410: You Don’t Need More Motivation—You Need a Plan That Works After 40

This week on the Real Life Runners Podcast, we are celebrating the amazing energy and breakthroughs from our recent Running Reignited Challenge! It was so inspiring to see so many of you reconnect with your goals and remember why you started running in the first place.

But here’s the thing we really want to talk about: Inspiration is great—but it’s not enough on its own.

If we want to create real change, we have to move from feeling motivated to actually taking action. That’s where the results live.

In this episode, we dive into:

• Why so many runners (especially women over 40) struggle to follow through—even when they want to
• How to avoid the “start strong, burn out fast” trap
• The power of structure and support in keeping you consistent
• What actually matters in your running routine (hint: it’s not just doing more!)
• How strength training, nervous system health, and nutrition all play a role in your progress
• Why having a flexible, sustainable plan is key—and how the Real Life Runners team can help you build one that fits your life

We also share real stories from our team members—runners just like you—who’ve shifted from feeling stuck and frustrated to strong, confident, and in control of their running journey.

So if you’ve ever felt like you just can’t seem to stick with it—or you’re ready to stop starting over—this episode is for you.

Let’s stop chasing motivation and start building momentum. You’ve got this—and we’re here to help every step of the way.

Listen now and take that next step toward the runner (and person) you want to be.

00:03 Reflecting on the Running Reignited Challenge
01:01 Inspiration vs. Implementation
02:02 Next Steps After the Challenge
02:36 The Importance of Consistent Action
04:05 Building a Comprehensive Training Plan
05:17 Understanding Your Body's Needs
06:31 Self-Assessment Questions for Runners
10:04 The Role of Strength Training
13:34 Managing Your Nervous System
15:21 Nutrition for Midlife Runners
20:19 The Real Life Runners Team
26:58 Special Enrollment Period
41:19 Testimonials from Real Life Runners

Join the Team! --> https://www.realliferunners.com/team

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Transcript

Angie: 0:00

What's up runners and welcome back to the podcast. I am still on a high from our five day running reignited challenge, and I've been reading through all of your takeaways and I just have to say. Wow. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for listening to the replays on the podcast. For those of you that showed up live and participated in the calls, it was so powerful and such a fun week, and the breakthroughs that you all have been sharing around your mindset, your body, your energy, and how you view running. These are all so, so powerful. I saw things like don't look for motivation. Action is the motivation. People that have saying this is confirming so many things that I've been trying to piece together over the past. Few years, I finally understand why my energy is shifting the way that it is, and how I need to adjust my training. And all of this is telling me something really important. You are ready, ready to do things differently, ready to feel better in your body, ready to stop chasing motivation and start training instead with intention. But today I wanna lovingly challenge you a bit. Because a lot of times when we go to things like the challenge or go to live events, and we are feeling so inspired and so motivated. But then we get home and things kind of fall off the wagon because inspiration is not the same thing as implementation. And while breakthroughs feel amazing, they're a crucial first step. They're not the thing that actually changes your results. So today we're gonna talk about the difference between inspiration and implementation and give you the exact steps that you need to move forward. So stay tuned.

1:43

If you're looking for ways to bring more joy into your running and you want to be a physically and mentally stronger runner, you're in the right place. This is the Real Life Runners podcast, and we are your hosts, Kevin and Angie Brown. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Now let's get running.

