452: Rest, Adjust, or Push? What to Do When You’re Tired

Ever feel tired and wonder what to do about it? With the recent shift from daylight saving time, a lot of runners are feeling the effects of disrupted sleep—and that small change can actually increase fatigue, slow reaction time, and even raise injury risk.

That’s why we wanted to walk through how we think about fatigue as coaches and runners ourselves.

One of the biggest things we see is that not all fatigue is the same, and learning to recognize the difference can help you make better decisions about your training.

We break fatigue into three main categories and address our stoplight framework: 

Normal training fatigue = Green light.
This is the kind that comes with good training. Your legs might feel heavy at the start, but once you warm up and settle into the run, things start to feel better.

Accumulated fatigue or stress overload = Yellow light
This is when training stress combines with life stress. Poor sleep, irritability, higher resting heart rate, brain fog, and easy paces feeling harder than usual are all signs your body might need an adjustment.

Red-flag fatigue = Red light 
This is when your body is clearly asking you to stop. Sharp pain, illness symptoms, deep exhaustion, lingering soreness, dizziness, or severe brain fog are signs that pushing through could do more harm than good.

To help runners decide what to do on days like this, we share a simple three-question filter we use ourselves:

• Is this physical fatigue or nervous-system fatigue?

• If I start slow, does it start to feel better?

• What is the intention of today’s run?

From there, the choice usually becomes clear: push through, adjust the workout, or take a full rest day.

We also talk about why you almost never need to “make up” a missed workout. Trying to cram it back in usually creates more fatigue than progress. In our experience, chronic overload is far more damaging than the occasional missed run.

The goal isn’t perfect training. The goal is consistent training that respects your body, especially as we get older and recovery matters more.

If you’ve ever wondered whether you should rest, adjust, or push through a run, this episode will give you a simple framework to help you decide.

Join the 30 Day Running Reset and get a plan that will help you build a strong and injury-proof body by combining running and strength training in a way that actually works for runners like you.

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Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

Transcript

Angie 0:00

All right runners. Quick show of hands, who is tired this week? Daylight savings time hit last weekend. We lost an hour of sleep, and even though it's just an hour, research actually shows that it can take days to adjust up to a week. Injury rates go up, car accidents go up, hard attacks go up in this week following daylight savings time. But what do runners often do? We like to look at our training plan and say, I guess I'm just supposed to push through. So today we're talking about something incredibly important. When you're tired, how do you know if you should rest, adjust, or just push through. So stay tuned. What's up, runners? Welcome back to the show. Since you can't see us on the other end of, the microphone or your AirPods or whatever it is, your car that you're listening to us right now,

Kevin 1:11

since you can't look out your ears

Angie 1:12

since you can't look out your ears. Kevin and I were both raising our hands in as I was recording that intro when I said, if you're tired, raise your hand, because I know I am definitely feeling. A lot of fatigue today.

Kevin 1:25

A lot of fatigue. You driving into school? I thought about that thing. I'm like, every year we come to, to spring forward in time and car accidents go up. And I think part of it might be because it's dark out also, like everybody's tired. Yeah. And it's dark. I know. I was moving slow this morning. And I

Angie 1:41

know it was definitely weird because yesterday on Sunday when we actually had the time change from Saturday to Sunday, we could sleep in a little bit. at least we could, and. We planned on sleeping in'cause we got late, got to bed late the night before. Our daughter had her school musical this weekend, which was absolutely incredible. They did the 25th annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. And if you all have never heard of that. Musical. Like I had never heard of that musical. I highly recommend it. It's a, it was a really funny show. They did a great job. watching these high school kids perform was just absolutely incredible. especially our daughter. Like just watching your kid on stage doing something that they love or just, even if it's not on stage, just watching your kid doing something that they love, that just lights them up inside is just the best feeling in the whole world.

Kevin 2:24

Yes, it really is great to watch your kids do that and then to walk around. School today and have all the other teachers and faculty and staff.

Angie 2:30

Yeah.

