404: Navigating the 404: Rerouting Your Training Plan After 40

In this episode, we draw an analogy between encountering a '404 Page Not Found' error on the web and hitting a plateau or decline in one's training plan, particularly for runners over 40. We discuss the changes in physiology and life circumstances that necessitate a new training approach, including changes in hormonal levels, stress management, and adjustments in workouts to reflect current fitness capabilities. We emphasize the importance of accepting these changes not as failures but as opportunities to redirect training strategies. The episode also highlights the mental shift from focusing on becoming thin to becoming strong, the need for proper nutrition, recovery, and addressing the stories we tell ourselves about our abilities and future potential. Encourage listeners to identify the 'broken links' in their training and find new paths forward.

01:44 The Frustration of Broken Links and Training Plans

02:32 Understanding the 404 Moment in Training

05:48 Adapting to Physiological and Life Changes

10:09 The Importance of Acceptance and Adaptation

15:42 Case Study: Overcoming Training Plateaus

20:44 The Role of Plateaus in Training

25:19 Training with the Right Mentality

26:04 The Importance of Recovery

27:02 Balancing Intensity and Recovery

29:27 Shifting Focus: From Thin to Strong

36:50 The Power of Stories We Tell Ourselves

37:28 Embracing New Training Methods

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Transcript

Angie: 0:00

You know when you click on a link and you get that little message 404 page not found, it's not your fault. The page didn't vanish because you did something wrong. It's just that link doesn't go where it used to and trying to refresh it over and over. that doesn't fix anything either. It's like our training after 40 things don't work the same way that they used to. Your body's changing and your training needs to also. Just like the webpage, the solution is not to double down on what used to work. It's to reroute to create a new path forward, one that matches where you are now and where you want to go. And today we're talking about that moment. The moment when your training, your mindset, maybe even your identity, hit a 404, and how to stop refreshing the old page and start writing a brand new one. So stay tuned. What's up runners? Welcome to episode 404, page not found what to do when your training plan stops working.

Kevin: 1:19

I know the answer to page not found. I do this at work all the time. You just go up to the top of the page. You re-highlight the website. Yes. And you hit enter again. And sometimes you hit enter like extra hard,

Angie: 1:30

why wouldn't you just hit the refresh button? The little like curly Q arrow.

Kevin: 1:33

Sometimes you can try the curly Q arrow, but sometimes you just, you really wanna make sure that you've typed it in and then firmly press the enter button. To let the computer know who's boss.

Angie: 1:41

Yeah. That works for you. yeah.

Kevin: 1:43

It's, that's a guarantee.

Angie: 1:44

So today when we were thinking, when I was thinking about, okay, what are we gonna talk about on episode 4 0 4? This. Analogy popped into my head of that super annoying 4 0 4 page, right? Like when you hit a 4 0 4 page, that page I don't know about you guys, but I know I get annoyed with it. what the heck? Especially if it's on my website and I don't know that it's there, and I'm like, wait, what happened to this link? Clearly this got changed and I didn't. Fix this link. So when it's a broken link on my own website, that's a little frustrating to say the least. But it is one of those things that can be really annoying. And the same thing happens in our training when we get to a point in our training. Where things just don't work the way that they used to. That link is not working. It seems broken. AKA, your body's not working the same way it used to. A lot of people over 40, especially women, when we're going through perimenopause and after menopause, when our hormones are different, we feel. Like our body's broken a lot of times and that is not necessary. That is not the case for sure. Your body's definitely not broken. It's just been rerouted to a different place.

Kevin: 2:49

And you have to find where that place is. It's funny that you mentioned your own website. It's a site that you're very familiar with. Yeah. As is so many people's training plans. They know the way that they've been training. They know oh I've been a little inconsistent. My training will be off. But if I just go back to this method has worked for me so many years. This is probably, sometimes you get newer runners later in life, but we're talking about if you've been running for a while, so many people are dedicated to that plan. They're like, oh, I know if you just give me 12 weeks before a marathon, I can lock in. If you gimme a few months before half marathon, I lock in. This is my training plan. It always leads to good success and suddenly. It doesn't lead to the same success. That's where the frustration comes, because you know the plan, it's worked for you for years, and suddenly you're exhausted and you're running slower, but feeling even more tired. It's a really rough combo.

Angie: 3:40

Yeah, and I think that can happen physically, and a lot of people also see it happening mentally. Like they used to never have a problem with consistency. They'd go out on their run, they'd look forward to their run, they enjoyed their run, and all of a sudden they. Just don't feel like going and they feel like obviously much more tired and just lacking motivation and that can relate to the runs not feeling good. When runs aren't feeling good, you're not gonna look forward to them as much. Of course, but there's just this different way that you even feel towards running as well.

Kevin: 4:13

Yeah, a hundred percent agree with that one. After my last race, there was the time that I needed to take off physically, but then it was. Difficult to get going again, there were some sickness in there, but just mentally it was tough to be able to be like, yeah, I'm gonna get fired back up and I'm gonna go off on some training runs and get myself going again.'cause you always know going, getting going again is harder than maintaining. Once you're going it. Feels fine for the most part, but that starting back up again is always tricky to get the momentum going, especially if it feels like it's not giving you the return that you are used to getting out of it. Yeah.