Angie: 2:02

All right, so raise your hand if you participated in the running reignited challenge. Whoop, whoop. Heck yeah. So last week was so much fun and thank you to all of you that were there. today I really wanna talk about next steps moving forward, because like I mentioned in the intro, sometimes we can come off these things with. This sense of inspiration. But what I also see, and what I've seen from some of the responses inside the challenge is that we can often have this false sense of, okay, I know everything now I'm good. I can figure it out on my own, and. Today we wanna talk about why for so many people that doesn't work because aha moments like so many of you were having last week during the challenge. These aha moments are awareness. But awareness without action does not change your pace. It does not rebuild your strength. It does not regulate your nervous system or help you lose. Belly fat and breathing, or just slowing down on your runs. Those are just a couple pieces of the puzzle that's not the full picture because that change that you want. Only happens when you consistently apply what you've learned over time with the right structure and with the right support. You don't just need inspiration, you need implementation. And if you're like so many women, especially after 40, you've already tried to implement, you've already tried figuring this out on your own. You've tried doing the research, you've tried plans, you've listened to podcasts. So why are you still feeling stuck? One, one woman during the challenge said that it confirmed what she's been trying to piece together over the past few years, and I really wanna pause right there because right there. Is one of the things and one of the issues that I see is that so many women are trying to piece it together. Alone. You've been gathering information, but without a plan to apply it and without the support to stay consistent, it's falling short. It's like trying to train for a marathon without a map, without an actual plan. You wouldn't try to build a house. Based on tips from social media, right? I sure as heck hope not. You'd want a blueprint and you'd want someone, hopefully a licensed general contractor to walk you through it. Even if you are a contractor, you know that you likely aren't gonna be able to do it yourself. You're gonna need to hire an architect that is gonna help, have to help you come up with a plan, and you're probably gonna have to hire other people to support you. Maybe you're really good. At the concrete part, but you don't know how to do, you know, the electrical stuff. so there's so many pieces that go into a plan and. You need help and you need the right support. And truly, that's really what the real Life Runners team is. That's what the Running Reconnected method is, and that is why I designed that, because I've seen so many women trying to piece together all this information and there's just, there's always holes in it because there's so much information out there. There is also a lot of conflicting information out there. It can be very, very confusing unless you know how to sort through it and sift through it. Let's go a little bit deeper, so you might be feeling inspired after last week, and that is a beautiful thing that tells me that something inside of you knows that you're ready for more. But now I want to ask you some honest questions because I want to help you figure out if you truly have the. Tools that you need to move forward on your own or if you're just more aware than you are before, because awareness again, that is the first step, and I'm so glad that all of you were having so much more awareness in all of these breakthrough moments in the challenge when you started to see why you've been feeling that way. That was my goal of last week. My goal was to show you that you're not crazy, you're not alone. There's a lot. Reasons why your body is feeling this way, and a lot of it is has to do with the hormone shifts that are happening during perimenopause and menopause. And that doesn't mean that you're broken, and it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. It just means that you need a new strategy moving forward. You need a different plan, different tools, different resources, different support levels to actually help you move forward and get the results that you want. So I'm gonna go through a couple questions here to help you try to self-assess here, to see if you do truly know all of the information or have all of the tools that you need to move forward. So first question, let's, let's talk about your running first. Do you know exactly how many times to run per week? What each of those runs needs to feel like. We talked about the importance of slowing down, and a lot of you last week hadn't ever heard of the concept of polarized training or the 80 20 rule, and we talked about how so many runners go out. And push themselves hard on each run. They're somewhere around like a seven outta 10 on each run, and how that's just breaking your body down and how most of your training needs to feel like a two to three out of 10. That is true, but how many of your runs need to feel like that? How long should your runs be? What about the other 20%, the speed days, the harder days? What should those look like? I'll tell you. One thing, it does not mean that you should just go out and push hard for the entire run on those days. That is not the most effective way to training. That is not the most effective way for you to get the fastest results. So if you're thinking, okay, well I'll probably run three or four days a week. And I'll make a couple of those easy, and then I'll push harder on a day, and then I'll go longer one day. That's a good overview. But what are the details of that? Do you have those details? And do you know how to put those things together in the most effective way? Number two. How do you know? Or I'm sorry, do you know how to tell if your long run is actually building endurance or if it's silently draining your energy and slowing down your progress? So if you are training for a longer race, if you are someone that wants to improve your endurance, you are probably focused a lot on long runs. And a lot of people that train for half marathons and marathons, they. I've