412: What to Do Now for Your Fall Race: Why Summer Training Matters More Than You Think

In this episode of the Real Life Runners podcast, we discuss the importance of starting fall race preparation during the summer months, particularly June and July. We delve into the concept of cycle stacking, emphasizing the need to lay a strong foundation now to avoid last-minute rush and stress. Key topics include the importance of strength training, building mental toughness, adapting to heat, and incorporating up and down weeks for better adaptation and reduced injury risk.

The episode also highlights the flexibility required during summer schedules and vacations, encouraging runners to redefine consistency and integrate new training strategies that align with their current life circumstances.

05:00 Importance of Summer Training for Fall Races

08:20 Cycle Stacking: Building a Strong Foundation

12:04 Adapting Training for Runners Over 40

14:33 Strength Training and Addressing Imbalances

18:26 Mental Training and Consistency

21:50 The Power of Up and Down Weeks

25:57 Planning Ahead for Recovery

26:16 Balancing Business and Training

27:33 Training in the Heat

29:12 Heat Adaptation Benefits

34:34 Summer Training Strategies

39:30 Creative Training Solutions

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:24

Welcome back to the Real Life Runners podcast. If you've got a fall race on the calendar, whether it's a 5K, 10 k, half marathon, or full marathon or ultra marathon, this episode is for you because so many runners wait until. Late summer or early fall to get serious. But the truth is, if you really want your fall race to go well, your work starts now. June and July are your secret weapons. This is the time to lay the foundation, build strength, and adapt intelligently so that your race prep feels strong and not stressful. Today we're breaking down exactly what to focus on this summer. How to use cycle stacking. Why up and down weeks matter more, especially after 40, how to train effectively in the heat and how to stay consistent through vacations and busy schedules that the summer often brings. Because your fall race success is not about going harder, it's about being more intentional now. So stay tuned. What's up runners? Welcome back to the show. Last week we had an amazing guest on the podcast, so I hope that you all have listened to that. And now Kevin and I are back with our first episode of the summer. Happy Summer, Kev.

Speaker 2: 1:56

Happy summer. It's good times.

Speaker: 1:58

I know this is a wild time for us here because. Kevin, for the past 18 years of teaching has taught summer school every single year, and this is his first summer without teaching summer school. How you feeling about that?

Speaker 2: 2:12

It's super weird'cause I have to actually just clean up my classroom in just a couple of days. Oh. And then? And then go, yeah. True. Like normally I have an extra five weeks to clean up my classroom and then, and the. You know, maintenance crew comes in and takes care of it. Yeah. But I, I slowly get rid of all my stuff over the course of multiple weeks. Yeah. Now it's, it's gotta go

Speaker: 2:30

now it's gotta go. So how are you feeling about like, having this whole summer now to relax or train however you want to without the time crunch of a schedule given to you?

Speaker 2: 2:44

Well, so that's, that's an interesting one. Yeah. It's not, not always the time crunch. Sometimes having a schedule actually makes training easier. That's true. Because you're like, oh, well I need to run here because I can't run at any other time during the day. So that's where it goes. I think sometimes the, the sort of laid backness of, of summer, mm-hmm. Especially from my perspective as a teacher, actually makes it almost more difficult to train, even though the openness of the schedule should make it so much easier.

Speaker: 3:10

That's a really interesting point. And so I'm wondering how many of you out there listening are kind of nodding your heads to that as well, like, oh yeah, that's true because we do get into these routines and routines are very helpful for us as runners and truly just as humans. We humans do well with routines and the summertime is often. When those routines change whether your kids are not in school, if you still have kids at home with you and now they're in summer camps. And the summer camp schedule is probably different than the school schedule was, or things at work are kind of different like they are for you as a teacher, they're definitely very different. Um, summer just can bring some challenges and some of them are not really expected. Like I wasn't really expecting you to say what you just said because I would think that having more time would make training. Easier, but I can see how that presents just a different challenge now.

Speaker 2: 4:02

Yeah. Thankfully the fact that it's, uh, it's still South Florida, the only time to train is pre-dawn. Yes. Otherwise, heat stroke is the best method of training, and that's not always ideal.

Speaker: 4:12

I know that was one of the things that I was thinking about in talking to my running friends about as well, because I typically. One day a week, I wake up and I go run at five 30 with my friends. And then the other days of the week, I typically run a little bit later after I drop off the girls at school. But that is not really an option anymore during the summer because it is just too darn hot. So it's kind of weird, but I'm gonna be waking up earlier over the summer and not getting to sleep in as much. I mean, I'm, I'm gonna sleep in on the other days when I have strength days and those kinds of things where I'm not running outside, but. I think I'm going to be work waking up a little bit earlier on my running days than I'm used to.

Speaker 2: 4:51

Yeah. I mean there's just so many scheduled changes. Like we've got the kids still around the house and they're gonna like to stay up a little bit later. Mm-hmm. And so then you get the combo of everybody else in the house is staying up later, but I need to get up early and get a run in. Yeah. And yet there's still a way to make summer work for you. Mm-hmm. To be set up for super success in, in whatever fall race you have.