Angie: 4:47

Yeah. I think that's a big part of it too, is not getting that same benefit, the same return. Like you said, you're not getting the same feelings and that. Not the physical feelings that are the same. The mental release that a lot of people look for in running, that changes because when runs are feeling harder, you're just putting more stress on your body. And it turns out that a lot of runners end up feeling just more depleted and more exhausted after their runs, and that's gonna make it hard to stay motivated and consistent.

Kevin: 5:14

If you're frustrated with the run, you're not, it doesn't. Feel good on the run and you're so focused on what feels uncomfortable and you're tired, you're never going into that flow state where you actually ever get close to feeling that runner's high. Yeah. Like you only feel that when you almost forget that you're running and if your knee's bothering you or your stomach's bothering you, or you're just feeling super, super worn out and tired and you're worried about what the number on the clock says and all of these things it, you're not going into flow state and you're not gonna feel the joy of the run itself'cause you're so concentrated on. Other things that are happening during the run.

Angie: 5:48

Yeah. So let's get into this and understand the 4 0 4 a little bit better and why we need to reroute our training when we hit this point, because everybody hits this point at a different point in their running journey. Some people start to hit it in perimenopause. Some people it's after menopause. Men. Men hit this point as well. So it's not just a female only thing, but let's start to understand why this is happening. Why? The stuff that used to work, why isn't it working the same way anymore? So just like the link that you used to click used to work and used to direct you to the place that you wanted to go. Your old training strategy. Doesn't lead to where it used to for a lot of people, and this is again, this happens at various points in the journey, but basically what's happening at the base level is that your body's physiology is changing or has changed. So women specifically in perimenopause and menopause, your estrogen levels are declining. Your progesterone levels are decreasing and changing, and this is leading to elevated levels of cortisol, which is your stress hormone. Your body doesn't recover as quickly, so your. Literal physiology of your body is not the same in your forties, fifties, sixties, as it was when you were in your twenties and thirties. And it's not the same in your fifties as it was in your forties. And it's probably not the same at 44 as it was at 40. Like I'm even noticing now at 44, my body is much different than it was just a couple of years ago because I am getting closer to the age of menopause and my hormones are more, changing more as I get to that point. And we have all of these physiological changes that are happening in our body. We also have changes in our life. Whatever's happening in your life right now is likely not the same as it was five years ago, 10 years ago, or maybe even just six months ago, right? Like different things pop up in our lives at different points, and that puts stress on the body and emotional stress. Psychological stress, financial stress, all of those things still cause stress in the body. And stress is stress. All of it plays a role in how your body responds to training. So if you're just in a more stressful place in your life because of outside events that are not related to running, per se. It's going to make a difference in how your body responds to running and how you feel on your runs.

Kevin: 8:12

And it's not saying that you didn't have stressful events in your life 10, 15 years ago. But maybe when you're younger, you're in your low twenties, early thirties, you're like, oh, there's still so much life left. Maybe you're hitting a point now where you're, you've got some judgment coming on. Where you're currently at in your life. When you're in your, like your low twenties, we got little kids and you're starting up work and you're trying to figure out all this stuff that is a very stressful time, but you accept that you're out of college and you're starting all these new things and there's a bunch of stuff that you're trying to juggle all the balls simultaneously doing the best you can. You know that some of them are getting dropped. And it's just an accepted of that's what's happening. But as you move into forties and fifties, you're established in your job and you're I should be move. I should be moving to a certain position. I should be at this place already. Just having that should be thought is creating extra stress into your life, beyond all of the actual physi, physiological changes that are coming in there.

Angie: 9:07

And so when you have thoughts like that increase your psychological stress, that also is increasing your cortisol levels, which then. Affects how your body is able to run, how your body's able to recover from your runs. So all of these things are connected and I think that a lot of times we want to see them as separate and we wanna see running as something that helps us deal with stress. And it does it definitely has mental health benefits. And at the same time it is a stress on the body, especially if you are pushing hard. Every time you go out for a run, you're trying to run fast, you're trying to do more because you're noticing that you're not getting the results that you used to have. That's going to be even tougher. And we often start to see these changes and maybe we can even acknowledge some of those changes that are happening. Okay, Ange I hear ya. Yes. My life does look different now. Things look different. My body's changing. All right. But oftentimes. We can start to see those things, but our minds haven't really gotten on board yet with accepting where we are in our life right now. And so we have to really understand how to shift that as well to a place of acceptance and not acceptance, meaning complacency. And I think that's where a lot of people get misinterpret that, right? Because a lot of people think if I accept something, that means that I'm okay with it. And that means I'm not gonna try to change it. And I want. To make sure you hear me very clearly, that acceptance does not equal complacency, but we, and we do have to accept something first before we are actually able to change it.

Kevin: 10:40

Yeah. Acceptance in the most negative sense. To go back to your 4 0 4, metaphor is saying oh 4, 0 4 broken link. I guess I can never get to that website anymore. And that's not what we're saying. That's not the level of acceptance. Acceptance isn't like broken link. That website doesn't exist anymore.

