 Scrutinizing Research Studies

25:39 The Impact of Life Stress on Running

28:03 Social Media and Running Stress

31:38 The Misconception of Junk Miles

34:51 Adapting Training as You Age

39:41 The Role of Strength and Speed Training

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Angie:

Welcome to the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 381. Today we're talking about five reasons why your running might feel harder than it used to. So stay tuned. What's up, Runners? Welcome to the show today. We are talking about why running might feel harder than it used to, especially if you're over the age of 40, like we are. Running used to be this wonderful, magical thing that just felt amazing every single time you went out and run, right?

Kevin:

I disagree with that. I don't think that running ever felt

Angie:

that way. And then all of a sudden, when you turn 40, it all went downhill. That's,

Kevin:

That, that's a good part of it. And we don't even have that outlined at all, but that is part of it is looking back. Running always seems like it felt amazing. Yeah. Cause you don't look back and remember the days especially like the easy runs, the days that you were just supposed to go out for an easy 30, 45 minutes. And it just felt amazing. You don't recall how often that happens, but it's a somewhat regular occurrence and, it's just not one that we recall. We pretend that never happened.

Angie:

It's the same reason why you have multiple children, too, because you forget about the dirty diapers and the sleepless nights and the temper tantrums and all of the things that were Much more challenging. And you remember how sweet they were and how cute they were and the little hugs and their little voices and all of those things, and both happened. And if you really thought about it, it's hard to say which one outweighed the other, but this is how our brain is wired. Our brain is always wired to remember the good things. And there was plenty of so many good things, like when our kiddos were little and especially when they become teenagers and start talking back to you and giving you attitude and. God knows what. And then that's all you remember when they were little. You remember how so sweet and angelic they were.

Kevin:

Because the comparison is so stark at that point. You're like, wouldn't it be as great if I could just put you on my lap and cuddle you like I used to. But sometimes you, when you put them on your lap and cuddled them, they were screaming and throwing me a tender tantrum and then poop themselves. Like you don't recall that.

Angie:

Unless you do, unless there was like that one really funny time when The poop went up the back of the shirt. And that was not

Kevin:

one funny time.

Angie:

That happened a lot.

Kevin:

All the time. Like, why is it going up the top and bottom of this onesie? Is she wearing a diaper? What is going on?

Angie:

What happened? But yeah, going back to our running here. It is sometimes easy to look back with rose colored glasses and think about how great it used to be and how now it's not that way anymore. And if we're being honest with ourselves, it's always been up. There's always been ups and there's always been downs, right? There's always been those days where you had the struggle bus running, riding along on the struggle bus and other days that it felt fantastic. And so we do have the same ups and downs now as we're getting older. It just, maybe it seems like your harder days are starting to outnumber the more pleasant or easier days that you used to have when you were running.

Kevin:

Yeah, I'll give you that. Maybe it's possible that you haven't tweaked training to, to optimize your current abilities, to optimize you for the you that you currently are. And, but that's what running always is trying to figure out how do I work my training to get the best out of me. It this point in my life because of how I trained when I was a teenager was very different than my 20s and 30s and 40s. It continuously changes.

Angie:

Yeah, and I think that's really the overarching principle here is that maybe you haven't made adjustments yet in your training and you need to because as we get older. Our body changes and we need to change our training accordingly. If we want to keep getting good results. And if we want to keep feeling good for the majority of the time during that process. And so if you're still training like you were in your twenties or in your thirties or in your forties, depending on how old you are right now, if you're still trying to train like you did five, 10, 20 years ago, it probably isn't working anymore. And we're going to go into some details. Okay. Today of some of the things that you should start to look at specifically with that training, but that's really what it comes down to is like your training needs to look different now than it did maybe even just two years ago, maybe five years ago, 10 years ago, your body's changing. And so your training needs to change also. That is really the core principle that we're talking about today. So what do those changes need to look like and what might you be doing that you need to. Possibly adjust.

Kevin:

I think number one is starting with buy yourself a 500 pair of shoes.

Angie:

Clearly if you're not running in carbon plated shoes, that's probably the reason why you're Runs are getting slower and running is feeling a lot harder.

Kevin:

Yeah. And the carbon plating is important, but I think more than that is literally just how expensive the shoes are and how absurd they look. If it doesn't feel like you're standing on top of a mattress when you lace up your shoes and certainly. Look like you're standing on top of the mattress. Like the new super shoes out there. They remind me of those commercials where they used to take like a chainsaw and cut a mattress in half so you could see the inside of it. That's the level of foam that we're working with. And the price tags are just absurd.