even seen a lot of runners kind of ignore their training during the week and really only focus on their long runs. They kind of keep their weekly training the same and just ramp up their long run mileage. Which can work for some people, especially younger. You know, when you're in your twenties, maybe even your thirties, but that is not the best strategy, especially for women in your forties, fifties and beyond. So if you are just focusing on building up your long run, especially if you're pushing too hard, if you're doing your long runs too fast, that can be just draining your energy. Slowing your progress and setting you up for more injury, especially if you don't know how to fuel during your long runs. Because if you are training for longer races, like half marathons and marathons, fueling becomes a very big part of helping you build endurance, helping to give your body what it needs in order to build endurance and in, in order to build and adapt versus just breaking your body down. So last week we talked a lot. About the effect that stress HA has on our body and how there are beneficial types of stress that we can apply to our body, like training. Exercise is a form of stress on the body, and the goal of stress is to help our bodies adapt and get stronger. But the way that so many people are training and exercising, they are just adding stress and accumulating the stress without allowing their bodies to adapt. And that's just breaking your body down even more, which can actually be moving you in the opposite direction that you want to go. Okay, so that's question number two. Question number three, do you know the specific strength exercises that compliment your running? And when to do them so that you move forward instead of stalling out or getting injured. We talked about strength training last week on day three, and I had you guys do some strength assessments so you can see how strong you are and where there might be weaknesses or where there might be imbalances. And we also talked about how runners need a specific. Way of strength training and there's people out there on social media that will tell you that there's no such thing as running specific exercises or runners don't need to train in, you know, running specific ways. All you need to do is squat and deadlift and that is not the full truth. Yes, squats and deadlifts are great exercises and can do a lot for you as a runner, but that is, those are missing major pieces of the puzzle. Because running is a single leg exercise. Running is essentially jumping from one leg to another over and over and over again, and your body needs to be able to stabilize itself to be strong enough to absorb those, those forces, and also have enough power to propel you forward. So there are. Better ways for us to strength train as runners. And there are ways, and it, the order of your strength trading even matters. You know, if you are, if you have a day where you're doing strength and running on the same day, which one do you do first and which one do you do second? Like which, where is your focus? And I can't give you the answer to that right now on the podcast because it's not one simple answer. It depends on what you're training for. It depends on what your focus is. Right now, if your focus is running a marathon. That answer is going to be different than someone that is focused on building strength that is not trained for a race right now. And so this is why having that understanding of how strength and running complement each other and how to work with each other is extremely important because strength training and running can actually work against each other if they're not put together the right way. So do you know those exercises and do you know the best way to put. Plan together so that you are training the most effective way and improving your risk of injury, decreasing your risk of injury, versus increasing your risk of injury. Because if you're just adding strength training onto your current running routine, you are adding more stress on the body. You are just adding load. So if you're not adjusting your running at all and you're just adding in more strength, you're actually putting yourself at a higher risk of injury. There's a very. Calculated and effective way for you to add strength training in. That meets you where you are. If you've never strength trained before and you try to jump in to four days of strength training, lifting heavy weights, most likely you're gonna get injured. There's a better way you can progress. You have to meet yourself where you are. You have to help the body move better first before adding resistance. So do you know the movements. That you're supposed to be doing. Do you know how to warm your body up appropriately so that your muscles are ready to lift heavier? Okay. Like only you can answer these questions, and that's why I'm asking them here. Okay. Question number four. Do you know how to recognize when your nervous system is overloaded and what to do about it? So if we talked about in day four last week, we talked about, uh, the nervous system and how it's really important because your nervous system regulates everything that you do. It's really the main control, switch the operating system behind everything. And we also talked about how so many women are getting stuck in sympathetic activation. Their nervous system is overloaded and they're in fight or flight more than. They need to be. And when we're in fight or flight, we don't adapt to training well because our body is just trying to survive. Our body is just trying to keep us alive when we're in sympathetic activation. And so it's important for us to understand how to help our body shift over into what's called parasympathetic activation or rest and digest mode so that your body can actually recover. And adapt from, adapt to your training. But when your nervous system is overloaded, it's really hard for that to happen. So do you know how to recognize it? And do you know how to, how to get your body to shift over and. When I say this, a lot of people are like, oh yeah, I just have to think positive, or I just have to deep, you know, do some deep breathing. And those are helpful. Believe me, we've, we talked about those as well last