Angie: 10:55

Yeah. Guess that's done with

Kevin: 10:56

like that's, that is a very sad way of looking at this and that is clearly not how we're gonna wrap up this episode of and especially, and it's sad. Yeah. Especially

Angie: 11:04

on my website. Site when, like when broken links are on my website, I'm like I wonder where that link went. It's not oh, guess that page is gone. That blog link no longer works ever again. It's

Kevin: 11:13

just gone and vanished into the ether. Yeah, it's just, there it goes. But I, into the cloud, I, we kinda went over one. I have a question for you,'cause I know on this, I wanna make sure that it balances on, on men and women also. Your type of muscle fibers change also as you get older, like you get more slow twitch fibers naturally as you get older. This works for both genders, right?

Angie: 11:34

Yes.

Kevin: 11:34

Okay, so this is also a thing that you're going up against is when, and

Angie: 11:38

just a loss of overall lean muscle mass as well.

Kevin: 11:41

Overall loss of lean muscle mass. Yes.

Angie: 11:43

We're losing lean muscle mass unless we are actively. Building and trying to maintain it through strength training. And those fibers are switching from type two to type one.

Kevin: 11:53

So it's making it harder to go faster. Because we don't have the same amount muscle and generate power it's harder to go faster because you can't generate as much power. Because. E every year of life. You literally are just flipping over some of the muscles towards slow twitch stuff, which is why you don't really see Olympic sprinters up in their forties. Like you can still see really high caliber distance runners. Yeah. As they get older. But it doesn't really happen as much on the sprint side.

Angie: 12:14

Yeah. And that's why a lot of the people that used to be on the track tend to get longer and longer distances as they get older as well. Exactly.

Kevin: 12:22

Yeah, because you just you can't, you also see some people move from like the 10 K marathon and then they head into trail running

Angie: 12:28

the 10 K marathon,

Kevin: 12:29

10 K or marathon.

Angie: 12:31

Oh, I didn't hear the, or

Kevin: 12:32

I, I had a slash in my head. I made a chopping. I know. We just, it looks like a, you did

Angie: 12:37

make a chopping. It's on a podcast, but

Kevin: 12:39

just so everybody can understand, I didn't say 10 K Marathon, like those are equivalent to each other. I put a slash with my hand. Yeah. Like your

Angie: 12:47

coworker that asks you, how was your 10 K marathon this weekend?

Kevin: 12:50

Yes. My 10 K marathon. No for people who are doing a 10 k slash marathon, is that better for you? Maybe move on to the trails because even if the distance is the same or even shorter, it's possible that just because of the trail thing there's a slower effort level to, or there's a slower pace to it because of the variation of terrain.

Angie: 13:08

And so what we don't want. You all to follow and the trap that we don't want you to fall in is there's a couple traps that we can tend to fall in here. Number one is thinking that this is just the way that it is. I guess I'm just broken, or I'm just, I guess I'm just getting older and I just have to accept it and there's nothing that I can do about it. We do not want you to fall into that trap because that is not true. What is, but we, the second trap that we don't want you to fall into is. Just trying to do the same thing and trying to do more of it, or trying to do it harder or trying to hit enter with more force to show the computer whose boss.

Kevin: 13:44

I might have just typed the website in wrong. Maybe I should just try typing the website again. No, you type the website just fine and so

Angie: 13:51

you delete it and then you start typing it and then URL just generates itself automatically and you hit enter again. Yeah, but and don't actually type in the whole thing. No,

Kevin: 14:00

But I hit enter with. Force, that's the key again, to let the computer know whose boss. Whose boss. Yeah.

Angie: 14:06

So if you're just trying to repeat the same methods, adding more mileage. Restricting your calories, not fueling your body. Pushing yourself harder, trying to go faster on all of your runs, hoping that it's going to start working again. Pushing enter with lots of force to show the computer whose boss. It's just going to lead to more frustration. Injury burnout and more stress and most likely injury. That's gonna be a big time that people start to get injured, especially as they get older.

Kevin: 14:34

'cause it's not just repeating the same methods, it's trying the same method, but literally with more force. That's why like I do this I joke, but I literally do this. I'm like, maybe if I hit the enter key harder. But people do this, like it sounds silly to that hitting the enter key would do something.'cause obviously that's not affecting the website's on a different place. But people do this with their running all the time. They're like, this method has always worked for me. So maybe if I just do the same style of training, but up the volume, up the intensity. But I generally am doing the same thing. I just turn the dial up just a little bit more and turning the dial up a little bit more on a method that's not working for you is a hundred percent going to. Suck all of the fun out of it, and like you said, most likely gonna set you up for an injury. But it's also gonna suck the fun out of it before you even get hurt. And once you're hurt, you know that an injured runner is just like the least fun person that you could possibly be around.

Angie: 15:27

Yeah, I might know about that from experience, being your wife and all, and I'm just saying, I, I love you.