Angie:

Like a mattress, right? And obviously, we're joking here. You do not. in all likelihood need. No, you don't need carbon plated shoes and they might actually not do you any good if depending on what level of running you are currently in,

Kevin:

they could benefit you, but that's certainly not on our list of needs. It

Angie:

definitely is not. But the first thing that you might be doing that Could lead to running feeling much harder than it used to is number one. You're not getting enough sleep Yes We are going to start with the lowest hanging fruit here because if you are sleeping less than seven to eight hours per night Or you're not getting good quality sleep This is a huge reason most likely why running is feeling harder than it used to because sleep is critical but it's also For all body functions, especially running is moderate leveled exercise, and our body needs to recover between those efforts. And sleep is the best time when our body recovers between exercises. So if you're not getting enough sleep and you're not getting enough recovery, there's definitely, you're, it's definitely going to start feeling harder.

Kevin:

The other issue here is, it's not just enough sleep, it's the quality of sleep. And as we get a little older, sleep disturbances become a whole heck of a lot more prevalent. I know that somebody wakes up frequently through the night and sometimes wakes me up as well.

Angie:

Are you talking about me? No. You're calling me out on our podcast for having to go, get up and go to the bathroom at night? Nope, the dog

Kevin:

is. Definitely the dog is. It's the dog's fault.

Angie:

No, you are not. You are totally calling me out. And you know what? It's true. Because I usually wake up really once per night. I don't think it's multiple times. No,

Kevin:

it's generally once per night and almost every time I sleep through

Angie:

it. Yeah. So I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. I, you're waking me up here because you usually do sleep right through it. But yes, I do typically wake up once per night. I don't know how new of a thing that is though. I feel like I've always done that, haven't I? Like ever since we've been married, I don't know.

Kevin:

Honestly, I think that the more issue for me is that I now wake up periodically when you do it, I used to almost never wake up, but every once in a while now I wake up and I can't immediately fall back asleep. So I notice it a lot more, so it seems like you're waking up. So it seems

Angie:

like a you thing that more than a me thing. But yeah, it's true. Like I do usually wake up once per night to go to the bathroom. So in. And I know that is a common thing, especially as we get older. Some people need to go to the bathroom multiple times per night. And there's multiple reasons that, that, that is happening, especially as women in perimenopause. And if you're after menopause there is a difference in the way that our body, works. Handles urination and if the way that it handles fluids throughout the day and there's insomnia is actually a very common symptom for women in perimenopause and after menopause. I think over 60 percent of women experience some form of insomnia, so that's definitely a real thing. And so knowing that. It's really important for us to do everything that we can to try to maximize both the quantity and the quality of our sleep. And there's lots of things that you can do to help improve your sleep. I'm, I think we have, I'm sure we have an episode specifically devoted to getting better sleep on this podcast, don't

Kevin:

we? We have an episode devoted to getting better sleep, and I'm pretty sure we have a separate one devoted to recovery that has a getting better sleep section in it.

Angie:

Yeah, because sleep is really, And that's why we're starting with it because it is the number one thing that you can do to start feeling better, to having more energy, to making your runs feel better is getting more sleep and feeling more rested. Like your body. So many good things happen during sleep because during your workouts, you're breaking your body down during sleep is when your body builds back stronger and recovers. So if you're not getting enough sleep and specifically. If you're not getting enough deep sleep. And so this is a really important thing to point out because deep sleep is more prevalent and more in the beginning stages of our sleep cycles at the beginning of the night. So the actual ideal window for deep sleep is from 10 PM to 2 AM. That's when our body gets the most amount of deep sleep. And then it's actually, if you look at the sleep cycles and what happens in our brainwaves and all of those things. Throughout the course of the night, we shift out of deep sleep. So like in the hours leading up to the morning, we get less deep sleep and we get more REM sleep or REM sleep. So if we really, if you really want to maximize the amount of deep sleep that you're getting, it's important for you to go to bed earlier so that you're asleep during 10 p. m. to 2 a. m.

Kevin:

All right. That sounds fantastic. I think for some of us that poses a bit of a challenge, like especially if you've got kids getting older, like one of the challenges that we're currently facing is the kids don't want to be in bed. And by the time we get them, they have

Angie:

social lives. Now

Kevin:

they're not allowed to, they're supposed to still be snuggable and on my lap. I'm not sure what's going on. I

Angie:

know. And we have to stay up so that we can go pick them up at different places,

Kevin:

which is just absurd. I'm so glad that you took that one that night that I was feeling off. And I went to bed super early on that night.