Speaker: 5:10

Yeah. And I think that is a challenge as you have kids that. That get older as well as they want their bedtime to go later, but we still want our bedtime to go the same or even earlier, maybe earlier. Earlier,

Speaker 2: 5:21

8, 8 30, please. Yeah.

Speaker: 5:23

Yeah. So today we thought it would be good to talk about how your success in the fall starts now and not in August, because a lot of people kind of lose track of the summer between. The changes in schedule, summer vacations, all these different things, the heat, these things that can get in your way of summer training and then all of a sudden it's August, the kids are going back to school and you're like, oh yeah, I signed up for that race in a couple of months. I better start training. We don't want you to find yourself in that position and whether or not. You're training for a race or not? This episode will still apply to you because I am not a big racer. I don't have a race scheduled for the fall. Neither do you actually. But some of the concepts that we're gonna be talking about in today's episode are important regardless of what your goal is. If your goal is to build muscle, to build bone, to get stronger, to improve your endurance, whatever it might be, even without a race on the calendar, this episode is going to apply to you. So. Let's start about why June and July are critical months when we are looking forward to a fall race.

Speaker 2: 6:32

Okay, so this goes all the way back to when I was in high school as a runner. Mm-hmm. And the classic cross country coaches. Coaches, cliche is fall champions are made in the summer. Mm-hmm. Like that. And there's a reason to it, like, yeah. Every coach likes to bring that out and it's, it's true. Mm-hmm. Because what you do over the summer puts you in position to then not start essentially from scratch. Yeah. When fall starts, you know, there's a lot of of athletes that essentially go through training cycles and they have a spring race and they kind of chill and relax over the summer and they have like a late fall, early winter race. You know, kind of depends on your geography of when racing season is around you, but that's how they work. Sometimes summer just slips away. So being able to find something that you can focus on using summer as a chance to build up weaknesses where you're not like, oh, well that race is so soon. I wanna make sure that I really prioritize the workouts that are designed specifically for that race. But you kind of take a step back and look at your overall training. You're like, I have a big window to work with here. So it's not just. One area I can focus on, I might be able to knock out two or three things and build up my overall fitness, not just for this race, but my just overall fitness, which will pay off regardless of what distance you're going for.

Speaker: 7:48

Yeah, and it definitely is evident in the fall. As cross country coaches, when we have kids that show up on day one of practice, we know immediately who has been training over the summer and who hasn't been training over the summer because the kids that have been running are number one used to the heat. You know, down here in South Florida, August training really kind of no matter where you are, but especially here, the heat is a major. Thing that we need to get used to, and this is one of the things we tell our cross country kids as well, is that even if you're going outside to walk or to walk run, it's just important for you to be outside so that your body can start acclimating to the heat so that when we are asking you to go out and run three, four, or five miles in the, in the fall, it's not, you're not dying out there of heat stroke. So it is very important for. Them and obviously us also as runners over 40. So let's start by just defining one of the most important terms that we're gonna be talking about today, which is cycle stacking. So we believe, and this is the way that we train all of our clients here at real life runners in 90 day cycles. And sometimes cycles can be a little bit shorter or can be a little bit longer depending on what you're focusing on. But 90 days is a good measure for us to, to kind of look at and. Each 90 day cycle needs to have a specific goal. So for example, if you are looking to build strength, correct weaknesses, rehab, uh, maybe some nagging aches or pains that you might have, that's gonna be the main focus of a cycle. If you are training for a 5K or for a half marathon, that would be the main focus of a cycle. Now, it's important to understand that when you are, when you have one goal for. A certain cycle. That doesn't mean that you ignore everything else. We're still going to be doing strength training and mobility and speed work and other types of workouts during each cycle. It's just a matter of what the focus is and how much of an intensity we're gonna be putting in each place. So when we have a cycle that is, has a 90 day focus, then we can. Stack those cycles on top of each other so that we can build up the plan for a year or maybe even multiple years, so that each cycle builds on the last one, and then you are able to progress more regularly. That's not the word I'm looking for, like progress better over time without all the. Highs and lows that so many runners go through in their training.

Speaker 2: 10:22

Yeah. It's still not gonna be a linear progression because every time you, you add a new focused stimulus, you're gonna be able to make a jump in, in whatever that direction is. Yeah. Like if you spend some time, you're like, I'm really gonna focus in on speed now you're gonna be able to see some speed gains. And then you try and maintain endurance and maintain strength in that, and you're like, okay, now I'm gonna pull away from this and I really want to start focusing on building endurance. You're still gonna be able to maintain the speed, but now you're gonna focus on, you know, stretching out the runs. And so then as it gets closer to, you know, maybe there's a goal race of a half marathon or a marathon, if you've had some time prepping speed and some time prepping endurance, now you start merging those things together and you are now. Training, endurance and speed. That's essentially what racing a long distance race is, is the combination of both those guys. So summer gives you an opportunity to be like, all right, what is it that's, that might be holding me back from whatever my goal is? You know, is do you have a goal time that seems like crazy out of reach? Maybe what's holding you back is your higher end speed. And so many people, and this is. My cross country bias that they use summer as a chance to go longer and slower, but that's not necessarily what is NN. Going to be the best thing for you, depending on what your goal is, maybe summer is an opportunity to go faster. Maybe what's been holding you back is every time you start ramping up mileage for a race, you get hurt. So instead of worrying about ramping up mileage, use summer to ramp up your strength. So that when it comes time to start ramping up mileage, you have this huge foundation of strength and your body can physically handle the load. When you push all of this stuff off and you kind of do some training over the summer, but without like a key focus to it, you get into your later fall training, race training cycle, and you're trying to do too many things simultaneously. That's, that's the issue is like, well, I need to build up my mileage and I should probably get some work on strength and, well, I don't wanna lose any of this. Speed. Now you're doing all the things simultaneously, which means you're not really doing any of them super well, and it's just too much strain on the body.