Kevin: 15:35

Maybe it's more than just pushing the enter key really hard. And it's possible that I have reflected some of this myself over the years,

Angie: 15:41

quite possibly. So we had a client that came to us a couple years ago and. He was trying to improve his half marathon time and he was, I believe in his forties or fifties at the time. I can't remember exactly'cause I don't always know people's exact ages, but he was running a half marathon every other day trying to break two hours and he was unable to break two hours. He had been working at it for months and months, I don't remember exactly how long, but it was for an extended, it was at least three to six months. And he would just go out and when he came to us, he was, he told me this and I said, wait. What you are running a half marathon every other day. And he's yeah, and I don't know why I'm getting close. I'm at like 2 0 5, 2 0 4, like 2 0 2, but I'm like stuck right there. I keep trying to push harder and I can't break two hours and through our method and our program, we put him on a plan that changed what he was doing and not have, so we really pulled back a lot on his mileage. Because he was in, in that mindset, because, and it's not his fault, he didn't really know any better. He figured, like a lot of runners do. They figure, okay, we're running is pretty simple. And when you start running, when you start increasing your mileage and when you start pushing harder, it works like it works for quite a while until it stops working. And that. Point always comes, it's just a matter of when it comes for each person. And so he was at that point, and he had been at that point for quite a while. He was at that plateau to the point where he wanted to actually figure out what was going on and reach out for help. And so we took him, we put him on a plan, and we pulled back his total mileage by quite a lot and put him on. What we do with all of our athletes, which is a more, more polarized training schedule, where your easy runs are truly easy, and then you have harder days where you're doing speed play and harder training sessions. And then of course. Complimenting that with some strength training and some other things to make sure that he stays strong and injury free. And after, I wanna say 12 or 16 weeks, I'm pretty sure it was after like his first training cycle. He dropped 15 minutes off of his time and ran a 1 45.

Kevin: 17:49

Yeah, every distance run that we had, like the long runs on the weekend over, that wasn't, there was no attempts to break two on those. It was just, you're gonna go out, you're gonna cover the mileage, it's gonna be nice and comfortable.

Angie: 17:58

And yeah, I was having. So much more fun. So much more fun. He was like, he loved running, like he came to us loving, running. He was starting to get very frustrated with it, but he started to enjoy his runs so much more,

Kevin: 18:10

and so he came to us before the joy was completely sucked out. Yeah. Because he was on the verge of losing the joy. And it was like, all right, we're gonna need to turn your, like your Tuesday half marathon into five miles at an easy pace. And it was very confusing at first. Yeah. Because it didn't make any sense.

Angie: 18:23

And it was very uncomfortable for him because, and again, this go goes back to that mindset piece. And I, a lot of ladies in, in the program inside of running Reconnected, when we start to talk about nutrition, they also come up again. It's this mental block and this mental wall. When I tell them you're not eating enough food, like you actually need to eat more food. And there's this huge block because for decades they've believed the lie that the food industry has told us about how we need to restrict. We need to eat less, we need to cut our calories, calories in, calories out, all the bologna that we are fed.

Kevin: 18:59

You shouldn't eat bologna. Also,

Angie: 19:02

it's highly processed. That there is a, there's a big mental block to actually eating more food. Just like for a lot of runners, there's a big mental block for decreasing mileage because it seems counterintuitive. It seems if I do that, I'm gonna go backwards and nobody wants to go backwards. And so it is a leap of faith. And we do ask our athletes to trust us, like there is a trust factor that needs to be there and to be built for them to actually get on board with. The things that are truly going to help them.

Kevin: 19:31

But here's the thing is we've got a couple different scenarios that we're talking about here. Obviously, there's most people that we're talking about fall into the category of runners over 40, but this whole idea of a training plan that simply has stopped working for you happens for runners at much younger ages also. That's true. Yeah. There are runners that who have a running age, like the time, the amount of years that you've been running. Yeah. Can start building up. Like I was in my mid twenties and I was like, okay, I can't just keep training in the same method. It's not working for me. And I had to rethink how I was training. My new method of training was not necessarily the most successful either, as I ultimately ended up in a hospital with seizures. But I did still have to rearrange. I've gone through this a few times. Yeah. To try and figure out what works best for me. So personally, I. I can get stuck in things if I can take a moment and step back and see it's not working, I can usually, from my running perspective, I don't Clinging to things. Yeah. A lot of runners clinging to the way that it has been. Even if they can see that it's not making the progress, they're like, I know, but this has always worked, so I have to stay onto it. Yeah. Because trying something new. In running or in any avenue of life, trying something new when you don't know what the results are gonna be, seems a little bit scary.

Angie: 20:44

Yeah, and I think that also there are periods of plateau in our running journey that are very normal, and it can be a frustrating thing for runners because we as runners want to see progress. And so when we do hit a plateau, it can be frustrating. So really this applies mostly to you if you have noticed that a plateau or a decline that is lasting more than three to six months, would you agree?

Kevin: 21:12

Yes. Because plateaus are great. Yeah. Sometimes the plateau is literally just the spring of your training just coiling up and it's gonna lead to a breakthrough, right? It's when you really seem stuck on that load. Plateau for so long, or you've been sloping downward for several months, that's the sign that maybe you need to actually flip the direction because sometimes plateaus happen. Yeah. Like you don't your fitness. Yeah. And I

Angie: 21:35

wanna make sure that we like point that out. That's like plateaus are normal.