Angie:

Yeah, that was homecoming. But here's the thing is, you may have been able to get away with less sleep in the past, but you start. It starts becoming more and more important as you get older because with the loss of our hormones, especially women with the loss of estrogen and progesterone, our sleep just matters way more because estrogen and progesterone used to help our body build back stronger. It used to, it was, they're very protective hormones. So we're losing some of those extra layers of protection. So we need that sleep even more to allow our body to recover. Same thing for men with the loss of testosterone. There's just, men do lose testosterone levels as they get older. It's just not as drastic as the change during menopause for females.

Kevin:

Yeah. You guys have a bigger dropping off point, whereas we just start gradually fading after tragically, I think it's like 25.

Angie:

Yeah, 25 30 is

Kevin:

really early and it just is this gradual downhill slope.

Angie:

There you go. So another reason number two that your runs might be feeling harder is very much connected to the sleep and reason number two that they might be feeling harder is that you're not recovering enough. So this could be because you're running every day or you're running. There you're doing too many hard days, like all of your runs feel moderate or moderately hard. So you're doing too much and just not building in enough recovery into your schedule. And you used to be able to get away with this again, because of the hormones, because of testosterone, because of estrogen, but your body needs more rest and recovery now in between workouts, because like I just said, During the workouts, especially harder workouts, anything that's really above an easy level. If you're like in the moderate to hard range. So when I say that I'm talking about on a scale of one to 10, anything that's really like a four or above your body's going to need recovery time to build back stronger than it was before. And that happens during easy days, rest days, sleep recovery. And so your body needs more recovery, especially in between those harder workouts.

Kevin:

And this goes back to what we open the podcast with is you just need to make sure that the training is optimized for you. So if you used to be able to, cause this used to be my training cycle, I used to be able to do a workout on a Tuesday. Recover with an easy run on a Wednesday and then hit another workout on a Thursday. And that's just not really something that I can pull off anymore. I can't fully recover from Tuesday and hit another speed session on Thursday. I need two recovery days. And I'm still at a point where I can go off and run on those days, but I'm open to other possibilities, which I think is a good viable option for so many people. This is massive benefits of cardio cross training because you can still maintain a real high level of aerobic volume. If your recovery day, instead of adding the extra pounding of going out for a recovery run, if you can transition it over to something that is much lower impact, you can even add some extra moderate. You talk about the running workouts. Once you hit like a level four out of 10. If you're at that three, four, five pace on something that is non impact, like an elliptical or a bike, you just don't get the same fatigue level because you're not breaking down the muscles from the constant pounding that running does. Running is just so brutal to your muscles because of the impact forces that you don't get in the cross training. So if you're trying to wrap your head around Oh, but I always used to be able to run this much. And you're like, I need to be able to push a little bit more. I need that. Okay. Flip it over onto a bike, flip it onto an elliptical, and you can still get that sort of moderate at a little bit higher that you just can't necessarily handle the same way as a pure running total.

Angie:

Yeah, and I think that, again, that's going to be very important for you to start listening to your body and really understand what your body is trying to tell you. If you try what Kevin's trying to tell you, Just suggested and you are feeling more tired than maybe your body's not quite ready for it that yet Or maybe you decided to do that type of cross training on all of your off days Maybe you can do it on one or two times like not every single time, right? So again, this is one of those times where it's really important for you to learn How to interpret the signals that your body is giving to you and fatigue and running, feeling harder. That is a sign, right? Like when you're noticing that you just don't have the same energy, your workouts are much harder. Your endurance is starting to suffer. Those are signs that your body is giving you that things need to be adjusted. And so when you start to make adjustments, then you have to listen again, right? What's happening? What's my body telling me now? Is this good? Do I feel like I have more energy? Do I feel like my running is starting to pick back up again? If not, then pull back or option number two would be. to not include those back cross training and just take some rest days and recovery days for a few weeks to let your body catch up then gradually add those cross training back to back in

Kevin:

right and then gradually add in some easy cross training and see how that works see if you can handle your recovery day being an easy cross training day rather than a rest day and maybe you can maybe that's something you can tolerate and you can keep the volume where it is. Then maybe you might every couple of weeks want a sample. What if I went a little bit more moderate on a cross training, but this is not a every time you cross train, you just dig and grind it out on elliptical. That's not the purpose of cross training. Cross training gives you a chance to be able to get in some workout, feel like you're still putting in the effort because you are. You're still getting the cardio benefits of it, but without the impact and pounding.

Angie:

And this is, I think it makes it easier for some people to maintain that easy effort level. So at first your cross training should feel more like that level two effort that we talk about two out of 10, because on a bike or on an elliptical, maybe it will be easier for you to maintain that easier effort level versus when you're out on your run.