Kevin 2:30

Tell me how great my daughter is. Is it? It's a nice day.

Angie 2:33

It's so cool. Because like we know how great she is and it's just so fun when other people get to see it also. And I think that's so special.

Kevin 2:41

Yes.

Angie 2:42

We went to bed very late because not only is she in high school and she had this musical, then they of course have to go out to dinner afterwards and stay out late, doing their little cast party after. And, so we had to go pick her up because in Florida there's a state law that 16 year olds are not allowed to drive after 11:00 PM We got to bed quite late Saturday night, but luckily we were able to sleep in, so when we woke up on Sunday, it was light outside. So I did, I feel like my body didn't have as much of the fatigue on Sunday. Sunday. I felt pretty much Okay.

Kevin 3:13

to be fair, when you say we stayed up really late.

Angie 3:15

Yeah.

Kevin 3:16

If we're pushing it past 10 30, it's real late.

Angie 3:18

I know. But we went to bed past midnight.

Kevin 3:20

I know. That's the thing is it was like extraordinary late for us. Which was like late for normal people, but

Angie 3:26

I don't know about normal,

Kevin 3:27

like then waking up when it was sunny, like waking up when the sun actually rose and the dog started making noise. That was like, oh, I guess it's time to wake up and still got plenty of sleep. But the morning had to get up with an alarm. The day was slightly off and then I had to drive to, to work in the dark and that was, yeah, that was a new thing. I haven't done that in. Months.

Angie 3:44

Yeah. So waking up today when it was dark out was definitely a wild thing and I just have felt very tired all day today. And I know you said the same thing, and I'm sure that we are not the only ones which has inspired this episode. So this is obviously applicable this week because of daylight savings time, but this really applies no matter when you're listening to this episode, because we all have those seasons where you wake up. You look at your training plan and your body says, absolutely not. So then we have to ask ourselves, what do I do right? Do I push through? Do I take a rest day? Am I being disciplined or stubborn? Am I honoring my body or making excuses? And if I skip this workout, do I have to make it up? And that's really what we want to make. Very clear. Hopefully by the end of this episode, so by the end of this episode, you'll know how to decide when to push. When to rest, when to adjust, and also whether or not you need to make it up, if you miss.

Kevin 4:42

Yeah, I we're gonna try and make sure that we're actually very clear and explicit on all these things so that you can actually have an answer and some yes or no questions that you can answer to get to, yeah, get to a good decision.

Angie 4:52

And obviously we can't make that decision for you. Only you can make that decision. But hopefully this episode will give you, like Kevin said, the right questions to ask and right filters to look through. So that you can figure this out. So

Kevin 5:03

only you get to be honest with those answers also.

Angie 5:05

Yeah, a hundred percent. Because sometimes we are honest with ourselves and sometimes we definitely like to lie to ourselves. I know I do.

Kevin 5:11

To both sides of the question a

Angie 5:12

hundred percent. yeah, sometimes we lie to ourselves, making our ourselves feel better than we actually feel or feel worse than we actually feel if we don't actually feel like doing the workout.

Kevin 5:20

Yes. All right, Let's get going with defining essentially what we mean by tired. Yeah.'cause tired actually falls into all sorts of different categories. And the most straightforward one is you've been working out and your body is fatigued.

Angie 5:34

Yeah.

Kevin 5:34

Like you're actually just. Tired physically, your muscles feel like they've been doing work.

Angie 5:39

Yeah. So we're gonna break this down into three main categories. So type one is that normal training fatigue, where you might be a little sore, your legs might feel a little heavy, your muscles feel worked. Mentally, though you're pretty neutral, like mentally. It's not like you're totally wiped out. It's not like you're motivated, obviously, because you're tired, but you're neutral. When you go off and you start running, oftentimes when you go through the warmup, you end up feeling better. After that warmup, you end up feeling fine. So this type of fatigue is often very safe to train through. Like people often say that first mile is a liar. This that's defining this type of fatigue. Like sometimes that first mile feels really rough, but then when you get going and get into your rhythm, then your body warms up and you feel okay after that.