Kevin: 21:38

Yeah. That's a really good thing that you pointed out because. We see that. Yeah. Like we get clients that come into us all the time that are like, they've jumped from one online training program to the next. Every time it looks like they get to a plateau, they just leap to a different system. They change. Yeah. And you have to stick with a method and let it play its way out, especially as you move from one to the next. If you flip methods, you're going to see results rather quickly and then get onto another plateau, and you have to get through that plateau to really reap the full benefits of whatever method. As long as it's a worthwhile method, as long as it's not getting you hurt, it probably is gonna take a little bit of time to reap the full. Benefits of it,

Angie: 22:15

right?'cause a lot of times you can do things and not see the benefits for a while.'cause your body is changing, your body's adapting, and there are changes that are going on underneath the surface that you can't see yet. And then all of a sudden there's a breakthrough. And we like to talk inside of our team with our clients about the magic. Like there are people that come on our coaching calls every week and they say I don't understand. Like I am running. I'm not, I've never raced my goal pace. I'm not, I've never done this before. I've never run this full distance, especially the people training for a marathon. I've never run 26.2 miles. The highest I've gone in my training is 18 or 20 miles. You're telling me this is just gonna happen and it's yes. There's a magic that happens on race day when you train. Properly when you follow a well-designed personalized training plan, when you taper and you trust the training, that there is that adaptation because it takes your body time to adapt to the training. So it doesn't matter necessarily what you do in the week or two leading up to the training. A lot of times those. Last couple of weeks of your training plan right before your race have little to no effect on how you actually perform. But the 10 weeks, the 12 weeks, the 16 weeks before that have a massive effect. Your body just needed time to adapt and actually absorb all of that training.

Kevin: 23:35

Yeah. I always like to tell people that like the last week of training before your race, all you can really do is screw things up with that week. You're not putting in a work of that workout on Tuesday of the race on Sunday is not doing anything for your race on Sunday. Unless you overdo it, hurt yourself and exhaust yourself on Tuesday. Yeah. Unless you shoot your shot at your race on Tuesday workout. Because you've started your taper and so you feel great and it's a workout and you're like, oh, I feel really good. I should crush it in this workout. And you overdo it and you run your race on Tuesday, even though your race is actually on Sunday. That happens all the time, but you're not really getting the physical or mental benefits from the workout during race week.

Angie: 24:17

Yeah. So if you do find yourself on a plateau that's lasting more than three to six months, this is when. You have to look for the 4 0 4 or I shouldn't say the'cause. The 4 0 4 is not really the redirect. The 4 0 4 is what you're hitting where when you're hitting that plateau or you're seeing that decline, that broken link, and so we have to find the new path. You need to find the new link that's going to actually direct you to the place that you wanna go, which is that training strategy that's aligned with who you are now, not who you were. Last year, five years ago, 10 years ago. It's who you are, the body that you have right now, the lifestyle that you're currently living right now, and of course, who you want to be in the future. I think that there's a lot of times we get this messed up because we base our current actions on the past instead of the future because our brain knows the past. There's evidence there. The future is very unknown. But what we want to do is really look ahead to the future, to the person that we want to become and base our training. On that person, on, on what that person would be doing at this point in their journey. So don't hear me incorrectly. I'm not saying we need to train as if that we already have the abilities of that person because we don't like, that's what training is for. We don't wanna just ramp up our mileage and start running, 50 miles a week if you're currently running 10, even though that marathon runner that you want to be. In six months is running 50 miles a week. That's not where you are today. So I'm not saying to train exactly. As far as like the numbers and the metrics go, like that person would train or the paces that person would train, but to start with the mentality that person would have and approach training in the same way with where you are right now. Does that make sense?

Kevin: 26:03

Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think one of the biggest things on this is less grinding out workouts. When you're in your twenties, that's so hard because sometimes grinding is fun.

Angie: 26:14

And not only is it fun, but like it's gotten results in the past. And I think about some of the training that I used to do eight to 10 years ago, 10 years ago. Is that right? And

Kevin: 26:24

it feels remarkably rewarding.

Angie: 26:26

10.

Kevin: 26:27

Huh. It, but I, okay, so let me talk for a second here. Sorry.

Angie: 26:31

I'm like re goop. We're grouping,

Kevin: 26:33

it feels so rewarding. Seven or eight to grind out a brutal workout. Yeah. There are some workouts that I did back in my teens that you finish it and you're just like a. Puddle on the track and you're like, oh God, that was so good. If I finished a workout and I was a puddle on the track, I would be worthless for running for the next week and a half. Yeah, like I would just have to walk around maybe an easy run, walk, jog kind of thing. Like I just don't have the ability to go that deep. Yeah. On that. Fast of a track workout anymore. You have to be very intentional about the effort that you're willing to expend in any given workout. The whole idea, and this goes for training at all levels, all ages of always leave one rep in reserve. You never want to go all in during a workout. You always wanna just have a little bit left over so that you're, you don't just so deplete yourself. You leave an extra couple of reps in reserve as we get a little older. Yeah, because it, the recovery changes, right? So you want more than one rep left. You want a couple?

Angie: 27:32

And you don't have to go to that level to gain the same benefits anymore either. Also true, because a lot of us have been running for a while. There are some people that are new to running and that's fantastic and we're here for you also, and I love that you're here and you're listening to this podcast and there's a lot of people that have been running for decades. Your legs, your body knows mileage, it knows speed work. It knows a lot of these things, and so you need less. Volume and less intensity in order to reap the same levels of benefits.

Kevin: 28:05

You also don't need as much mental grit. Yeah. Training. Yeah. If you've done it already. Like you need enough, you need to periodically have a workout where you push yourself really hard. Yeah. And you can be like, oh yeah. I remember what this feels like. I'm good.