Kevin:

I almost have to go like the opposite on that one. I am so uncomfortable and uncoordinated on a bike, especially like a stationary bike that once I'm beyond like just moving the pedals, it starts feeling pretty moderate pretty quickly because I don't have the same ability to put out power efficiently like I do with my years of running background. So I'm really remarkably inefficient trying to go. Like an easy pace on a bike. Maybe you're just

Angie:

pushing too hard.

Kevin:

Otherwise I feel like I'm barely moving the pedals around.

Angie:

Yeah. And I think that's again, good to know, right? Like good to know that's how your body responds to that.

Kevin:

That's why I prefer an elliptical myself, but other people are like, I can't stand an elliptical, put me on a bike, especially if they've got a biking background or they just enjoy being on a bike or they can take the bike outside.

Angie:

Yeah. All right. Reason number three, why running is feeling harder. Could be because you're not fueling properly again I don't know. I don't know how you're eating. But this is one of the reasons that one of the very common reasons that we often see when people start complaining that they're running is feeling like this is that they're not fueling their body properly. And one of the biggest mistakes that people are making is not eating before a run because well, I've never eaten before run in my past. I've just always just woken up and gone out to run. And people assume that's just going to be able to continue, so it doesn't make sense that they need to now eat before a run. But what we try to explain to them is that, Just because you got away with it in the past doesn't mean that was the best choice for you, and that you probably could have performed even better than you did in the past if you were fueling your body appropriately. Now, as you're getting older, your body just really needs that fuel even more, and so you're starting to feel the effects of that lack of fueling more than you used to.

Kevin:

Yeah, that's exactly the issue is you were able to get away with it, but it's not like you were optimizing yourself before when you were going off on fasted runs. The thing was is that it's convenient, especially if you're an early morning runner. It's convenient to get up, lace up your shoes and head out the door rather than try and figure out like, what am I going to eat? How much am I going to eat? Is it going to agree with my stomach before you get going? And people go for fasted runs. It also used to be a whole heck of a lot more popular. And you don't have to go back that far. You can go back like a decade ish. And there were a lot of elite athletes that were touting the benefits of fasted training. It was like train low, race high so that you would race unfueled and then you would fuel yourself or you train unfueled and then you'd race while taking in different, fuel sources. And it was supposed to turbocharge you or people suggested that. training without putting extra fuel in your body would teach your body to burn more fat. And so there were coaches out there, there were like exercise influence people that were like, this is how it's going to optimize your body. And it, none of that is correct. Like current research suggests that none of those benefits that were touted in the past are at all have held up to any sort of scientific scrutiny.

Angie:

And I think that's one of the really interesting things that. We need to understand about workout research and like research scientific research based on exercise Science is that a lot of times these things? They start happening like in the running world, in the cycling world and whatever it is that researchers are studying it will actually, I should say in just like in competition, these things start happening. Coaches start telling their athletes to do them. Athletes start doing them. And then scientists are like, Oh, we should study that thing. And then it takes years to conduct proper research trials and studies on that type of training. And so then five to 10 years later, we're like, Oh, actually, That didn't work the way we thought it was supposed to work.

Kevin:

Yeah. And the studies that are coming out and they're like, Oh it does work in some circumstances, not among basically anybody listening to this. Especially with the topic of five reasons running is getting harder as we're getting a little bit older, because the only chance that it has of possibly working for you is if you're like in the very crust of the elite runners and in your low twenties and male. That's the very small group of people that it might have even small, slight benefits. And even that group, it's unclear if there's actual benefits or not, especially when you're playing the risk reward. Because, training fasted Is possibly just going to lead you to greater exhaustion and hinder the next workout. So even in that group of super elite testosterone filled 20 somethings, it's possible that the fasted training is going to put their body so much in debt that they're not going to be able to come back and have a good workout the next day. And the next day, and because workouts stack on top of each other, that's long term, not going to be as beneficial.

Angie:

Yeah. And what I can tell you based on the research on. Menop perimenopausal and postmenopausal women, which obviously there's not that, I shouldn't say obviously, but unfortunately, there's not that much good research out there yet, but what we do know is that training in a fasted state, going out and running or lifting is actually detrimental to your Health and to your performance. I should, I was meant to reverse those to your performance and also to your general health. Because when you train in a fasted state, it puts your body under greater stress. Your cortisol levels are higher. It throws your hormones more out of whack, and it actually sets you up for decreased for losses of bone density because, and losses of lean muscle mass as well, because when you do not have the proper amount of fuel on board in your body for your workouts, your body starts breaking itself down to try to find that fuel. And unfortunately it doesn't go straight to fat and it doesn't just burn fat. It burns some fat, but fat is the most difficult, like it requires the most oxygen, the most energy to burn. So our body actually starts to go in and. Attack our muscles, our bones, and break those things down to try to give us energy for our workouts. So it's really important, especially for us females in our forties and beyond to make sure that we are eating before we work out and also fueling after our workout to kickstart that recovery process.