week, but those are not the only things. You just sitting there and deep breathing is not the only thing that's going to help your body shift over into parasympathetic, especially if, you know, maybe you're able to kind of breathe. And, and calm your, your nervous system down, but then you go back to what you were doing and you ramp right back up again. Right? So do you know how to do that? Okay. Um, I think we're on number five now. Number five, do you know how to eat in a way that supports your training, your hormones and your recovery, especially in midlife? Because your nutrition needs over after 40 change. The hormones that are shifting in your body as a woman over 40 in perimenopause or post menopause affect the way that your body metabolizes energy, the way that your body metabolizes the food that you eat and your body changes, the insulin sensitivity changes your response to glucose, your cortisol response. All of these things are different and, and your body's, storage mechanism of like. When your cortisol levels are higher, because estrogen is declining, cortisol tends to stay more elevated, and cortisol is a hormone that affects fat storage. And so there's a lot of women in this phase of life that notice that they're accumulating more fat, especially around the belly area. Due to these cortisol levels. Now cortisol is not a bad thing. Okay? So I really want to try to break up and dispel that myth as well, because there's a lot of people on social media that are trying to make you think that cortisol is the enemy. Cortisol is not the enemy. Cortisol plays a very. Vital role in our bodies, especially as runners. Basically, cortisol helps to mobilize sugar in our body that the stored form of carbohydrates in our body to give us energy to go out and run and to exercise. So cortisol is, is a great thing. It's not so great when cortisol levels stay elevated. And the way that you eat makes a difference in your cortisol levels, the way that you eat what you eat, when you eat. All of these. Factors affect how your body processes the food that you're eating. So some of the things I just mentioned, when you're eating your nutrient timing becomes more important, especially eating around your workouts and what you're supposed, what you're, what's best to eat before and after exercise. what you're eating makes a big difference. And the your timing of all of that, how you're eating. Actually plays a role as well if you're constantly eating on the go and stressed out. If you are questioning whether or not you're eating the right thing and you're stressed about the food that you're eating, that's going to affect how your body absorbs it. And then of course, how much you're eating. Affects how your body responds and whether or not your nutrition is supporting your training, your hormones, and your recovery. Because there's a lot of women out there when I say how much you're eating, they think that they're eating too much. They think they're overeating. But when we really take a look at it, there's a lot of women and a lot of you that did the challenge last week that started to realize, oh my gosh, I'm actually under fueling. I'm not giving my body. The things that it needs, I'm not eating in a way that is supporting me. So. Again, the awareness is huge When you realize that and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm, I'm not eating in, in a way that is supporting my body and my hormones, and this is the way that I'm eating, is actually making these symptoms even worse. Okay, great awareness. Perfect. Now what? what do we do now? And again, we didn't have time to get into all of these details last week in the challenge. We only had five days together, so. Do you know how to eat moving forward? Because it's not just about eating more protein. That is an important piece of it. Of course, like we did talk a little bit about that. And protein is important for women in midlife. It becomes more important. When we go through perimenopause and menopause than it was earlier in our life. But that's not the only piece of the puzzle, especially as runners. Carbohydrates are also very important. Healthy fats also very important. So do you know what you should be eating to help optimize your health and your running and your longevity? And this is where I wanna caution you because I think that we can get into. A pattern or a place where we're hyper-focused on our food, and I don't want that for you either. Thinking that, analyzing every morsel, every bite that we put into our mouth, that is also a very unhealthy way to. Eat and an unhealthy relationship with food. So it's really about understanding how to listen to your body, figure out what your body needs, and then give it that, right, give it, give it the things that it needs so that. You can recover quicker. Your body builds muscle more easily. Your endurance improves, you sleep better, you stop. You have less hot flashes or brain fog or joint pain, like your nutrition has an effect on all of those things. Okay, and the final question, and maybe the most important question of it all. Do you really want to keep spending hours and hours searching for answers, scrolling on your phone, following plans from free apps that you hope will work and still end up in the same spot three months from now? I'm gonna let that sink in. Because if you don't have the right plan and the right system, and when I say plan, it's so much more than just your training plan. yes, your runs are important, but it's also about the things that I just mentioned here, like your plan for strength training, your plan for your nervous system, your plan for. Nutrition, and that's why I like to use the word system because this truly is like a training system and training lifestyle that goes into all of this. And there's people out there that are thinking, I'm sure, this all sounds like too much. This sounds like a lot. I just, I just wanna run a little bit faster. I just. Don't want running to hurt. I just wanna lose weight. Like you're talking this, this all sounds like a lot and I would love you to question that. is it a lot like it can be when you don't know the steps and you're constantly looking for answers, but. The truth is you don't need more motivation. You don't need