Angie: 28:19

And that can, because that will allow you to tap into it. Yes.'cause it's already there. Because

Kevin: 28:23

it's there. Yeah. You've trained it so much, you just have to remember that it's there. Yeah. Remember how to access it. But you don't have to dwell in it. Yeah. On a regular basis. Every single week have a super draining workout where you're like, oh man, I really had to gut it out at the end. You just, you don't need it. Yeah. Every once in a while you need to. Try it. Yeah. To make sure that it's still there. That when you try and hit the, in, like the starter on a grill outside, make sure that starter still actually does something.'cause sometimes it kinda wears out over time. Make sure that it's still sparking from time to time.

Angie: 28:55

Yeah. And we do need intense sessions and so make sure that you're not hearing that. Either like we do need to have high intensity sessions as we get older. Like they become even more important because of what we were mentioning before with the loss of our fast twitch muscle fibers with the loss of lean muscle mass. When we do those higher intensity sessions sporadically, that's the key sporadically with lots of plenty of recovery. That's actually very good for us, but we don't need them in the same volume and in the same frequency that we used to maybe do. Another thing that comes to mind too is this idea of. The things and the shifts that we have to make of less depletion, more restoration, like more recovery time even. You were talking about your workouts that used to leave you. In a puddle on the track, but even just sleep, right? Like we had our retreat this weekend, which was amazing. Shout out to all of our amazing seven amazing women that came from all over North America. This was an international retreat thanks to our Canadian that came down to Florida to join us. And it was amazing. We had women from. Literally seven different six different states and Canada. Yep. To come down to join us, which was so unbelievable. And we stayed up late, especially that last night. The last night. Of the retreat after the ladies left the retreat house, we had to clean up from dinner and, get everything packed up.'cause we had to check out the next morning pretty early and I had to take my friend to the airport and everything, but and I had a friend come in from Nebraska to help out with the retreat as well, which was amazing. And. We stayed up really late that night. We stayed up till 1 30, 2 o'clock in the morning and I, we had to wake up at five something to go to the airport. That's not a lot of sleep. Like that whole day I was wiped out. I was exhausted that drive home. Kevin and I, like Kevin started driving and I fell asleep in the passenger seat and he's I got, I'm done. Can you take over? Yep, no problem. And then I started driving and you passed out in the passenger seat.

Kevin: 30:58

I literally drove for as long as I possibly could. Yeah. And then when we stopped for lunch, I looked at you and just I'm tapping out. Yeah. I can't do it.

Angie: 31:04

Yeah. And that's what we do. I'm gonna

Kevin: 31:05

drive off the side of the road. This is not safe for the family. Not a good idea. I'm tapping out.

Angie: 31:09

And so then, and then we got home and basically unpacked all of the cold, the coolers of all the cold stuff that needed to go into the fridge and went and took a two hour nap. Yep. Because we were just wiped. And that was, a combination of all of the things that happened that weekend, but also the fact that we didn't get enough sleep in our bodies when we're older. We need more sleep, we need more recovery. And I'm still a little kind of a little slow on the uptake. My speed work this morning was pretty good, actually. I was actually pretty. Happy with it. I was surprised that I was hitting some of the paces that I was hitting, but I was good. And so that's just again, proof that we need to start doing things a little bit differently. And that also includes sleep and recovery.

Kevin: 31:50

You were good on the paces, but were your effort levels higher than they, they should have been.

Angie: 31:54

No, that's what I mean is'cause I was going by effort. Like I wasn't trying to, and things

Kevin: 31:57

were, things were going pretty good. Yeah.

Angie: 31:58

Like I wasn't trying to hit specific paces. The first rep was definitely, like my legs were pretty tired. Especially since I lifted yesterday, but in my, I did leg day yesterday I. But in my leg session, I, again, I'm maturing and getting wiser with age. I cut back on all of my weights for my normal leg day and did less than I normally do because I knew that I was tired and not recovered well from the weekend. So I, except

Kevin: 32:22

for the weighted vest box jumps that you added in,

Angie: 32:24

I did not do box jumps. Aren't you proud of me? But yeah, so getting back to some of these. New paths and the redirects that we need in our life. Kevin was saying, like less grinding, more intentional workouts, making sure that our workouts all have a purpose. That our easy days are actually easy. Our hard days are hard. The other big shift that we need to make, which I alluded to. When we talked about calorie restriction is this idea of, from wanting to be thin, to wanting to be strong. Because when we focus on trying to be thin and lose weight, it often leads to restriction and over exercising, and that is going to decrease our lean muscle mass. It's going to decrease our bone density, it's going to lead to hormonal issues and thyroid problems and all sorts of things down the chain. Whereas if we focus on being strong and we really work our body to like with resistance training, with easy runs and hard runs, making sure that we're fueling our body and getting enough protein and carbohydrates, getting enough sleep, and really focusing on improving the strength of our bodies, we will. Get faster or we will improve our endurance just by shifting the focus of what we're doing in our training. And that's a really powerful shift that I love seeing the women inside of Running Reconnected make. And when they come in, they're like, oh my gosh, this is such a game changer.

Kevin: 33:48

Yeah. The, this shift from thin to strong and the whole idea of lack of calorie restrictions, I think that it played out really well at the retreat also. It was really nice. There was a lot of good food. Yeah. And people were like, oh yeah, I'm gonna need that now I'm gonna have a snack. And there's, there was no judgment around any of it. Yeah. Because everybody was so focused on making sure that they were taking care of themselves. When you step back from retreat life and there's other people and you're like, oh, I don't know what that person's gonna think. It's really irrelevant what that person thinks. You need to take care of your body. Yeah. And more than you need to take care of what anybody else is thinking about your body. You need to take care of what you think about it. And everybody is going to operate their best when they're operating filled, fueled, and strong.

