419: The Benefits of Being Uncomfortable

In this solo episode of the Real Life Runners podcast, Coach Kevin gets real about the role of discomfort in growth—on the run and in life. Sharing takeaways from a tough birthday run and the powerful ideas in The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, Kevin unpacks how stepping outside our comfort zones can lead to real transformation.

He talks about why chasing big goals matters, how to avoid falling into the “arrival fallacy,” and the difference between pain that builds you up and stress that wears you down. You’ll also hear thoughts on recovery, resilience, and the underrated power of community support.

This episode isn’t just about pushing harder—it’s about choosing challenges that mean something. Kevin closes with a personal call to action: reflect on where you might be holding back, and consider what discomfort you might need to lean into to grow stronger—not just as a runner, but as a person.

00:00 Introduction: Embracing Discomfort

03:05 Pushing Boundaries: Is It Worth It?

05:18 The Arrival Fallacy

08:35 Training and Growth

14:42 Mental Strength and Support Networks

19:19 The Comfort Crisis

22:09 Practical Tips for Embracing Discomfort

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Transcript

0:00

When was the last time that you chose to be uncomfortable? Not sore after a run, but truly uncomfortable in a way that actually challenged your mind and your body? That's what we're talking about on today's episode one where I get to feel a little uncomfortable because, it's just me on today's episode. So today all about being a little bit uncomfortable. We're all gonna go through it together. Let's see how this one goes. All right, runners. Welcome to the Real Life Runners podcast. Like I said in the opening, it's just me. Angie is outta town and so I'm doing a solo one. She went solo last week. I listened to that one myself on a run, and this time you get just me because we are in completely different states and not able to record together. we will be back. Actually, I think we might have an interview for next week, and then we'll be back together to normal programming come August. So we'll see how this goes. but today's episode is one. It covers a lot of topics about things that I've been listening to lately, things that I've been reading lately, some of my favorite topics of pushing your body and pushing your mind and trying to put those things together and how do we decide on big goals and is that the right thing or my push too far? It's a lot of topics and Let's just start diving into that thing with a couple of topics that I want to open with and define, and then we'll see if we can start tying them together. The first one comes from a little over a week ago when I had my birthday and I was trying to figure out what to do for my birthday run. I like coming up with some sort of weird challenge, usually related to however many years I've spun around the sun. And I think last year I ran over a hill at a park near our house for 40 some times. I've done laps of the neighborhood. I've done one minute on, one minute off for however many years. So I wanted to. Do something this year. And the first thing that came to mind, this is an interesting conversation that Angie and I were having.'cause the first thing that came to my mind was running for 44 miles. And the first thing that came to Angie's mind was doing like 44 seconds. 44 times. Or actually I think hers broke down further of doing Four by four by 44 seconds of that's 16 by 44 seconds. So it's pretty short distance. My first thought was to run for 44 miles, and she pointed out that was a terrible idea because I've not been training in a way that I could actually do. That and feel good for the rest of the day. I could probably do it. I'd end up walking a huge amount of it, and I would be without my family for most of the day. it was gonna be a lot of misery in my head. That still sounded like an okay idea, but that kind of gets us right into this topic of is pushing ourself to do something uncomfortable. A good idea. And the answer is sure, as long as there's some sort of reasoning behind it, I would've done it for the reasoning of it's my birthday. No good reason. Beyond that, I don't know if I would've gained any lessons from it. If I would've learned anything about myself. It definitely would've thrown my training off. it would've kickstarted my training, been like, Hey, let's build that mileage back up, because I don't even have a race on the calendar. And because of that, I haven't really been doing long, long runs on the weekend. Plus it's the summer in South Florida, so it's a thousand degrees outside and the humidity is just absurd. and I get to relearn about what Dew point is and how that's just brutal to the body every summer. So anyway, back to the idea of pushing boundaries, sometimes pushing a boundary is a great idea. The idea of going really far seemed like a great idea to me. Going farther than I have in a long time seemed like a great idea to me. Thankfully, I had Angie around to suggest that going for 44 miles