Speaker: 12:28

Yeah, and that's one of the reasons that so many runners get injured because they're trying to do too many things all at once, and especially over 40, especially as a woman over 40, as are hormones start to change, you're probably noticing that it takes a little bit longer for your body to recover. In between, especially those harder sessions, it takes a little bit longer for your body to adapt to training. So by giving yourself a longer runway and giving yourself a different focus for the cycle, the couple of months leading up into your race training cycle in the fall, that's going to allow your body to make more gradual progress with less risk for injury because you're not trying to ramp up mileage and speed and strength all at the same time because there is this. Thing that happens to us, like it takes longer for our bodies to adapt, and there is a term called adaptation lag. The body just needs a little bit more time to respond to training stimuli in midlife and beyond, and that's why it's so important for us to start building now so that you can maintain and then sharpen later, not just to scramble to build. Fitness during those peak weeks of your race training?

Speaker 2: 13:43

Right. I mean, sometimes this may have worked when, when we were all a little bit younger. I knew that it didn't take me that long to be able to add in a a few extra hard stride sessions and I could get my speed back to a pretty decent level. It takes some time now. Mm-hmm. Like that first time that I really pushed myself on strides after I haven't done them in a while. Is like, okay, I feel like I'm going really hard, but my pace is just not there because I'm just, it takes a while to get that coordination going again, to get the muscles all firing in unison so that I feel, I feel powerful, that's fine, but I actually am using the power inside of my muscles to propel myself forward at a good speed. It's just not as, as smooth and as quick of an uptake in my body as it it used to be. I need more sessions.

Speaker: 14:28

Yeah, and I think that a lot of people can relate to that. And I think that it's important for us to talk about that because it's a very real thing. And there's a lot of people, especially women, that are starting to go through the, the hormonal changes that think that it's just them. And there's something wrong here and I don't understand what's going wrong. And I think it's, again, I'm gonna keep repeating this on so many of our podcasts. There's nothing wrong with you. Your body is just changing, and so your training has to change also. So when we look at what to focus on in June and July, there are multiple options. And like Kevin said, the classic longer, slower distance running base building types of training tend to be popular over the summer. And if that works for you, great. I personally like to focus on strength and I think that. Addressing weaknesses now and building up your strength training in the summertime is a fantastic use of your time for a lot of different reasons. Number one, it's hot outside and so the, your strength training most likely is going to be done indoors, whether you work out at home or in a gym. It's more indoors, so you are not exposed to all of the heat and the thunderstorms. I know that down here in South Florida, they, our summer thunderstorms have already started. The afternoon thunderstorms are here and they, the one today was quite windy and everything I was in, in my doctor's office when that started and I was just sitting there and all of the blinds were closed and then all of a sudden I heard this noise and I thought to myself, is that. Outside, like, what is happening? And so I got up and like peeked out the window and I could not believe the storm that was happening outside with that wind.

Speaker 2: 16:12

Yeah. I forget if it was Friday or Saturday, but that one was even windier and, but they're, they're so quick. Mm-hmm. It's like this massive gusts of winds for about like three minutes. Then the downpour hits and then it's like, all right, now I'm just gonna kind of sprinkle and drizzle through the rest of the afternoon. Oh

Speaker: 16:26

yeah. And it was so dark outside too, so it did get

Speaker 2: 16:28

really dark.

Speaker: 16:29

So there are. Weather issues that you have to think about. And you know, regardless of where you are in the world, there's heat, there's thunderstorms, there's something going on. If you're in the southern hemisphere, maybe you're in the middle of winter. Yeah. Here

Speaker 2: 16:42

comes the snow,

Speaker: 16:42

right? And we've got all of our Australians shout out to our, our Aussies. Uh, but that is one reason I think it's very good idea to focus on strength building in the summertime is just because then you're out of the heat and you can be. Indoors. Um, it's also the perfect time to work on your strength imbalances. One of the biggest reasons that runners get injured is because they have weaknesses and they have imbalance between either. There're, um, different parts of one side of the body or between the two sides, between the left side and the right side. There is an imbalance in strength as well. So summer's a great time for you to find those imbalances and then start working on them to build that strength up in those areas so that you can then prevent injury as you start to ramp up your speed or your mileage in your fall race cycle.