Angie: 34:30

Yeah. And even at the retreat, if you, if the ladies were sitting there and they were hungry the whole time because they didn't want to eat or they didn't wanna look like they were. Overeating or being little piggies or whatever, like some of them were joking around. But if they were hungry, they weren't gonna be able to participate as fully in the activities either. We went on group runs and we went kayaking, and we did mental performance and training sessions, and we did yoga on the beach. Like it was just such an incredible like soul filling weekend. But you can't do that when you're hungry. Like going back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, if you all are familiar with that pyramid, we have to fulfill our need for survival first, which is fueling our body before we're able to get into building relationships or looking at the deeper purpose for our life. You know that tip of that pyramid is self-actualization and really. Contributing to the world and wanting to make a difference with our lives. We can't do that when we're hungry. We can't do that when we are not sleeping well, when we are just exhausted and not fueled. And it's really hard to think, to maintain and to build relationships, to be a good parent or a good spouse, or a good daughter or son. Like all of that becomes harder when we're not taking care of those needs. And I dunno, that's a little bit of a tangent, but it is a very important one. But with a

Kevin: 35:57

takeaway message of go have a snack it's important to eat.

Angie: 36:01

Yeah, there's one of my favorite. Instagrammers, her handle is big time adulting, I think is what it's called. She's hilarious and that's one of her things. So she's, she had a viral reel. She's had quite a few I think at this point. But one of the ways that I found her is when she was like, Hey ladies, are you, like how are your cortisol levels? Are you fueling your body? And she like just went off about all of the things that social media tells us that we need to be doing to take care of ourselves and how ridiculous all of the advice is and how contradictory a lot of it is. And she's hilarious'cause she does it in very like deadpan style, but she then sometimes will. Talk to the camera and go off on her little rant, and then she'll end by poking the camera and be like, go have a snack. Snacks are good. Which is so great.

Kevin: 36:43

Which is a hundred percent true. Yeah. Like it, it's important to put fuel in your body.

Angie: 36:48

Yeah. Your brain needs carbs. But yeah, these are all, the stories that we tell ourself, like the stories that we've been conditioned to believe growing up. Those stories are starting to break, and they're starting to be broken. And not only because of the phase of life that we're in, but also because of the new research and the science that's coming out. That is showing us how dysfunctional some of these old ways of thinking and old ways of training are, and how much better we can feel and how much better we can perform in our forties, fifties, sixties, in all these later decades of our life if we're just taking care of our body a little bit differently.

Kevin: 37:23

You. You point out some very good import importance information there of the new research that's coming out. Forget the training method that worked for you in the past, and now you're a little bit older and it's not working. Yeah. What about the fact that training method is simply not the training method that anybody uses anymore, regardless of age? What about the advances in training itself? Yeah, not just training differently because of your age, which is one thing, but training differently because. Everybody is training differently at all ages, and they've figured out better ways to do this. Yeah. Fasted training used to be a thing, like fasted training was a push back in like the nineties and extended into the early two thousands. It's just not a thing anymore.

Angie: 38:01

And there are. Our men can get away with it more than women can. Like

Kevin: 38:05

three men in the entire world can get away with it.

Angie: 38:08

But more than women can.

Kevin: 38:09

No. Women can get away with it. And there's three dudes and three dudes and there's, and none of them are on Instagram. Yeah. There's a thousand dudes on Instagram that are still suggesting that their fasted training is working for them. But they're all on human growth hormone. Yeah. So it's not the fasted training.

Angie: 38:25

Yeah. And one of the things that we. Really dug into at the retreat this weekend were the stories that we tell ourselves and how we are all telling ourselves stories every single day. This is just what our brain does. It's very normal. There's sentences in our brain called thoughts. Those thoughts turn into beliefs. These beliefs we create stories our brain loves. Stories. And if we don't know the answer, we make up an answer. Like literally, that's what our brain does because our brain can't deal with open loops. It has to close the loop, and so we have. We tell ourselves stories and a lot of these stories we've been telling ourselves for decades since, even since we were children. And we don't even realize that these are the stories that we're telling ourselves. And so the big thing that we did over the retreat weekend, and we dig into this too, inside of our coaching program, is finding those stories that. And then examining them and saying, okay, is this story leading me to what I want? Is this giving me the result that I want? And if the answer is no if the answer is yes, go ahead and keep it. If that's a good story that's serving you well in your life and you like it, fantastic, keep it. But if it's not leading to the place where. You want to, the results that you want to, the feelings that you want, then it's time to change it. And that's where it can get really exciting to start rewriting and deciding consciously and choosing what story you want to step into. And a lot of people in this phase of life believe that their best running days are behind them. They believe that I'll never be fast. To get, it's only, I'm just gonna get slower from here. That's a story that you're telling yourself. And I, there is plenty of people out there and evidence that is not true, that get faster as that they, as they get older, there's, you're gonna hear some stories here. In the coming weeks of some really inspiring, amazing runners that we've been had the privilege to work with that started running in their late fifties and now running half marathons, ultra marathons in inner sixties. There's amazing things that people can do, but you have to start believing. A different story first.