Kevin:

It's tragic that there is more research on. male athletes with VO2 max of 70 to 75 than there is on athletic women between the age of 40 and 60.

Angie:

Yeah, when you look at how many of each are in each population, that's what I'm saying.

Kevin:

Like the population that is generally what exercise studies are done on versus the massive population of, Postmenopausal women?

Angie:

Yeah, just the world. Yes, the world

Kevin:

itself. The fact that you've got 50 percent of the population that's so drastically underrepresented in almost every exercise study, let alone, once you add in age as a factor, that almost none. But to simply just have any women show up in exercise physiology studies, that's a master, that's a big win to begin with. And then you throw in age, and there's almost zero. And

Angie:

so I really want to caution you. I'm just going to take a pause here. When you are learning, if you're someone that likes to read articles, likes to read research studies, if you followed fitness influence and influencers or coaches online, please always be aware of. Who the study was performed on before you take it and apply it to your life I mean by all means go ahead read apply I consider myself a guinea pig because I tried different things to see how I Responded to it, but always understand the population that research was Applied to in the first place before you start to just take it on as oh this is truth This is clearly what I should do. This is scientifically based evidence. Yeah, it might be You Research based evidence for someone that is 25 years old and male. But for you as a 45 or 50 year old female, does that same Information apply. That's where we have to be really start to scrutinize this information to figure out, does the same thing apply or does it not? And in the course of fueling for training, we know that it's much better for women and really men also to fuel themselves before and after training.

Kevin:

Drastically important for women. Like women have a huge downside. Men have essentially no upside and a potential for downside. Women just have downsides. That's really all you've got. Yeah.

Angie:

All right. Moving on to number four. And I want to also say that I appreciate you for acknowledging all of that very much. All right, number four, the fourth reason why running is starting to feel harder is life because oftentimes, we try to separate running and real life and not think about or not acknowledge the effect that. All of the stress in our real life outside of running is affecting and playing a role, how that's playing a role in our running, but. It's all stress, right? Stress is stress. It all affects how you feel and show up. And so when you are stressed out in any area of your life, it's going to affect how you feel in your running because stress has a physiological effect on the body no matter if it's physical stress, emotional stress, mental stress, like whatever kind of stress you're under. It changes the hormones in your body. So cortisol is the stress hormone. When you get stressed out, regardless of if it's physical stress or emotional stress, cortisol rises and cortisol has certain physiological effects in the body, right? There's different things that cortisol does. And so when cortisol levels are higher, then we have more tendency to break cortisol. The body down, there's more tendency for inflammation in the body. Our bodies do not recover as well. There's lots of different effects. And so stress is stress. So if there are things that are going on in your life, it makes sense that running feels harder. And there's a lot of people out there that talk about how running is therapy and running helps relieve stress. And while that can be true, running can have a stress relieving benefit at times. Running is not therapy, it's a form of self care, and it is a way for you to take care of yourself and all of that stuff. Yes, that's true, it can help with stress management, but it can also add to your stress levels, especially if you're pushing harder all the time. Especially if you're going out and you're doing too much and you're not getting enough recovery. All you're doing is raising your stress levels, so this thing that you're doing, running, thinking that it's relieving your stress, is actually doing the opposite. Yes.

Kevin:

So you were talking about adding the physical stress of running, trying to like, yeah, it's going to give me a little bit of balance and help have some self care and almost some relaxation time as I go out and run. But then there's the physical stress of running. But now what if you go out, you have the physical stress of running. And then you post your results on a social media. Then you check social media and you scroll and you've got a bunch of run running influencers and you're comparing your times to them. You've got so many things out in the world. Strava gets shared with all sorts of people. How many likes did you get off of your run? And. What now actually I saw, I don't know if you saw this, but there's no Strava AI, which doesn't seem to work very well, except it's a very positive thing. It seems to congratulate you on basically everything that you do. So that's at least working in your favor. Yeah.

Angie:

The people in our running group, like inside the Academy, our clients have been posting in our private Facebook group. And cause I guess like some of them were getting messages and others weren't getting them yet because I'm sure they're rolling it out. It's

Kevin:

in beta, it's limited release and stuff. Yeah.