Speaker 2: 17:31

Yeah. I mean, another idea that you could focus on over the summer is your running form, your cadence. These are not necessarily the, the sexiest things to do, and they are lower priorities when you have a, a race impending. Mm-hmm. Like if you've got a couple of months before your race, that's not the time to be like, why don't I overhaul my running form? Like that is the, that is way too low on the importance meter. But over the summer is an excellent chance to be like, Hey. Why don't I just take out my phone and do just like a, a quick shot of me running towards the camera. I'll run sideways next to the camera, and you can go back and look at it and be like, wait, am I moving in in a nice fluid manner? Sometimes just filming yourself actually points out some muscle imbalances because one arm swings differently than the other. One leg swings differently than the other, and that that's a good chance that you've got some muscle imbalance or some tightness on one side that you don't necessarily have on the other side. I, I know I was super imbalanced. I also had a hernia, but I think that that hernia was messing with, uh, all sorts of balances.

Speaker: 18:32

Everything.

Speaker 2: 18:33

It was messing with everything. But then to try and strengthen and pretend that I didn't have a hernia and I could just keep running, I could strengthen one side more than the other. And so my arms pumped asymmetrically then. Mm-hmm. So that was fun.

Speaker: 18:44

So fun, so fun. I'm so glad we're over that hump in, in your training. Um, another thing you could work on during the summer months as well is some mental training. And I think that. People often think that mental training comes when I'm pushing myself hard. That's when I have to then push through and find those mental tips or hacks or things that will help me get through those harder workouts. But. You can actually start to build up your mental skills outside of racing, outside of race training, so that when you get into your race training cycle and things get hard, now all of a sudden you have new mental techniques to help you get through those tougher weeks. Especially those, um, high load weeks of your training when you just feel exhausted in all the ways you're not gonna wanna then. Come up with new mental skills on top of that, like you're already exhausted. So learning some mental techniques, learning some, um, how to influence the way that you're thinking about your training and the way that your brain is wired. Now, when you have a little bit of extra rest time and recovery time and you're not in the peak of training is a great idea because now we, you start to build some of those neural pathways and neural pathways do not get built quickly. They are not, if you. Live in an area where they're constantly doing highway construction and it just seems like it never ends. That's kind of what it's like to rewire your brain as well. Your certain thoughts and beliefs and ways of your thinking have been programmed for so many of us for decades and decades, and so. Just one race training cycle is not going to start reprogramming that. So by starting now to find some of those thoughts and beliefs that might be holding you back, start to reprogram and rewire those pathways. Now it's going to be much easier for you to jump on those pathways when race training starts.

Speaker 2: 20:38

Yeah, and you don't need a race to be able to put yourself into a position where you're going to need some, some proper thought work to have the confidence and the consistency. There are plenty of days over the summer where you're like, Ooh, it would be nicer to sleep in. Or where you're training plan gets thrown off because you're on vacation with a family. It would be much easier to slide into a place of, of a lack of consistency, but being able to say, no, no, no. I train with consistency. I put in this, this type of work allows when it gets difficult. When you're trying to stack more difficult workouts in the fall, you can lean back on what you built over the summer and be like, look, even when it was tough, I still maintain consistency. It's going to be tough this week, but I've already shown that I can maintain the consistency. The more often that you show yourself you're capable of doing something, the easier it's going to be next time a similar situation presents itself and maybe that project at work and being on vacation are different, but they're both time constraints. So they're both like, how do I fit my, my exercise as a priority when I have these other time constraints hanging out around me?

Speaker: 21:48

Yeah, so I think that, you know, we can really use this time to build the foundation both physically and mentally, so that your race prep is smoother and more powerful. Yes, we can do strength exercises, we can address mobility limitations, and we can also work on building your mental strength as well, because that's going to set you up better. Um, so that's kind of the idea of cycle stacking and really looking at some of your weaknesses. Now, the other thing we wanted to address would be the power of having a longer runway and really giving yourself time instead of just trying to fit all of your training into a 12 week cycle or a 16 week cycle. Taking it and extending that, giving yourself a longer runway with up and down weeks are going to allow you to adapt. Um, even better. So what am I talking about when I'm, when I say up and down weeks, there's a lot of people that when they train for a race, especially a longer race, they just add on say, one mile per week. Okay, I'm just gonna start off. My long run is 10 miles and I'm just gonna add on a mile every week. And that would be an example of linear progression, even though we already talked about how the body does not adapt linearly. That's one of the reasons that we. Pretty much always institute. I, I think always not, there's not one plan or client that I can think of that we don't do this with. Um. We use a non-linear progression. So for example, two weeks on and one week off, where we are building for two weeks, whether that's your strength, your mileage, your speed, and then we do a down week or a pullback week. And this gives your body your both your nervous system and your musculoskeletal system, your muscles, your bones, your tendons, your tissues, all of that. Time to adapt. It also helps to reduce burnout, your injury risk, and hormonal dysregulation because if you are just pushing hard all the time, and if you are constantly just adding training load to your body, your hormones are gonna get dysregulated. Your. Risk of injury is higher. So having these pullback weeks in your training can really benefit you in so many ways, but you're gonna need a little bit of a longer training cycle to really institute these in the best way, especially if you're building up for a longer race. I think