was pushing too far without a good reason, and that without a good reason is critical. When we come up with pushing boundaries, she said, what else do you have? Because I had a variety of ideas and one of my other ideas was. 44 kilometers. Thank goodness there's a whole nother measuring system that well, everybody else in the world uses except for us here in the US essentially. I went with four to four kilometers, which is a little over a marathon, and I could do that, and it was not going to wreck me for days and days afterwards. And I was able to do it in a reasonable amount of time. And then Angie had planned a trip for us and so I was able to get back and shower and pack, and we left on time. Like everything about it just worked out smoother because it still pushed me. It was still physically challenging, but it wasn't something that was gonna completely wreck me. Not that those are terrible ideas. Ever, but it was not necessary to do it at this point. I didn't have a good meaning for why, and that I think is something super, super important, which takes us to the first big idea that I wanna cover, which is the concept of the arrival fallacy. The idea that once I've hit this goal, then I'll feel happy, then I'll feel fulfilled, then I'll feel satisfied, and that sense of arrival, never really. Actually gives us that level of satisfaction. Anytime we reach whatever goal it is, we always then think to the next goal. It's very hard to hang on to that feeling of satisfaction. We actually, as humans, we're designed to continue to pursue bigger and better things. Andy's not here, so I don't remember the actual, chemicals inside of the brain, but the chemical that. Leads us towards chasing big goals is gives us a stronger reaction than the chemical that leaves us satisfied with the things. It's the whole idea that like if you think about a delicious piece of chocolate cake, you get more satisfaction after thinking about that cake. Then you do out of the joy of actually eating the. It's why food doesn't actually satisfy, but the thought of food leaves us with these amazing cravings. We can do the same thing with various running goals. I know I did this for a long time, trying to chase a silly number on a clock when I crossed 26.2 miles. I thought that somehow crossing the finish line in 2 37, I forget. I forget what the number is because I've. Disconnected from that number. I let that number control my feelings about running and about me as a runner for a long time, and I've separated so much that I don't think I can actually come up with that now at 2 37, 12. It's something like that. but I've disconnected so far because I've come to, to understand so clearly that arrival fallacy that I'm never going to feel as happy. When I get to the thing as I do in pursuing the thing itself. Okay, so we're gonna keep going as. As we move forward here, but it all comes back to, I think, ultimately this sort of excitement slash disappointment I had over my birthday run is I didn't go as far as I wanted. I didn't, I wasn't able to push myself, to a great distance as I wanted. But the thing is, I did still. Push myself, and I did still do it with a whole lot of heat outside, and I did still get up early and go do it. Like I could have done it on a treadmill and air conditioning, and that's not what I did. I could have chosen a different shadier route. I went out and I, there was shade. I went out and I started early before the sun was beating down on me, but I didn't go out of my way to make it a super easy thing. But I also didn't go so over the top and make it a ridiculously hard concept. So it's this idea of finding a challenge that is enough that it helps us continue to move towards other challenges. Not that the run that I did on that one day was going to define my running. It was the ran run that I did on that day. It didn't define who I am as a runner. It simply was another step on my training journey. So the whole idea of why we would ever go out and push ourself to something further than we're used to is that we want to grow. as humans, we desire growth. We're always looking for the next thing. If you've ever crossed the finish line of a race and then thought to yourself, huh. I bet I could do that five seconds faster. I'm not sure there's any runner out there that hasn't had that thought relatively soon after crossing the finish line, regardless of how big of a PR that was. How amazing of a time drop that was. Maybe like a half marathon or who went from 2 0 5 to 1 59 like that. That barrier of changing the lead number on a time of 5K, that goes from over 30 to under 30, from over 20 to under 20. When that lead number changes, it seems super, super exciting, but what's really. Most satisfying is not that number. It's all of the work that we put in to get to that number, and that's why I love coaching so much is because I get to help out with the process of all of the journey along the way. Of people who are like, this is the goal that I have in mind, but I don't know, it's big and I don't really wanna share it. we do this every year at the start of the season with our