Angie:

And people were excited. They're like, I got a message today. And they see at least the ones that were screenshotted and posted in our group seem to be positive.

Kevin:

From what I hear, it's remarkably just like a super cheerleader coach with nothing useful and informative at all.

Angie:

Okay.

Kevin:

And that's not the worst thing. No, in terms of adding stress, at least it's not critical. Like

Angie:

Garmin,

Kevin:

that's exactly what I was going to say. Like looking down at my watch and Oh, I just went out for a six mile run and looked at my watch and says, Oh, unproductive, overreaching. Thank you. Thank you so much. Garmin. I needed to know that I was overreaching. Of course I'm overreaching. I just, I raced a 5k. The whole goal of that was to be overreaching, but I think that was the last time it told me I overreached. Oh

Angie:

my gosh, there was a couple of weeks ago where I went out and I did a Speed workout. And I, at the end of the workout, my watch said recovery. And I was like, wait, what? That did not feel like a recovery run at all. So I don't know. Sometimes Garmin's a little messed up in the head.

Kevin:

If it's a, it's risk based heart rate. So if it's not reading your heart rate, it's not going to be right.

Angie:

Yeah. Cause I think I was doing sprints. Garmin, especially short sprints, like it doesn't read your heart rate. Accurately, it takes it too much time to catch up. And by the time it catches up, I'm already done with the sprint.

Kevin:

Yeah. It's reading your heart rate. And it's also not realizing how fast you're running because your sprint doesn't cover that grade of time. So by the time it realizes you're going fast, you're slowing down already. So

Angie:

are you saying I'm? too fast for Garmin?

Kevin:

I'm saying you're too fast for the satellites themselves. The satellites that are flying through space. You're too fast for those.

Angie:

So fast. So yeah, so understand that your life is going to have a huge effect on how you feel, and that's okay. It's best for you to acknowledge that, It's not just try to keep pushing through it and saying, Oh, I'm not going to let this get me down. Okay, sometimes maybe that's what you need that one day you've got, you had a really tough day and you're going to go out and do a hard run. Maybe it can make you feel better temporarily, but if you're doing that day after day, running is just going to feel really hard. You're going to set yourself up for burnout and possibly a running injury as well.

Kevin:

I was really hoping that number four was going to be the magic supplement that you're not taking. Do we have that on the list of the magic supplement that you should be taking?

Angie:

Is it ketones? It could

Kevin:

be ketones or some sort of green powder. It's one or the other.

Angie:

Yeah. Who knows? There's so many different supplements out there, so that could be a reason that running is feeling harder as well.

Kevin:

It's probably the ketones. It's

Angie:

probably the lack of the ketones. All right. So number five, anything else that you want to say about life?

Kevin:

No, maybe you were forced to play the game life the night before. That is going to have some solid impacts on your run the next morning. You were

Angie:

up late playing the game of life? Yeah,

Kevin:

one, you weren't able to sleep and two, it was not quality sleep and there may be some high levels of cortisol.

Angie:

So you didn't end up in millionaire row?

Kevin:

No, not millionaire row. Oh,

Angie:

bummer. All right, number five. Reason that running could be feeling harder right now is that you think that running needs to feel hard to be effective. Maybe that's because you're not valuing your easy days or you're not really bought into this whole 80 20 principle or polarized training or this whole idea that some of your running and by some most of your running should feel easy. And only a small percentage of it should feel moderately hard. A lot of people have those ratios backwards and they're doing most of their runs at a moderate to high intensity level. And maybe a sum of their runs easy. Some don't even have any easy runs whatsoever because maybe you just don't believe that's the case. It's hard to buy into this concept. I totally get it. I had a hard time buying into this concept when I heard it at first as well. But. But if you're someone that just thinks that I need to be pushing myself, running has to be hard to be effective. There's no way that if I'm not working hard, if I'm not sweating enough, it's not effective. If that's the mentality that you're going into, it makes a lot of sense why running is starting to feel gradually harder because of all of the reasons that we've talked about today already.

Kevin:

If you're pretty sure that you just need to sweat a lot more in order to run, I suggest moving to Florida. Because I finished my run this morning, and I was not at all breathing hard. It was a very comfortable run the entire time, and I was dripping a puddle on our driveway. Absolutely water dripping off my elbows, dripping off the bottom of my shorts. So really, if sweat is really all you're going for, come live in the sauna that we live in. The sun also had not even gotten close to coming up at the time. Like it was pitch black and I'm just dripping in our driveway. So that seems like a solid option. I think another one here is Running needs to hard if you're still using the term junk miles There's gonna be something off with your mindset because if you're going out and getting a run, it's a good run It's a worthwhile experience Unless you're put the only junk miles are really the ones that you're pushing too hard to be comfortable valuable for you, the ones that are pushing you over the limit and saying, Oh wait, now I don't have enough time to recover. Now I have to take an extra off day. We talked about making sure you get enough recovery. And before if you're pushing too hard and forcing extra off days all the time, that's just leading to overall inconsistency because for the sake of an extra hard day, I would argue it's better to have a couple of easy days. More easy days along the way rather than have to keep pushing and then two days of recovery and then push really hard and then three days of recovery. That's just inconsistency.