Speaker 2: 24:06

that, uh, you did a great job and that's exactly where I would've started is focusing on the ability to recover on this. But the up down week cycle also includes the ups, and sometimes you might have a window of training that gives you an opportunity to pulse up higher than you're used to because you might also have an opportunity to recover better than you're used to. You know, if you are are like, eh, I've got these couple of weeks over the summer that I could do something sort of different and unique with. Maybe don't push really hard for both of them. If you pushed harder than normal for the first one, but then you could use the second one to recover. Like to essentially recover harder than normal. Recover softer than normal. Is that the appropriate way to say it? I'm not sure exactly what the terminology there. But like if I had two weeks that I could dedicate to like a training camp setting, yeah. I would overdo the first week and then over recover on the second week. That seems great. So if you know you're built up, like, oh, I've got, we've got this vacation plan, I'm really not gonna be able to do much during that week. If you have the opportunity to also go bigger the week before, that will be a, a wonderful two week combination.

Speaker: 25:17

Yeah, and the other thing that it does is it all also allows you to understand how to train when your body's tired. I think, you know, because if you do go harder on the one week and then you're still training the following week, even if you pull back a bit, you're still training on tired legs or a tired body because your body's still recovering and adapting to. The increased load that you placed on it the week before?

Speaker 2: 25:38

Yes. Yeah. But I mean, in general, the ability to constantly put in these pullback weeks or put them in as necessary, like you can schedule it and be like, oh, we're gonna go two up and one down, or three up and one down, or whatever it is. But sometimes you just, you can feel it. You need a recovery week. So the longer. Runway you have, the easier it is to be like, this needs to be a pullback week and it can stretch the training cycle out a little bit.

Speaker: 26:03

Yeah, and I think that this is really important to look at your schedule ahead of time and your calendar and see okay, if I'm having, if I have a vacation coming up or if I have something going on where I know I'm gonna be, you know, it'd be easier for me to get some more rest. Or it might be harder for me to get in training. You can start to plan this out ahead of time. And I actually just had a recovery week last week because not only was I pushing like harder, I was increasing, I'm in a strength building cycle right now, so I've been increasing the weights on my strength exercises, but I've also been like. Here in the business.'cause the other thing we want you to keep in mind is that your real life matters too. And so here in the real life runners business, I had a big ramp up in the beginning of May where I, I did our five day challenge, which those of you, you know, welcome. If you've just found our podcast because you found our challenge and you're new to us, I'm glad that you guys are here, but that. Like running challenge week. And then we had, um, our enrollment period where we were running promotions to get people to join the, the real life runners team and, and talking about that a lot. That takes a lot of. Power and energy and all sorts of stuff from me. And so last week it actually worked out really well that that was my down week for my training and also the week after all of our big promotions ended. So I was really able to give my body recovery on both fronts, which was really helpful. And I could actually just pull back and rest and take a nap and do things that really allowed my body and my mind to recover because. So a lot of times it's both, we need both mental and physical recovery.

Speaker 2: 27:42

Yeah. I mean, so that's, I think the, the last thing I'd like to point out on that one is just because it's a, a running recovery week does not necessarily mean you can then super ramp up everything else. Yeah. Because that's not necessarily going to be a recovery week.

Speaker: 27:56

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Alright, so with summer comes Heat, especially like for us down here in South Florida. And so it's important for us to understand how to train in the heat and we've done multiple episodes in the podcast specifically about training in the heat and how to allow your body to adapt better and how to. Make sure that you're preventing any heat related illnesses so you can go back, um, we'll try to link some of those in the show notes as well. But you can go back and look in our huge catalog of past podcast episodes and just search for summer or heat, and you can get a lot of really great information. But heat, the thing that we wanna point out today is that heat is an extra stress on the body, so. Oftentimes that means that your pace is going to be slower, but your effort level is still going to be higher. And I know that this frustrates a lot of people because they see their pace slowing down or they feel that, you know, when they're trying to maintain their quote unquote normal pace, it feels so much harder and they're so much more tired and just feeling more wiped out after their training sessions. That's because heat is an extra stress on the body, so we have to be very. Aware of this and very mindful of this, when we are going out to training. So that means, yes, it's going to feel harder. Yes, your pace is going to be slower and that is normal. Nothing has gone wrong here. It's totally okay. You need to know about it and then figure out how to adapt. But that doesn't mean that you should just stop running all summer long. Yes. Can you run on a treadmill? Absolutely. If you would like to stay indoors and run on a treadmill, totally fine. However, there are some benefits for running outside in the heat as well, and the benefits of heat adaptation will actually. Benefit you in your fall races also?