Kevin: 40:30

Yeah. The whole idea of your best running days behind you. I would've liked to have finished higher up in my last race. I always wanna finish higher up. You

Angie: 40:37

finished sixth.

Kevin: 40:38

I know, and it's always nicer to finish. Higher up always. But at the end of the race, the last two people that passed me were older than me by a decade. That is a really nice way to rewrite a story when the guy in his mid fifties just casually trots right past you and goes looking good. I'm gonna try and keep up with this guy. Yeah. And I tried to for two minutes and then he just pulled away. I'm like, all right, so best running days. Clearly not behind me. Look at this guy. Go.

Angie: 41:05

Yeah. Because he's now inspiration and proof of what's possible.

Kevin: 41:08

Exactly right. It's proof of concept,

Angie: 41:09

and I think that's so powerful.'cause a lot of times when we see other people, we say, oh, it's possible for them, but not for me. Or like they're a freak of nature. Or we make these excuses of what makes them different from us. But what if they're not? What if they're proof? That is possible for you also. And I love the what ifs, right? I think that the what ifs oftentimes our brain likes to use them against us and go into the negative of what if this doesn't turn out right? What if I get hurt? What if it goes, goes bad And you can use those what ifs in such a powerful way, just in the opposite direction, what if this went really well? What if I ran faster than I ever have before? What if I didn't have pain? What if I decided that this pain wasn't serving me and I released it and. Started writing a new story for myself, what would that be like? And we can start thinking more and expanding our possibilities, which is what Kevin talked about at the retreat, which is such a, an amazing talk that he gave as well. But again, it goes back to what do you wanna believe about yourself? What do you wanna believe about your running, moving forward? And I think that's really powerful. If you believe that your best running days are behind you and that you're gonna get slower, what will your running be like in five years versus if you believe. My best running days are ahead of me. Then what will your running be like in five years? Just that one choice on the way that you're gonna look at your training can make a world of difference.

Kevin: 42:34

Yeah. There's a beautiful country song out there. When you start going off on all of the what ifs there, I. I think the title of the song is What If, but it's the whole idea that her outlook is what if this doesn't work out? What if we break up again? What if this goes south? What if? And he flips it and goes, but what if this was made to be? What if this was the best relationship that you could possibly have? What if this is what we've been waiting for? Is

Angie: 42:58

that the one that's what if this was your last first kiss?

Kevin: 43:01

No, that's a different song, but that's also a good one. Yeah. So it's just, it's a great What if, so on, it being April 1st, it's also, what if I didn't ask that girl to turn around her clutter ring? So many years ago back in college,

Angie: 43:15

oh my God, it's April 1st. I know.

Kevin: 43:17

It's our dating anniversary. It's our dating of many years. Our

Angie: 43:19

dating. Oh my gosh. I totally didn't. Just remember that, but because you remembered and thank you for reminding me. So what story are you telling yourself? What is the broken link that you need to reroute? What is the new link that you need to find? And understanding that what got you here won't get you there? That is a phrase that my coach uses a lot in referring to business and life. But it's true. What worked up until now is not. Going to be the thing that continues to take you to where you want to go. And so even though it worked in the past, it might stop working. It might not work as well. So you need to find the new link in your life, and that starts with the way that you're thinking about your training. It starts with the way the training sessions that you're doing, how you're training is laid out and structured. Your nutrition, your sleep, your recovery, all the things. So what. Broken link do you have in your training and your life that you need to fix and that you need to find a new link for?

Kevin: 44:20

Yeah. And that new link might be very different. Yeah. And some of you may be struggling, but it is real life runners. There's two Ls in the middle of that. If you're typing it in, there's two Ls. And then push the ender button real firmly, which show the computer whose boss, but it might be a very different website. There might be a completely different address. And that's where you need to overhaul the training. The intensity, the overall volume, the nutrition, the stress, the whole lifestyle. It could be a whole overhaul.

Angie: 44:45

Yeah. It's like the new. Rebranding of our program. Like the program used to be called Press Play and now it's called Running Reconnected. So we have to go in and find all those links and change all of those links.

Kevin: 44:57

It's a whole different address. It's

Angie: 44:58

a whole different address. And so it's important for us to find those links. And the thing is, you might not find'em all right away. Also, there might be those sneaky, hidden ones that stay broken for a little while until you find them. And then you change those as well.

Kevin: 45:11

Yeah. They show up at like mile 20 of a marathon. You're like, ah. I did not think that one was still there. Yeah.

Angie: 45:16

So I would love to hear your news story, like where is your broken link? What is the redirect that you need right now? I would love for you to send me a DM on Instagram. We're at real life runners on Instagram. Send me a dm, let me know. What is the thing that you're struggling with right now? I would love to connect with you more. We also have a five day running challenge coming up in a few weeks. We're gonna be opening up enrollment for that, but if you want some help right now. Shoot me a DM on Instagram or we are also running a free class. You can check our website@realliferunners.com slash strong if you want to get in our next free class as well. So if you found this episode helpful, we would love for you to leave us a review. On your favorite podcast player, share it with a friend so that we can help more runners to feel good, feel more empowered, both now and in the future. This has been The Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 404. Now, get out there and run your life.