Angie:

Yeah, and I think that could be, putting those miles in that quote unquote gray zone. We don't talk about the gray zone a lot here because They're all miles for the most part are worthwhile miles, we believe, but it's true. If you are pushing too hard, if you're in that medium to moderate zone all of the time, you're just overstressing your body. So I wouldn't call them junk miles, but I would call them uselessly hard miles or, I don't know, miles that could be easier. I don't have a good term for it, but part of the reason that we often see people falling into this trap is that. Maybe you're not yet accepting the fact that things need to change, right? Accepting your body for its current strengths gives you permission to train for your current needs. This is super important because We're sometimes thinking that in order to get faster, I just have to push myself harder. I just need to run faster. If I want to build more endurance, I just needed to go out and run more and more. But as we get older, the way that our body responds to exercise changes, and also the way that our training is structured should also change. We need to have a much bigger focus on strength training, on building muscle, on building that lean muscle mass, building stronger bones. And if you're just going out and running every single day and you're ignoring strength training in the process, because you feel like, Oh, I just have to keep pushing myself. I keep having to do more. I running has to. Feel hard to be effective. I have to get that burning sensation every single time I work out. If that's the mentality that you're going into it with, you're going to be probably breaking your body down a lot more than you're building it back up.

Kevin:

Yeah. One of the current strengths that you probably have as you add a few more years to your life is the ability to. Increase your endurance capabilities without enormous amounts of volume. Okay, this works for everybody but especially for people who've been running for several years. You don't have to, make sure that you slowly methodically build up for a half marathon. You have, Years of endurance training background. So it just doesn't take as much volume from day to day from like your total volume for the week in order to reach your, in order to maximize your endurance capabilities, that's super important. That means that you have more time to do other exercises because your current strength of, I don't have to get in. massive volume day upon day in order to prep myself for this longer race gives you the ability the free time to get in the strength training that you actually need to get in the mobility that you actually need.

Angie:

I'm so happy to hear you say that, especially since your default is volume. You and I have this conversation a lot off microphone as well. We've, I'm sure we've had it plenty of times on microphone considering we've been doing this for seven years now, but

Kevin:

episode 381,

Angie:

But that, so to hear you say that makes my heart so happy, my little strength training heart, so happy.

Kevin:

Yeah, of course, I'm still training for a hundred mile race. So the volume needs are still there.

Angie:

Yeah, but you, it's not like you're going out and running 50 miles every weekend or, anything close to that. Like you have a high volume in your training, but your volume for your 100 milers are probably much lower than a lot of other ultra runners out there. Wouldn't you say?

Kevin:

Drastically lower. And they're lower than. Then they would have been if I was training for the same thing seven years ago, somewhere in like my mid thirties, I think I would have been able to handle and would have needed more volume. But as I had a few more years it's shocking how easily I did the long run that I did a few weeks, weekends ago, where it was like, alright, I'm gonna go out and knock out 30 miles, and as long as I fuel along the way, I felt fine literally the next day. I didn't, it wasn't like, oh, I'm gonna go knock out a speed workout the next day, but I wasn't hobbling around, I just felt fine the next day, because and it's not like I've been, Carefully slowly building up adding a mile every week until I'm like, all right I've done 20 and now let's get to 22 and now he's no I think

Angie:

you went from 20 to 30 Didn't you?

Kevin:

Yes, I went from 20 and then I think 16 the next week and then 30 the next week Yeah, I just made that jump and it's fine because I've been there before and I have this huge decades of a volume background.