Speaker 2: 29:48

Yeah. I mean there's massive benefits of heat adaptation, especially if you do it safely. Mm-hmm. And really hydrate and, and eat well afterwards. Like you can't just be like, oh, I'm gonna go out and run in the heat and get, get all my adaptations. You can't get the adaptations unless you do all of the steps. And training in heat is one of the steps. But then actually putting in. The, the fluid and the, the nutrients and the calories afterwards to gain the adaptations is, is key. Because what will happen is you're going to increase your, your plasma volume inside of your blood, and then relative to the amount of liquid that you have in your blood, you don't have enough red blood cells and so then your body's like, Ooh, we need to make more red blood cells so that you can fill up the, the plasma level back with the appropriate red blood cells and get back to where you were before. The takeaway from that is you end up with more red blood cells, which means you can carry more oxygen to all of your muscles, which means your muscles will feel better for longer at faster efforts. It's a massive win all over the place. F

Speaker: 30:47

during your fall races? Yes. Right. Like that's the thing that's cool is that your blood volume will carry over. Yes. At, at some point when it, it's not as hot, your blood volume will decrease and your body will adapt to cooler temperatures as well. But this is one of the benefits of running in the heat, and this is also a benefit of altitude trainings. The same kind of thing happens. It's a little bit different with the actual physiological mechanism in the body. But the, the point is the same is that your. Y uh, your body is better at carrying oxygen to the working muscles, and that is a plus when you're trying to run farther or run faster.

Speaker 2: 31:25

And it, it doesn't take that long to get the adaptations. Mm-hmm. It's why the beginning of summer feels terrible, but the middle and late summer do not feel as bad even if the actually gone up because. It takes a couple of weeks of hot runs to be able to be like, oh, my body has gained some adaptation toward this. And you just start feeling better. It's the tricky part of being like, oh, I'm going to do most of my runs, and it's, it's a recommendation that we have. I'm gonna do basically all of my runs in the morning in the shadiest routes that I can, I'm gonna do some treadmill running. If you do that, that's fine, but then every time you head out, you will not have gained the heat adaptations. If you do a couple of runs of during the week in the actual heat of outdoors, and I'm not saying go out at two in the afternoon where it's like the most oppressive heat, that's a bad choice. You do it. I know I do, but that's not my recommendation for our whole podcast audience. It's a bad I agree. It's a bad blanket recommendation, but

Speaker: 32:26

I agree.

Speaker 2: 32:26

But man, do you get some good heat adaptations to it?

Speaker: 32:29

Well, and if you're someone like Kevin that is doing 100 mile races where you do have to run at 2:00 PM in the afternoon, it is a good idea because you are. Forcing your body to adapt to those conditions. So if you're just doing all of your training at 5:00 AM when it's dark outside and there's no sun, and then you wanna go out and run a half a day or a full day race, your body doesn't know what to do with itself. So this is, again, one of those plugs for make sure that you're training for your goal, not just training for someone else's goal training in the way that somebody else is training. Your training needs to be specific to your goal. So Kevin knows. For his 100 mile races. Those are his last one. Took him 18 hours. He started at 6:00 AM I think, and you finished like 1:00 AM I think whatever, 18 hours is something like that. I think he finished around a little after 1:00 AM but he had to run all day long at 10:00 AM at 12:00 PM At 2:00 PM At 4:00 PM he was running and so. When he goes out in the middle of the day, yes, it seems kind of crazy. But he's adapting. He's training in a way so that his body can adapt to the way that he wants it to be able to perform in whatever race he's currently training for.

Speaker 2: 33:44

But when you do that and you, you make the choice to be like, all right, I'm gonna go out in the middle of the day and it's gonna be a bajillion degrees. Then you make sure that you very much lock in and it is a, a tricky mental training. Yeah. But you have to lock into your, your rating of perceived exertion way more than whatever pace you're doing. Yes. Like if you were training in the winter and you head out in like six layers of clothes, you got like the tights and then the, the. Like tights over the top of that and a big puffy coat, you would not expect to be running the same pace because you're wearing all of the clothes. If you're running in the middle of the summer, it's like you're strapping all of these clothes onto yourself because that's how hot it is. Like you're just not gonna be moving as well. You might have to take walking breaks. You're gonna really need to have to. Focus on fueling and hydrating during the run because you're losing so much. Your electrolytes are super key. You pointed out, we've got some great episodes on this. You really have to focus on this, but don't worry about your pace. Yeah. Especially on runs where you're like, this is gonna be a run where I focus on heat adaptation. Mm-hmm. That means that you just have to be out there and get some exposure to it. It can be nice and slow. You can take the walking breaks. Walking breaks, doesn't stop the sun from beating down on top of you. You're still getting plenty of heat exposure.

Speaker: 34:58

Yeah, and I think that it's important for us to remember that summer training is not about performance because you are not racing, most of you are not racing in the heat of the summer. You're training for a race in the fall. At least that's what we're talking about in this episode. So summer running is not about performance, it's about adaptation. And when you can reframe that in your mind, the. Goes along with what I was talking about before with mental training and starting to rewire then your pace. Doesn't have as much of a meaning and you stop making your pace mean something about you, about your ability, about your progress because you realize, wait, I'm just out here to allow my body to adapt. It doesn't have to be about the pace and the time and all of that stuff. I'm just out here to allow my body to gain the benefits of heat adaptation. And so that makes seeing those. Slower paces on your watch. I think it makes it mentally easier when you understand. Yeah, it's not about the. The time on my watch, it's just about me being out here.