cross country kids of what's your goal? And they're like, oh, I'm thinking of running. And they put it, throw a number out there. And I'm like, what was your PR from last year? And the numbers like 30 seconds slower. And I'm like, Yeah, you're going to get that you're a year older. This works out great with high school kids'cause they just get faster. as long as we don't hurt'em, they all get faster. And, with, with Angie's Strength programs, they do a pretty good job of not getting hurt along the way. But in order to improve, they have to keep pushing themselves. If all they did was every day come to practice and we just did the exact same loop every single day, eventually that stress wouldn't be enough to stress the body anymore. We'd be doing great on the recovery side, but we wouldn't actually be stressing ourselves in order to adapt, in order to continue pushing ourselves, in order to see what we are capable of. There has to be enough stress in the body. That were like, Ooh, I wasn't quite capable of doing that. I need some recovery time so I can come back and build back stronger and change whatever the capabilities are within my body so that next time I have to try and do that, I get to do it and I'm going to be more successful at it. It's why. When the kids first start coming out, I give'em a couple weeks to get used to running in the heat, and then I start ramping distance up on them and they're like, what? I just did three. How do you think that I'm gonna be able to do four this time? I'm like, because you did three for the last like entire week. Now you're used to the heat. If you did three, you can do four. Or if they don't, if they have a watch with them, if they did 30, they could probably do 40. Is it possible they're gonna need to take a walking break in there? Sure. But if they did 30, they can probably do 40. Or if they did 40, they could do 45. There's always that ability to do just a little bit more, as long as you have the other side of growth, which is making sure that you're not just pushing a little bit more, but you're also recovering. Some of the kids on the team are really good at doing this out on runs. They'll push themselves just a little bit farther, or they'll take that run and go a little bit faster, but we also take'em into the weight room. And this year one of the things that I'm doing is having the kids actually monitor the weights that they're lifting so they can see, oh, I haven't tried to lift a heavier weight in a long time. I want to actually increase that. And it's not that we're getting the cross country kids to be like the size of the football players. Although I've seen some of the football players at summer practice and they might be better designed for the cross-country team, but that's a whole different topic. but the strength that we're building these kids. If we don't keep increasing the weights or if we just allow them to do the same exercises with the same weights, eventually it's not a stress on them. We can change this. If you go out and you do the same loop on a run, you can change the speed that you're doing it instead of going at a steady pace the whole time. You can go faster and slower and faster and slower through the whole thing. You can do this in the weight room if you don't have heavier weights. You can do the same exercise and try and really do a. An increase your range of motion, or you can go through the exercise slower. You can go through the concentric movement. if you're doing, like a squat, you can go down really slow and then push back up faster. Or you can push up and then try and get like up onto your toes briefly and get almost like a mini plyometric out of it. There are ways to modify all the different exercises that just slightly increase your stress now. Don't start bouncing on all of your squats. Do all this under some guidance of an actual trainer in front of you if you're gonna try and branch out on squats. But there are ways that you can modify the exercises that you can make sure that they are continuously stressing yourself as long as you also have time to recover from it. Okay. The track that sometimes I myself fall into. I am really good about not doing this to coach other people, but sometimes I end up accidentally doing it to myself is I'll do a speed workout one day and then lift pretty hard the next day and then. Do a speed the next day and then lift pretty hard the next day. And suddenly I've strung four really physically taxing days, and it's the end of the week and I can't figure out why I'm so exhausted. And I'm like, oh, that's right, because I did overstress every day and I never gave myself the time to recover. Adaptation. Always reaching for something more is nice, but remember that adaptation is not always pushing yourself as far as you can, as fast as you can every single day. that adaptation always needs a bit of a pullback. After I did my long birthday run, I then used the rest of the weekend getaway that Angie had planned to recover from that thing and take really good care of myself. So that was a balance of the overstress and then the recovery time. All