to keep trying to figure this out on your own. You need a method and structure and real support that meets you where you are. And this is exactly why I created the Running Reconnected method and the real Life Runners team because in this phase of life, running gets harder, not because you're doing it wrong, but because your body's changing and your training needs to change with it. And I think that a lot of you that join the challenge as well. Are newer to running, and so I, I want to, if you're hearing me say the word training and you're thinking to yourself, oh, that's not me. That doesn't apply to me. I'm not training for a race, I'm not training for anything right now. I'm just, I'm just running. I would love you to challenge that because you, I would argue that you are training, like if you're out there trying to improve. In any way you're training, you might not be training for a race. The the end goal might be different, and that's totally okay. But you are training if you are wanting to improve, whether you're trying to improve your strength, you're trying to improve your endurance, you're trying to improve your body composition. All of that is training because I use the word training as the things that you're doing that is are leading you towards a goal. And inside the team, we take all of those insights that you had in the challenge and we turn them into action. That creates real and lasting transformation because you don't need to figure it out all alone. You just need the right system, and you need the right people to walk beside you as you make those changes. I know that there's a lot of people that think that running is a solo sport, and it's true. A lot of people. Do go out and run by themselves. Maybe you're also a part of a running group, and so you do some of your runs or even all of your runs with other people, which is fantastic. And even though you go out and run on your own, a lot of us, that doesn't mean that you don't need support because you know how it feels when you feel like you're doing the right things and you're not seeing the results or you go out. And your run just feels terrible when you have someone that you can share that with, that understands what you're going through because they've been there too. It makes a world of difference. Just like anything in your, your life, you know, if there's ever been something that you've done in your life that was hard. You can have people in your life that can be sympathetic, but if they haven't been there and if they've never experienced it themselves, it's not the same as sharing that same struggle with someone who's been there and done that. I. Had that experience as well. It just hits different, you know, if you're a mom and you're struggling with a teenager and you're talking to someone that doesn't have kids that's trying to be sympathetic, you appreciate that. You know, like your friends that are trying to be sympathetic, it's wonderful when they're there for you and they can listen to you. But you know that it's different versus when you're talking to someone else that also has teenagers or that had teenagers, maybe their kids are grown up and they can offer you more wisdom and perspective because they've been there and they got through it and they're on the other side of it Now. They can look back and they can tell you, they can see what worked and what didn't work, and they can help guide you so that you don't have to go through all of the same struggles. That is priceless. That is gold right there. When you can have people in your life like that, and that's exactly what is waiting for you inside the real life runners team. You not only have coaches to guide you, expert coaches, not just coaches that have gone to a weekend running certification program. Kevin and I have been running for decades, both of us, Kevin, longer than me, and I've been a physical therapist for 18 years and worked with thousands of people and I understand and am an expert in the human body and the nervous system and. All of the things in strength training, all the things that we need to succeed as runners. So you have coaches there and you have amazing people on the team that are right next to you that are out there training, that understand the the struggles and the frustrations that also understand the joy that comes when you break through things and do things that you never thought possible before, and they're there to celebrate you. Hard. They're there to celebrate you big time. I love the celebrations that we have in our team, both on our live calls and inside the Facebook group, where I just watch the runners support each other and it is the most heartwarming, like cup filling thing that I see is these runners connecting from all over the world and understanding maybe some of them for the first time that they're not alone. And that is so, so huge. So if you're not yet a part of the Real Life Runners team, I want to invite you to join us, and that's why I have decided to release this episode a day early because right now we are running a special enrollment period. We've got some special bonuses and a special investment, and that investment is going up. I want you to get in and I wanna give you the support that you need. So I wanna walk you through now exactly what happens when you join the team so that you know what's waiting for you, because I want you to have all of the information that you need to make the decision that's right for you. So those questions that I walked you through earlier of like, you know, do you have all this information? Do you know how many times like your runs and your strength and all those things, if you answered no. To any of those questions, I want you to consider joining the team because those answers are inside for you. So when you join, you're going to get a personalized training plan that is built around you, your effort and your physiology. So Kevin and I, when you join, there's a, you have two choices in the way that you get your training plan. You sign up for the team, you'll watch a welcome video that'll explain kind of what, what, what you're getting inside the team and all about our coaching and our community and all of that stuff. There's a little intro video, and then we go to your