Kevin 6:25

Yeah. And mentally neutral I think is the biggest key on this one.

Angie 6:27

Yes, I agree.

Kevin 6:28

it's a lack of brain fog and sometimes, because I'm sure we have plenty of runners listening to this, that they wake up and go run almost immediately.

Angie 6:36

Yeah.

Kevin 6:37

So sure. You're still gonna feel slightly sleepy at the beginning of it, but you're not like in a fog. Yeah. Like you're up and functional. You were able to tie your shoes on the first attempt. if you're struggling to tie your shoes, you're no longer mentally neutral. That's my take on it, because I'm tired when I get up in the morning.

Angie 6:52

Yeah.

Kevin 6:52

Because I'm still slowly waking up and I try and keep all the lights out so the dog doesn't wake up. But I'm in a mentally neutral place if I can like. Tie my shoes in a normal fashion,

Angie 7:01

right? Then there's type two fatigue, which is, we're gonna call accumulated fatigue or stress overload. So often this is a result of poor sleep. You can have an elevated resting heart rate, especially if this is an elevated resting heart rate over several days, you feel more irritable. Everything just feels harder than normal. Your motivation is low or non-existent, and when you try to go out for your easy pace, you feel like more of a medium tempo, moderate effort is happening, even though. You think you're going at your easy pace, but it just feels way harder.

Kevin 7:33

And this is, I think this is the trickiest one to diagnose. Yeah. Because

Angie 7:37

I agree.

Kevin 7:38

You could go either way on this one. And it depends, like you pointed out, elevated resting heart rate. sometimes you just. Have a higher resting heart rate.

Angie 7:46

Yeah.

Kevin 7:46

Like maybe you have very vivid dreams and your watch told you high heart rate because of what you were thinking about overnight. Maybe just you didn't sleep great. Yeah,'cause that's the first one. Poor sleep that just leads to an elevated resting heart rate. So things seem off and because you got poor sleep, you're naturally more irritable. There might be a reason that you could just go forward on this one. But you also might, if that elevated heart rate has lasted for a few days. Now we're looking at, okay. I was, I tried to push through, but now that pushing through is just literally accumulating even more fatigue.

Angie 8:19

And this often signals some nervous system and stress overload, like some nervous system overload, like your central nervous system is not able to adapt to the training or all the stress you're under. Just kind of everything that's going on in your life. And so this is one of the things that, that everyone understands is that there's different types of stress and fatigue in your body. Nervous system fatigue, like especially central nervous system fatigue. And then there's muscular fatigue. There's peripheral nervous system fatigue like your nerves that are actually going through, your limbs. But central nervous system fatigue is more of your brain, right? Like the brain and the spinal cord, just that's your central nervous system. And. It's essentially just the messages are not getting to where they need to get to as quickly as they normally would. You've got a slow highway.

Kevin 9:07

Yeah. But the central nervous system, depending on which, exercise physiology theorist you'd like to discuss. The central nervous system governs your body's feeling of fatigue. And so if you're pushing yourself and your brain's not quite firing on all cylinders It's naturally going to think that you are more fatigued than you actually are. Maybe your muscles actually feel fine. But your central nervous system Is overly shot. And so it's sending you all the signals. This is really difficult.

Angie 9:35

Yes.

Kevin 9:35

Even if your legs are like, actually it's not that difficult. it's a weird combo.

Angie 9:39

Yeah. And that's really where. It gets very confusing, especially if you are a woman over 40 in perimenopause.

Kevin 9:46

Agreed.

Angie 9:46

Because, yes.'cause you definitely have experience with this, right? But this is what happens to so many women in perimenopause is this. This stress overload in this central nervous system fatigue because of all the hormone changes that you're going through and because of, all the things that are going on in your body right now. And just midlife is just a, typically, I would say, a stressful time because of all the things we've got on our plates. There's a lot of people, a lot of women in midlife that are dealing with kids still. Oftentimes teenagers and teenagers are. Much.