of this. Also exists in the mental capacity. We need to be able to push ourselves. We need to know that running creates a space where we are safe to push ourselves. Sometimes there's parts of the environment around us. My job as a teacher, if. If the principal comes into my room and they're observing, sometimes it's Ooh, I feel like I'm gotta make sure I perform really well in the test. I was talking to our daughter who just was in, a play production over the wheel, musical production over the weekend, and. We were talking about how she feels more comfortable during the actual performance than she does during the audition portion, because there's this level of uncomfortableness of, oh, I have to make sure that I actually, I really step up and compete. But all of the practice, once the auditions are done, and then. All of the practice up until she's actually on stage. She feels great because she's so comfortable with the people that she's around, that even though what she's doing would terrify a lot of people, I find the whole idea of standing in front of a stage and singing the way that she does that seems unbelievably scary to me. She thinks that when I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go run for 50. Miles, a hundred kilometers, a hundred miles, that is super crazy and insane. So we both understand the other person's insanity and we both understand that ultimately both of us are pushing ourselves and we get this weird combination that we understand the other person, but not exactly, but we both see that the other person is trying to push themselves. And both of us understand this idea of mental strength, that in order to push yourself, it's best if you surround yourself with people that you feel comfortable screwing up in front of. Hey, it's one of my favorite parts of the Real Life Runners community. It's my shameless plug for joining Real Life Runners, and I don't even have the website to go to because Angie is not here. But go to Instagram and at real life runners and then DM Angie about how to become part of the team because the team is amazing. Everybody supports each other and they know when other people have races and they're cheering other people on. And even though you may have never met this other person in your life, you feel like you have an entire community that understands your same craziness and are there to support it. And if a race doesn't go well, they're there to cheer you on that you were bold and brave enough to venture out and push yourself into something that was tricky, that mental strength part. Whew. Two Ultras ago when I ran the Daytona a hundred, there was a point in the race that I was completely ready to be done, and I was hours and hours into the race and I knew that I still had hours and hours to go, and the blisters on my feet were killing me. And I told Angie, I don't know how long this is gonna take me. And she said, it's okay. We're gonna be here for as long as it needs. And when she said that, suddenly. I gained so much mental strength because I was able to deal with the uncomfortableness, knowing that I had the support. Okay? So having a support network sometimes allows you to feel safe even when you're outside of your comfort zone. it says Even if this ends poorly, the people around me will still love me, and so it's gonna be okay. If I do something scary, it's gonna be okay. If I declare what the, what my big goal is and I end up flopping, it's gonna be okay. Okay. And that knowing that it's gonna be okay, whether things work out the way you want or whether they don't, gives you that mental strength to continue persevering in the face of what is astronomical odds. a couple ultras back when I was training with a hernia to race for a hundred miles, those were big odds. I had already tried a hundred before and had not made it to the finish line. The, the deck in my head was stacked against me, but I was still willing to do it because I had people. That would support me. All right. Moving on. The next thing that I want to talk about is something that I heard on a different podcast that I was listening to, because honestly, I don't listen to ours unless it's an interview or an Angie solo episode. because I can't stand the sound of my own voice. God bless all of you for listening to this because for those of people who have. Ever listen to themselves on recording? You know what it's like, sometimes the sound of your own voice just doesn't seem quite right. So I was listening to a different podcast and they were talking about a book from a few years back, and the author's name is Michael Easter and he wrote a book about the comfort crisis, how society is essentially building up a world that we live in that makes everything as easy to get to as possible. And how running is a possible way to go against this comfort, this excessive comfort around us and the concept of the book, and then where that podcast went were slightly different. But the idea was essentially we live in a world where, I have a tracker on my arm at all times, so I know how many steps I get in, but the concept of the book was essentially we