training plan and you can either choose to build your own training plan and we walk you through exactly how to do that. If you're someone that likes to do it on your own step by step, we show you how to do that, and we have tons of templates that you can. Use to work with and then customize, or you can fill out a customized plan request and that gets sent to us so that we then will ask you some questions like, how many times are you current? Like, where are you currently? Right? Like, how many times are you running? What are you doing? Are you strength training? Like we get a a snapshot of where you are right now, and then we also ask you about your goals. Where do you wanna go? And then we build you a plan to take you from where you are to where you want to go, and we give you all of your runs during your week. Okay? So if you wanna run three days a week, if you wanna run five days per week, we build that plan out to exactly what is going to work in your real life. That is why we are real life runners, because this needs to work inside your real life. So we tell you your exact runs per week. Exactly how long they should be, exactly how they should feel on the effort level, scale, scale from one to 10. Um, what that should feel like in your body. We give you the speed days, you know,'cause some of those days are gonna be easy. Feeling like that. Level two to three like we talked about. And then. What does a speed day look like? You know, maybe you'll have intervals on your plan. Maybe you'll have some hill workouts on your plan. There'll be different types of speed days or harder days to help you make faster progress with the le, I should say, with the least amount of effort and with the least amount. Um, it's the most effective way to do it, right? So you'll have all of your runs all planned out for you, your exact long runs, everything that you need. Your plan also has all of your strength workouts. It gives you the exact exercises to do with video demonstrations of those exercises so that you don't have to guess. You don't have to Google, you don't have to go to YouTube. You just open up your plan, open up the strength workout, you'll see the whole strength workout written out for you. And then you'll also have videos to follow if you're not sure what any of those things are. You'll get warmup and mobility routines so that you can get your body moving better. You'll, you'll have running drills put in there, okay? Don't let this overwhelm you. These are little things. Running drills take, you know, five minutes or less, but they're there to help your body understand how to move more efficiently so that running feels better. Inside your plan. You'll also have the rest days planned out in there for you if you have any sort of injury or any sort of pain. Right now we have little things that we can add in to help you rehab those, um, injuries. Again, you're getting access to me a physical therapist, so if you are dealing with some plan plantar fasciitis, if you're dealing with Achilles pain or calf pain or knee pain, I'm gonna give you some. Additional exercises to do to clear that up first before we start jumping into heavy lifting or more running or those kinds of things as well. Okay, so we build out the training plan. We, um, you get that training plan delivered to you on a, a training calendar called Final Surge that syncs with a lot of the popular watches out there, like Garmin, apple Watch, Kross, Strava, like all these things. So you can just connect your, your Garmin or whatever watch you use, and then the workouts will literally just be pushed to your watch each day. How cool is that, right? You'll get an email every single day, uh, the night before actually you get the email the night before saying, here's your workout tomorrow. Um, and so that you know what's coming. You know how much time to, you know, devote to it. You can plan out your whole week and figure out, okay, where am I gonna fit my training sessions in this week? Because you have your whole calendar all planned out for you. So that takes away so much research. No more guesswork, no more guessing paces, no more burning out. And all of the strength and mobility work that is in your plan is designed to compliment your running and to reduce your injury risk. And again, we tell you, do you know if you, if you are doubling up on strength and runs on that day, which one do you do first? Right? And if you're not sure. You have coaches that you can ask, and we get you those answers quickly. Um, you can get coaching and support in a lot of different ways. So we have live weekly coaching calls on Zoom every single Tuesday. If you can't make it to our, our live calls, you can email us, you can send us a message inside the app. You can, um, actually request. A group coaching call on a different day. You know, that's a new option that we have added to the team recently as well, because we want this team to work for you no matter where you are in the world. And we do already have people all over the world in lots of different time zones. Australia, the uk, the us, Canada, like we're all over the globe already, which is amazing. So you get all this live, these live calls, um. We also have a, the private community Facebook group where you can post questions, you can post your wins, right? Just post your runs, like, just for some accountability so you can find support and accountability in those teams. Uh, in in, sorry. In that group, uh, we also have. Team coffee chats, these are super fun because they're just zoom chats where you can connect with other runners around the world. That's not like a coaching session, it's just you having a virtual coffee with your running friends. So if you don't have an in-person running group, you, you now do have, you have a virtual running group that you can connect to and you can ask the. Questions that people might think are TMI, you know, too much information here, like the, the, the chaffing questions and the sports bra questions and like the things that you would feel weird asking other people. There's really no weird questions inside the team, and that's the cool thing. Um. Then you have access to the running reconnected pathway. Okay? So you have that, the training plan, you have all that