Angie:

Yeah. And I think that's really important to understand is that the longer you've been running, the more miles you have in your legs, that means your body is already built for endurance. And this is especially true for women because a lot of times, Women, we are more built for endurance than men are. So this is a reason why we don't need as much volume, especially when we get in our forties and beyond to train for longer races because our body is built more for endurance than for speed. Our bodies also burn fat more effectively than men as well. And we have extra fat on our bodies, all of us for. Those endurance types of events and then when you fuel your body on top of it Your body is able to burn fat even more effectively. So you've got that. So yes I totally agree that we don't need as much volume as we may have used to when we were younger because we have all of those years of experience underneath us and that's something that Actually does play a very big role

Kevin:

and this gives you the opportunity to then get some strength session some speed sessions in which You can't put in so much volume into a speed session if you're really hitting high end paces Something around 5k or faster. You just can't run that much at that volume Even when I was younger, I couldn't run that much of that volume because it's exhausting and it breaks your body down pretty quickly so as a A master's age athlete, you definitely can't run that much at that volume, but you still need to focus on your speed. And so you're like, all right how do I get in all of this good speed stuff? That's where plyometrics, that's where strength training comes in, because speed is really just being able to take your strength and apply it to make your body move forward. So you need a little bit of speed training so that you can actually. Figure out how to physically translate to the strength that you've built inside of like a gym into moving your body forward at high volume and

Angie:

it also helps to improve your coordination as well. Like I was doing plyometrics today and I've been doing plyometrics for a few months now consistently doing box jumps and I decided to just change up the way that I was doing the box jump. So I was jumping for a few months now I've been jumping from the ground up To the box and then stepping slowly back down and then repeating it. And today I decided to do a little bit more of a rebound effect. So I w I jumped up on the box, jumped back down and then immediately jumped back up. So it was a three part jump. And the first few times that I did that, I was super uncoordinated and I was like, what is going on right now? I felt like very clunky. I felt like when I jumped down to the ground, I was like hitting too hard and I wasn't cushioning my landing enough. And as I practiced it and as I did a couple of sets of those types of jumps, I got better just in one day. And so a lot of the speed sessions, the plyometrics, the strength sessions, a lot of it is building coordination, which is that message going from your brain to your body. The neuromuscular connection is part of what you're building here as well, because when you do your strength training and plyometrics and speed work, you're also Helping to recruit more muscle fibers to the party, which is going to help to improve your speed and your endurance in your longer events. And it's also helping. You to maintain more of your type two fast twitch muscle fibers because as we get older, our type two muscle fibers tend to start changing over to our type one muscle fibers, which are our endurance muscle fibers. Great. For endurance stuff, right? This is what we were mentioning before of, you don't really lose endurance has quickly because you still have all those muscle fibers, but we want to really try to maintain as much of those type two fast, which muscle fibers as we can for so many reasons some of that is just, Balance, proprioception, fall prevention because if you trip on something and you lose your balance, there's a reason why older people fall a lot more than younger people. It's because the reaction time is much slower. Guess what's in charge of your reaction time? It's that neuromuscular connection between your brain and your muscles and also your muscles ability to turn on really fast and catch you like you're the strength to catch yourself. So these things are very important for. are running, but they're also super important for the rest of their life, rest of your life. And as a physical therapist, I just had to mention that as well.

Kevin:

Yeah. If you think about falling and trying to get your hands down, like one, you have to get your hands down quickly. That's a speed. But then even if your hands are down, you have to have the muscles actually feeling it. firing rapidly to stop impact of landing like there are people who have fallen and they're like, I scraped my hands, but I also scraped up my nose because I got my hands on, but it just I couldn't prevent myself from getting all the way through. Those air fast, which fibers that We're just not activated fast enough. And that's the muscle coordination. That's where, plyometrics and really high end speeds. That's why I like doing strides on a regular basis where I'm really pushing myself to a higher level. When I started doing that over the summer, Oh my word. My first few strides were. awful. I'm like I'm not sure that I'm going that fast and this feels awful. And I think I might also just be waving my hands over my head as I do it. I don't know what I'm doing, please. I hope no one saw that. That's I was trying to do them only in the morning when it was still dark outside because I'm like, I don't know what I look like. And it took two weeks and suddenly it was like, I feel much more coordinated and my watch suggested that it was also moving faster, but I just felt So much more coordinated, not necessarily faster, but I didn't feel like I was going to fall over. Like I felt smooth.

Angie:

Yeah. Yes, running does need to feel hard to be effective sometimes, but not every single run. Definitely not every day. So try to start to let go of that mentality and save the hard for those quality speed sessions, your quality strength training, your quality plyometrics. Think quality over quantity, especially as you start to get older. So those are the five reasons that we have. Why running could be feeling harder than it used to. We'd love to hear your feedback on it. So head over to Instagram and follow us at real life runners on Instagram. Send me a DM. Let me know what you thought of this episode. And if you liked it, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts or on Spotify and share this podcast with a friend so that we can help more runners to feel better and get stronger in their forties and beyond. And. As always, thanks for joining us today. This has been the Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 381. Now get out there and run your life.