Speaker 2: 36:04

Yeah, no, the only time you need to keep track of the time on your watch is to make sure that you're hydrating enough, like, oh, haven't taken a drink in five minutes. I should do that again. Like that's a good reason to keep, keep an eye on the watch.

Speaker: 36:14

Absolutely. So the next thing. And possible obstacle that you might encounter during the summer months are summer schedules, vacations, this difference in your flexibility. So between vacations and kids' activities and shifting routines, oftentimes there's a lot of runners that realize that training during the summer is not going to be perfect, and that's okay, and this is why. Again, looking at those mental shifts that we wanna make, instead of focusing on perfection and making sure that you're just checking every single box on your training plan, it's more important to focus on consistency. And that might mean that you have to redefine what consistency is because some people think consistency means I do all of the workouts on my training plan. And while that is one definition of consistency. There are many definitions of consistency, so you might need to redefine what consistency looks like during this season, during this cycle, and that's a really cool opportunity as well for you to decide. Uh, very consciously what you want things to mean. You know, like, this is kind of going back to this idea of like thoughts versus truths versus beliefs. A lot of people think that if I miss a session, that means I'm not consistent and that. Is not a truth. That is a thought. If you redefine what consistency means to you over the summer and say, as long as I get in three sessions this week, then that will be consistent. Or if I making sure that I get in at least two runs and two strength workouts, that's gonna be my definition of consistency. And you're. Definition of consistency is also allowed to change week to week, whether or not you're at home or on a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean somewhere. Right? Like these things can adjust and can change to take real life into consideration.

Speaker 2: 38:11

Yeah.

Speaker: 38:11

I

Speaker 2: 38:11

think, you know, one of the things we, we talked about is. Uh, having a goal for what this particular part of your training plan looks like. If your, if your training plan is focused on increasing endurance, then consistency is about being able to ramp your mileage up from one week to the next. If you're really focused on strength, consistency means hitting your strength routines during the week. And if that means that, oh, I missed a run, that's not a ding on your consistency. Yes. If you're consistently missing your strength workouts. During a time where you're like, I'm really gonna focus on strength, that's a lack of consistency. But if, if you're able to always get the strength and you miss a couple of other things because you've got other priorities, because it didn't fit your schedule, because things are coming up, know what it is. That's most important to be consistent with over the summer. Know your priority for your particular goal.

Speaker: 39:04

Yes, and that's also the benefit of cycle stacking, like we talked about, is knowing the goal of your current cycle and then also making sure you kind of hit some of the minimums. With the race the next cycle in mind, right? Like yes, I agree that when you are in a strength cycle, it is most important for you to get those strength workouts in. However, if you have a marathon coming up in the fall, you can't just not run. It's important for you to make sure that you're still getting in the minimums so that you'll be best set up for the next cycle as well. That's why each cycle is not. Its own little island. Each cycle connects to the cycle before and after it.

Speaker 2: 39:46

I was just thinking of all the islands on that like inside out movie, now they're all connected to her hub in the middle. Yeah,

Speaker: 39:51

that's true. I love that movie. That's such a good one. I

Speaker 2: 39:53

know

Speaker: 39:54

the summer scheduling can also be a good opportunity for creativity in your training as well. Like, okay, what do you got? Well, because if you're traveling, you're, you might not have access to the same equipment or. You know, trails or routes that you normally have,

Speaker 2: 40:11

but you might have new trails and routes. Mm-hmm. That's always God, always

Speaker: 40:14

fun.

Speaker 2: 40:15

Always fun to find new trails, new routes around the city. Not necessarily my favorite experience. You love it?

Speaker: 40:20

I do. I love exploring new places on foot and really trying to just see different things. I think it's so fun.

Speaker 2: 40:26

I love new trails that I've ever been on. I think that is super exciting. Mm-hmm. But, and, and you love exploring new cities and stuff. Trying to figure out how to make strength training work in new environments also can involve some creativity.

Speaker: 40:39

Yeah. Because maybe you're staying in a hotel and they've got a nice weight room and you can go ahead and get your strength workout in, and maybe you're not, maybe you're staying in an Airbnb and there's no. Equipment whatsoever. So now you get to experiment more with body weight training so that you're just getting something in and maximizing the time that you have. You know, maybe you just get in a 20 minute strength workout because you've got a really busy day with the family, and maybe you're going out for hikes or you're going kayaking or doing other things. That's also. Physical activity that you can count as part of your training.

Speaker 2: 41:12

Yeah. Maybe you're going kayaking. That is a whole upper body workout that I am not used to. Yeah, you love to take us kayaking and suddenly my abs are sore for like four days after that. I'm like, that is a whole upper body workout that I was not quite fully prepared for.

Speaker: 41:28

Yeah, so I think it's important for us to remember that flexibility is not failure. It's just part of the plan. It's part of this season, it's part of this cycle, and when you can see it like that, then you can stop beating yourself up for missing out on a couple of things because you're, instead of. Seeing and only focusing on, oh, I missed my training. You can redirect yourself and say, yes, maybe I didn't get my exercise in, but now I'm focusing on getting more time in with my family, and that's important to me.