coaching and support, and then you have the access to the Running Reconnected method. And this is the framework that I built to help women over 40 run strong, feel energized, and love their bodies again. And this framework is designed to compliment your training plan. So. Inside of your training plan, you've got, again, you've got all the runs, all of the strength and mobility and all of that stuff. And then the running reconnected method is this is like you get one to two lessons every week to implement other action items. So for example. Week one, we talk about nutrient timing, and I help you understand when is the best time for you to eat around your workouts or throughout the day in order to get the the results that you want. And so you practice that during week one and it gives you time to implement because again, inspiration, awareness, and information is much different than implementation. So we. Kind of break it down into a 12 week roadmap so that you have one to two things to focus on every single week so that you can start to implement these things. You can start to implement these changes in your nutrition, in your recovery, in your sleep, and in, you know, your nervous system regulation. All of these things that you can do outside of your running as well to make your results even more, even better, right? So. Those are like the main things. And then in the, um, membership you also have additional tools, like I've got additional trainings, like the Habit Accelerator. I've got a, a whole vault of bonus trainings. Um, oh, we also have amazing guest workshops. We had one yesterday. We brought in an intuitive eating and food freedom coach, and she talked about how to. Understand the signals that our body is giving us. And you know, we do talk about that inside of the program. So, um, but I also bring in guests that know more than I do in these areas or that compliment what I'm teaching in these areas to help go deeper on some of these things as well. Um, and these experts, we can. Ask questions. That's what these workshops are. They're interactive workshops. It's not just you coming to listen to a lecture. Like, yes, there is some presentation and there's more information for you, but it's about trying to workshop this and when you're feeling like you don't understand what to do, having me having a coach and then having these guest experts help you can make a huge difference in how you feel. You know, we've got some fantastic, uh, guest workshops planned for the rest of the year. In June, we're doing one with a gut health expert, um, in, we've got a dermatologist coming later in the year. We've got some functional health experts coming in, so it, the membership, the team is designed to give you. The things that you need to not only be a strong runner, but also just be a strong woman over 40 and to improve your health in all areas. And I know that that can seem overwhelming. Some people are like, well, I just want to, I just wanna run faster, you know? But in order to run faster, there's a lot of other things that you need to think about, and I don't want that to be overwhelming for you. I just want to give you the best results, and I want to give you the best results with the least amount of effort. I want your training and your choices to be effective and for you to start seeing results sooner rather than later. And that's how I've built, really built everything inside the team. And then, you know, I tell people,'cause one of the big questions that people ask is, is there a minimum commitment? And I, the answer is no. I don't require, right now we don't require a minimum commitment. In the team, and I do that for several reasons. I do that because, number one, I never wanna lock anyone into anything that's not right for them. However, with that being said, we also know that I. Change takes time and that results get better over time. So I would suggest that you commit to three months because you'll start feeling better. Likely most women start feeling better within the first 30 days, some as early as like a week or two, and will feel totally transformed by the end of 12 weeks. Okay. And then at the end of the 12 weeks, if you're like a lot of women, then you're like, well, now what? You know what, what? Now that's why it's an ongoing membership. Okay? It's not just a 12 week thing. It, it, it can be for some people and that's fine. But if you are someone that like, after that 12 weeks, you're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I just wanna keep this going. That's why we have that ongoing membership. And because this is really about building your strongest, most aligned running life long term. So that's why we have it set up this week. So if you have had even one aha this week, whether you have joined us live in the challenge, whether you listen to the recordings here on the podcast, however you consumed any of the content, if you've had even one aha moment this week, and if you're still here listening to this episode, and if you know deep down that what you've been doing isn't working anymore, this is your moment. You don't have to stay stuck. You don't have to do this alone, and you don't have to keep piecing things together and hoping that something clicks. I want you to, I, I wanna invite you to take all of the insight that you now have and turn it into a strategy and a lifestyle that actually works, and I would love to help you inside the real Life runners team. So. If you wanna join us, head over to real life runners.com/team because this special challenge offer is expiring Thursday night. Okay, Thursday, May 22nd. Is when the special pricing, um, expires to join the team, and then the price will go up after that. So if you've tried doing it on, on your own and that's not working for you, maybe it's time to start doing it together. Maybe it's start, it's time for you to start working with people that have your back no matter what. No matter where you are in your running. Even if you think that you're too new or you're not far enough along, we will meet you where you are. And we will help you get to the place where you want to go. So again, that link is real life runners.com/team, and I can't wait to help you in this next phase of your running life. I.