could get up if we wanted to, we could get up. Okay. Order breakfast to our house so we don't even have to go to the grocery store. We could have it delivered to our house. We could have it delivered, cooked to our house. So all we have to do is nuke it and you'd be fine that way. but at a minimum, we could have groceries delivered to our house. We could make things more comfortable and have prepared foods delivered to our house so we could get out of bed. Go to the bathroom, get the food that is already prepared in our fridge, heat it up, and then move to somewhere in the house where we could conceivably work on a computer in a virtual work environment all day long, only taking breaks to go to the bathroom and eat more food. And at the end of the day, we could move from that desk to maybe a couch, watch some tv, and go back to bed and call it a day and end the day with like a hundred steps. Okay. It's possible the society that we've created makes that a very realistic possibility. Going out and running does not fit into this because it is inherently. More resistant than that world. That's why some people find it so challenging to get up and go run. They constantly think that they've gotta build up the motivation to go run, because running is inherently trickier than sitting on a couch. That's why the suggestion is always just. Do the bare minimum, do the next easiest step, and I think Angie was talking about this on last week's episode. Just put on your running clothes and tie up the shoes and head out the door, because once you're out the door, it's more likely that you're gonna start the run and it's not that difficult. If you can wrap your head around, I'm just getting dressed. Then once you're out the door, be like, all right, I'm just gonna walk for five minutes. And now you're five minutes away from your house. And if you are feeling really down and you're like, I don't have it today, I am just feeling super exhausted. You could walk five minutes back to your house and now you've gone for a 10 minute walk. And that might help you mentally. Okay. But it also might be just enough movement that you're like, all right, maybe I could start running. Okay. That it gives you that just enough to get over the initial hurdle that you've got some momentum built up that you can start going so. The whole idea of going out and exercising is a way to fight back against the excessive amount of comfort in the world. This is why I love picking big, scary goals. This is why I love running in the first place. This is why I like running when it's super, super hot outside. Okay? This is why I'm trying to get better about running when it's raining outside. I like to suggest that because it's Florida essentially every time it's running. I might get struck by lightning, and that's why I should run inside, but it's not, it's because I don't like running in wet shoes. That's the main thing. I don't like running in, in squishy shoes, and it's something that I just find that uncomfortable. But the suggestion from the book is, maybe we should find areas in our life where we can plan out discomfort. Okay. Now don't get me wrong, this goes back to what I said at the beginning. You should not be pushing yourself to physical and mental challenges every single day. You need some recovery in order for growth to come in, but you don't need every day to be as smooth as possible. If you're trying to improve as a runner, if you're trying to improve in any craft, you have to find days where you're pushing yourself, where it's not just an easy run most distance running because it's so physically taxing on the body. Most running should be at a very easy, comfortable pace, but some runs need to be difficult. Some runs, we need to stretch our efforts. If you find hills terrible, okay, you just hate running up hills. It might be a sign that on occasion you should go run up hills if, for the physical benefits, great, but also the mental benefits of choosing, aspects of running that you find difficult. Okay. I find. Running super long distances difficult, but remarkably rewarding. very difficult. Once you've been running for several hours, it's difficult to continue running. So even though I find odd joy and fun in that aspect, I do still find it remarkably difficult. But there's other aspects of running that I find difficult that I shrug away from. Super fast speed work. Not my favorite. Angie loves it. She leans into that. I like moderate pace speed work. I like doing fart like sessions where it's like, ah, two minutes fast, two minutes easy, two minutes up, and two minutes down, and it doesn't have a specific pace assigned to it. I love those days, so I like to stretch myself by going into the weight room and trying to lift heavy things. Because that's not my favorite. By going on runs where I'm actually timing myself over shorter, faster segments and seeing how fast I'm actually going of, am I able to hit some time metrics to see if I could hit certain race time goals. It's not my favorite process, but it's a little bit of discomfort that I can put in, that I can be like, all right. I'm gonna