Kevin 10:20

They're a blessing.

Angie 10:21

They are a blessing. They absolutely are just

Kevin 10:24

angels from dawn to dust.

Angie 10:25

They also stay up much later than, little kids. Oftentimes they have their own social lives. they often say little kids, little problems, big kids, big problems. So there's a little bit more stress involved when you're kids out driving and you're, just praying and making sure that they get home safely. Then there, there's also the other side of the spectrum where a lot of women in midlife are also helping take care of aging parents, and there can be a lot of stress in that realm as well. And so we are just juggling a lot of things in midlife and all of that. Adds onto our fatigue accumulation because I like to use the analogy of a bucket, like we all have a stress bucket. I know I've mentioned this in one of our recent episodes as well. We all have a stress bucket and no matter what kind of stress it is, whether it's physical, stress, emotional, financial, family. Any sort of stress, it all goes into the same bucket. And that bucket is your central nervous system. your brain, your central nervous system has to figure out how to buffer, essentially all of that stress, poke holes in that bucket so that your bucket doesn't overflow. And that's really, so we, as runners, oftentimes people talk about how running is stress relief and running is therapy. And while that's true. Running can be very therapeutic and it can help you process a lot of mental and psychological stress. There's also the added physical stress that it brings into your system that especially if you are someone that is pushing to that medium to moderate effort level on all of your runs, you're just adding more and more fatigue into your system and all of that fatigue adds up.

Kevin 12:00

Yeah. You talk about the bucket. Running can be a way to poke a hole in the bucket and let some of it drain out. Yeah, but it is pouring water in also

Angie 12:09

Actually, both. So which one is. Which one is more right? are you putting more physical stress in than you're actually letting out? And it that depends on your effort level, on your runs.

Kevin 12:18

That depends on your effort level. That depends on if you're bringing mental stress into judgment about your run.

Angie 12:24

Oh yeah, that's always fun.

Kevin 12:25

Which that also comes up of If your easy pace feels like a tempo now, are you judging how you feel? Like you're looking at the watch, it's supposed to be easy. You're like, this feels really hard, but my watch says it's an easy pace. Now that run that physically is an easy pace. You're now judging it and bringing extra stress to it.

Angie 12:43

Yeah,

Kevin 12:44

so what probably was going to be like a small physical stress and might even be like a relaxing mental release now has become a mental challenge also.

Angie 12:52

And then we have type three fatigue, which is really when you need to. wave the red flag, like this is a red flag that you need recovery. So any sort of sharp pain. Okay. Like when you move into sharp pains in your body, that's a red flag. Whenever you are having illness symptoms, like you just feel like your immune system is just wearing down and you're starting to get sick. If you feel this sense of very deep exhaustion, I know. I know that feeling all too well and it's hard to explain, but if you've ever had that deep exhaustion, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you have lingering soreness that isn't improving with rest or with time, that's a red flag.

Kevin 13:35

That's a big one.

Angie 13:36

or if you're having any sort of dizziness, lightheadedness. Like Kevin said, brain fog, depending on the level, right? Brain fog can oftentimes fit into type two fatigue, but when you're just at the point where you can't focus on anything that's starting to move into type three,

Kevin 13:51

and that's the thing is that you can't focus on anything. Yeah. It's that your soreness that, that could put you in, like type one is just soreness. That never goes away. It's soreness that is always there. You start running and it just ramps up even more. It's not that you warm up and the soreness fades, it's that you warm up and the soreness increases, like you're just. You feel like you're running on fumes at all times. And some of these are that, that like deep exhaustion Yeah. Is running on fumes sharp pain is just okay, you've overdone it. That's not Muscle soreness. That's just sharp pain. Yeah. that's time to take a couple of days off and see what your body needs to do on a reset. Some, most of these are. We need at least a off day and possibly a few off days,

Angie 14:34

right? So that's where we get to our decision filter when, okay, now you know, there's three different types of fatigue, and now we have to figure out, okay, what do we do right now? I know that, okay, these are the categories that I might be in here. How do I decide what to actually do when I'm feeling this way? So there's three questions that you need to ask yourself. Number one, is this physical fatigue or is this nervous system fatigue? And hopefully you understand what we mean by that question based on what we just said. Number two, if I start slow, does it improve? Okay. Because that's a good sign.