Audio Only - All Participants: 41:19

Hi everyone. so I became a member in I think 2022. I mostly did it because I was a new mom and I. Wanted to enjoy running. I was I did sports as well. and so running was a punishment, but also, being in the military, fitness integral part of what I do and it's part of, what we have to do and how to stay into the military. And so the mindset was always push, push, push, push. And I wasn't getting anywhere. And I wanted so badly to enjoy the mental relief that I knew so many people had with running. And so when I joined the, real life runners, everything shifted and I put it in the chat that said this is the best thing that I invested in myself. because I never wanted to do that. I never thought I should spend money on like the things that like would help me. aside from like small things, but this is by far the best investment in myself that I have made. there, there's so much to offer from what she said, but my whole mind shift, it's not just about running anymore and my physical fitness, it's a whole life change. Like I, I've, through this I've realized I can change how I approach life and my perspective on life and how I interact with my loved ones. And, we had the retreat in April, her first ever and I'm so much closer to those people. So you should definitely join real life runners. I joined Real Life Runners. I am, I'm a cross country coach and that I'm not, I wasn't able to run much'cause I, have back issues and so I, I joined real life runners for just the hands-on coaching and it's become so much more than that. I focus on strength and I'm now consistent in strength and running and I just did a 5K with my daughter and that went extremely well. And I've got goals now, and some people in the group are all about how far they can go, pushing themselves so longer. I wanna push myself to do be faster and so I wanna see how fast I can go and I really, I. Only have desires to do 5Ks I don't really desire to go beyond that. and that's okay. And I've become, good with that. And it's just, I love each one of our group members we're so supportive and encouraging. And it's not just about running either. We go through some really deep stuff and we work through life issues and it's just been really cool and everybody really helps with that.

Angie: 44:19

Cindy,

Audio Only - All Participants: 44:20

I am not an, I never was an athlete. My high school career, my adult life, not an athlete. Absolutely not. I took my first running steps at 59 years old. 59 and I did a year of, I am, I'm gonna try to run and I'm gonna run fast because that's what runners do. And then I thank God, found our real life runners on a podcast and listened to some podcasts and she was speaking my language. I understood her. She was, had the science to back it up. I joined Real Life Runners in 23 and the encouragement I get from these young ladies, and then some are even a little older than me, and that's okay too. I just, have found that I can train and exercise and build strength at 60 years old that I didn't even know the importance of it. I had no idea. And I have, my goal is to see how far I can go. I'm 62 and a half now. Last year I ran my first marathon. Thanks to this this amazing group, and here I go. I can't help it because this is this is just, has changed my life and I am doing this for 83-year-old Cindi and 93-year-old Cindi I couldn't ask for also a better group of gals to be my friends. They really are. So they're stuck with me.