control this uncomfortable thing. I'm going to purposely put myself in an uncomfortable position, and this is the workout that I'm doing today. So it's a challenge that I offer to you as the listener is find. Some aspect of running. We've all got some part of the running that we're like, Ooh, that's not my favorite thing. And maybe that's the part of your training plan that you keep skipping. Maybe it's the long run that you don't really like. And so instead of doing six, you tend to make it like five. Instead of doing 12, you're down at eh, tens close. Make sure that you're actually getting. The length of the long run, and if you need to put in walking breaks, then put in walking breaks, but cover the distance. Maybe like Angie, you were not a big fan of the tempo run. Maybe the 20 minutes at moderate effort just seems like it's overwhelming. I know it did for her when I first started prescribing that to her so many years back. But she's come around to it. It's still not her favorite, but she still does it every once in a while because of the mental hurdle. Yes, there are physical benefits of doing the wide variety of efforts, and that's a whole different concept here. What I'm talking about is finding the aspect of your training that makes you mentally uncomfortable, and then living that discomfort don't even, for the most part. Listen to our podcast. It's fantastic. We love it. Share with friends and family. Tell everybody how amazing the podcast is. It'll be better. Angie will be back. There'll be both of us, trust me. but find the part of your running. Maybe it's the super fast speed work. Maybe it's the tempo session. Maybe it's the long run hills, whatever it is. And then without headphones. Just go out and get into the hard session. Just put yourself through it where the only thing you have to deal with the discomfort are your own thoughts, and it will help you figure out what kind of coping strategies you have. And Angie talked about some coping strategies last week where she can zoom in on what's happening around her and she can zoom out. And we've talked about coping strategies before. That sometimes there's distraction, but sometimes there's paying very close attention. And you can practice all of these different tactics, but it's difficult to practice them when you have music in your ears, when you have an audio book or a podcast in your ears. So pick that aspect of your training that's Ooh, that's not my favorite aspect. That's really hard. And sometimes to get through it, I just turn up the music really loud and I sing along and then it's done. See what happens if you put yourself in that uncomfortable position and then do it with just the thoughts inside of your head. It is remarkably satisfying. Okay. Which brings us back to the arrival fallacy. Doing that workout is not going to, in one attempt, make you a completely different person saying, I did my speed workout for the week without headphones, and therefore I feel satisfaction. It's, that's not how this works. It's not like I've accomplished this goal, therefore I feel this way. You can feel however you want. The idea here is that all of this process, that the whole idea of all of the workouts and the mental work and putting yourself in challenging situations and trying to figure out which different coping strategies will work for you. And this one worked and I, oh, this one worked last week, but I tried it again this week and it didn't work. And all of this, and successful workouts and quote unquote unsuccessful workouts that all of this. Is the training process. All this trains you to be a better runner. All this trains you to be a better person. All this training helps you set up to, I think, the joy that is running, because running doesn't guarantee success. Life doesn't guarantee happiness. Okay? Just because you sign up for a race and you pay the entry fee, the very expensive entry fees on certain races, no one's guaranteeing a pr. That's not what comes with it. Like you can't pay your race entry fee and for an extra$20, they'll guarantee a pr. That's not how it goes. What running guarantees is the challenge. The challenge is there. That's what it's it, you go out and you climb a mountain, you're gonna get a view at the top, but most of your day is gonna be spent looking at the mountain. Okay, we're taking the annual summer trip out to California and we're gonna go on some amazing hikes. I'm sure Angie's gonna plan out some phenomenal things. There's gonna be some great views, but most of the views are gonna be the trail in front of me. Hey, a lot of them are gonna be the trail sitting in front of me, and then every once in a while we'll go around a bend and there'll be a beautiful view. But if you don't enjoy the trail in front of you, if you don't enjoy the challenge of climbing up the mountain, the hill, whatever it is, then the view at the top is just gonna be a brief view, and you could just go to the gift shop and collect a postcard that has the same view that feeling at the top is only so satisfying if you go through the challenges to get there. Okay, so it's not that you're