Speaker 2: 41:58

Yes, and that's, that's the other thing is. If you missed a strength session, what you're doing later with your family does not have to become part of your strength session. It can just become time with the family.

Speaker: 42:07

Or maybe you just do a whole hit session with the family and make everybody work out.

Speaker 2: 42:11

That seems like a great option.

Speaker: 42:13

I've done that before.

Speaker 2: 42:14

Yes, yes. When they were

Speaker: 42:15

younger, they would definitely not do it now.

Speaker 2: 42:17

No, definitely not now. But I was thinking like the last time we went kayaking. Mm-hmm. I was like, this could be a strength workout. Or I could just go kayaking with my daughter, and that could be fun also.

Speaker: 42:27

Yeah, that's true. And that's, that's the thing. Is it because you have a different focus to it then? Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 42:31

Like it doesn't. If it has to also be your strength cycle mm-hmm. It might take away of what it was supposed to be. Yeah. Which was time with your family. Mm-hmm. Know what your activities are. Sometimes it's great and you can, you can multitask the things and sometimes that's gonna lose the benefit of both sides.

Speaker: 42:47

Yeah, exactly. And that's why it's so important for you to know your priorities and then make your choices very consciously. So as a little recap. Your strategy for fall success. Number one, stack your cycles. So have a point to your summer training. Don't just say, oh, I'm just gonna get in some things where I can, unless you don't really care about your results in the fall, if you don't care about your results in the fall. That's totally fine. Maybe the TI summer is a good time for you to just take off and give yourself both a mental and a physical break. We didn't even talk about that, like that's actually a really good idea. Also, if you don't have a race in the fall or if you don't have some sort of performance goal coming up later this year.

Speaker 2: 43:31

Yeah. I mean, just because you have a race in the fall doesn't mean it has to be the best race you've ever done. Right. Like you might have a race and you're not. That's why I

Speaker: 43:37

said performance goal. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 43:39

It doesn't have to be chasing a pr. Yeah. It's just a race that you're gonna participate in. Mm-hmm. Then yeah, summer is a great time to stay

Speaker: 43:45

fit,

Speaker 2: 43:45

but take all of the pressure off of it.

Speaker: 43:47

Yeah. Which is great, but then again, know that and then choose that consciously so that you can take the guilt away. I think that a lot of times people kind of have that in their head, like, oh, I'll just get in what they, what I can, but then you feel guilty because you're missing training or because you feel like you're not getting quote unquote enough in. So having a definition for what enough is, having a definition for consistency during the summer, I think are going to be really helpful knowing the point of the current cycle that you're in. All of those things are going to be really helpful. Hi. I highly suggest taking the summer to address any of your weak links. So if you've got, if you haven't. Been consistent with strength training or with mobility training, now is a really good time to focus in on that, to build up your muscle strength, to work on how your body is moving, the fluidity of your movement, any tight spots, any weak spots. Now is a great time to address those things while you kind of maintain a base of mileage so that you can ramp up in the fall.

Speaker 2: 44:47

Right and embrace the variability of what summer and different plans and different schedules can provide for you. Embrace the opportunity to train and heat and get those adaptations that you might not get at other times during the year because those adaptations can pay off in the fall, and there are ways to hang onto those adaptations through the fall. Even if you have a late fall race, early winter race, you can still hold onto those heat adaptations.

Speaker: 45:09

Absolutely. So ask yourself, you know what? Is one thing that you can commit to this week or in the next couple weeks, or in the month of June, that is going to help set you up for success in the fall. It is a good idea to stay on some sort of a training plan or a training schedule, understanding that that might need some flexibility. So if you want some help, if you want coaching, if you want a training plan that is flexible, that does fit your train, your life and your training, come check out the Real Life Runners team. All of our plans are customized for you. We believe in a personalized experience here inside the Real Life runners team. The team is really a hybrid of group coaching and having an amazing community with group coaching calls and all sorts of good stuff, and a personalized plan that is. Where you are in your training right now with the goals that you have, with the goals that you have coming up later in the year, we would love to help you and to coach you through it. So check out all of our resources over@realliferunners.com slash team. Uh, we also have some amazing guest speakers this summer as well. That's. All part of our team membership. We've got our gut health expert, Nikki Deza. Um, Dr. Nikki was on the podcast last week talking about gut health, and she's gonna be coming into our team to, um, do a member workshop with us next week. So if you're on our email list, keep an eye out to to your email. I've got a special invitation for you, even if you're not part of the team. I wanna invite you to come join us for this workshop because it's going to be a great one. And she's gonna be talking all about gut health for runners. And why your gut is so important, not only for your performance, but also for how you feel in the rest of your life. So, um, come check it out, you know, become a part of the team and you get access to all of those resources. So, um, you have anything else that you wanna add?

Speaker 2: 47:00

You are beautiful.

Speaker: 47:01

Aw, you're the sweetest. Alright guys, thanks so much for joining us. This has been The Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 412. Now, get out there and run your life.