going to be a completely new person at the top. It's not that the marathon finish line changes you, it's the months leading that prepare you for the possibility of running the marathon, of chasing your 5K PR of lifting more than you've ever done before, of going for that job promotion of, whatever the thing is. Okay. This is the part where I. I feel a connection to my daughters, even though neither of them run the one dances and she trains really hard. And I could watch her dance and I, unless she falls over, I literally, I can't tell. If she screws a step up, she'll come off the stage. She always has the smile.'cause you have to have the smile on stage. And she comes off and sometimes as soon as she clears the stage, her face drops and she just crumbles. And sometimes she's still smiling and I never know what it is. But the stage, like I said, the running doesn't guarantee the happiness. The stage doesn't guarantee happiness, but she enjoys training with who she's with. She enjoys going to practice. She enjoys practicing dancing at home. She's always dancing. It brings her joy. Even though there are aspects of it that are very physically challenging, even though the, there is the mental daunting process of standing on stage with judges in front of you, scribbling notes on the piece of paper in front of them, that's a mentally daunting process. It is mentally challenging to go into a race, pin a number on your front, and know that however long from now you're gonna cross a finish line and there's gonna be a big, giant number on a clock. That you can feel judgment from it, or you can say, Hey, I've done all of this training. I know who I am at the starting line, and I know that's the same person I'm gonna be at the finish line regardless of what that clock says. This is how I think combining, putting yourself into uncomfortable scenarios and the arrival fallacy slide together really nice because by putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, you gain joy out of the process and you're not worried about how you're gonna feel when you get there because that real satisfaction actually comes from all of the steps along the way. Okay, so hopefully all this tied together and made some semblance of sense. Usually Angie helps me with an outline to try and take my just rambling thoughts and put them together. Sometimes she has to translate things that I say into actual English, so I hope that you appreciated this run. I know. I found this very mentally challenging. Honestly, just to click the record button, I clicked it probably eight times and the volume was working, but I was just not sure that I could actually do this thing. And I know that Angie's got an episode that she could have run if I was not physically capable of doing this. But sometimes we need to put ourselves into new. Difficult, mentally challenging places. Maybe it's physically challenging, maybe it's mentally challenging. Maybe it's both. Hey, if I come up with another race, I will. You guys on the podcast will be some of the first to know that I've come up with another mentally, physically challenging race that I'm going for. But find one yourself. Okay. Or my challenge as I, I said during the episode is sometime during this week, pick whatever aspect it is about training during the week that you're like, Ooh, that's the one part of my training that I really dislike and think about beforehand. What is it that I find so challenging about this? Go into it and do that workout, that long run that easy. Run that lifting session, whatever the thing is, go in and do it with no background noise. Just the thoughts and coping strategies you have in your head, and then afterwards actually take the time to sit and think, what did I get out of that? Because the growth comes during that recovery process, but only if you actually allow there to be time for growth. If you run a race, going back and thinking about how that race went so that you can improve the next time is how you do it. Okay? and so this is my thoughts for you, is sometime during this week come up with a workout that you can challenge yourself and figure out how can I mentally grow from that workout. If you've got something, if you wanna share, I have Instagram, so feel free to DM me. I am Kevin at Real. No. Kevin, oh man. I'm totally actually gonna have to look this thing up, but you can always share your thoughts and your joys with Angie. She's@realliferunners, on Instagram, and I am going to give you mine in just a second. It's totally coming. There we go. Kevin Brown, RLR at as is on Instagram. Every once in a while I'll decide to post something. Sometimes I get in a mood and I'll post things for a couple of straight weeks. feel free to DM me and be like, Hey. What's going on? And, especially if you've got something that you think is gonna be a fun challenge for you this week that you wanna share, and maybe I will post something that I find challenging and put that up on Instagram myself. It'll be a fun little challenge for both of us. All right, I hope you got something out of this guys. until then, go out there and run your life.