Kevin 15:09

It's like a warmup.

Angie 15:10

Yep. And number three, what is my intention? In this training cycle, what are you actually training for right now? How important is it that you go in and get in that workout today? I think that's a really important thing to consider as well.

Kevin 15:24

I think it's a double question. Yeah. What's my intention of this cycle and this day?

Angie 15:28

True.

Kevin 15:28

I think like you really need to figure out like how does,

Angie 15:30

yes,

Kevin 15:31

what is this cycle and how does this day fit into the cycle? Because

Angie 15:33

I'm really glad that you said that because I think that's why it's so important that when we coach our clients, we educate our clients also on the purpose of their workouts. I think it's really important that they understand that and that they're not just following a training plan.

Kevin 15:46

it's helpful because then it leads to some of these later things about do I move it? Do I adjust? what am I supposed to do? Do I have to put it back into the week? Yeah. I missed a workout. So should my race, my week end with workout? Workout, long run, because that seems like a lot.

Angie 16:00

Exactly. So let's talk about when to push through first. Okay. So we basically, after you. Ask yourself those three questions, then you have three choices to a, you answer those questions, you can figure out, okay, is it physical, is it nervous system? Is it improving or, and what is my intention? Now you have three choices. So your three choices are rest. Adjust your workout or push through. Okay, so let's

Kevin 16:26

push through.

Angie 16:26

So let's push through first because this is where a lot of us default to.

Kevin 16:29

let's do it

Angie 16:30

right. So

16:31

it's

Kevin 16:31

turn on my fire up music and let's go.

Angie 16:33

Perfect. All right. So it's usually okay to push through if it's just heavy legs or if it's normal soreness. Like Kevin said, it's not that lingering soreness that's been there for weeks or months.

Kevin 16:46

No, it's that you worked out the day before and sore, you're feeling sore, right? You can directly point to what you did. Likely the day before, or if you were running real hard downhills, maybe what you did two days before.

Angie 16:56

Yeah.

Kevin 16:56

But you can point to the specific work recent workout.

Angie 17:00

That

Kevin 17:00

is. Likely causing your soreness,

Angie 17:02

right? You also like it's okay to push through most likely if you slept decently. It's not that you need a perfect 100% sleep score, but you slept decently and you wake up feeling okay.

Kevin 17:13

You ever gotten a hundred percent sleep? Sleep score.

Angie 17:15

So I don't get sleep score. I only get body battery. Ah. Like my watch is too old for the,

Kevin 17:20

I know. You get,

Angie 17:20

I don't have the sleep score yet.

Kevin 17:22

you get really close to a hundred body battery all the time.

Angie 17:24

I do. Yeah.

Kevin 17:25

If I wake up at a 60, I am crushing life.

Angie 17:27

That's wild to me. I know

Kevin 17:28

it's weird.

Angie 17:29

Like most of the, I would say the majority of my body battery is between 90 and a hundred on most days.

Kevin 17:34

Yeah. My favorite are the days where I wake up and it's 30. oh, that's gonna be a special day.

Angie 17:37

Yeah, that's wild. okay, so it's, again, you slept decently, warm up improves how you feel. So if you go out there and that first mile doesn't feel so great, but then you start to warm up and feel good, then that's a good sign. And here's one that you've gotta be honest with yourself about. It is okay to push through when you know that you're just avoiding discomfort, not protecting your body. So discomfort is a part of training. We all know we've had that time where we look at our workout plan and we're like. I don't wanna do that. Usually for me, it's like a 20 minute tempo run. I'm like, oh, I'm feeling so tired today.

Kevin 18:18

I'm exhausted.

Angie 18:19

I'm so tired.

Kevin 18:20

Daylight savings time seems to come all the time.

Angie 18:23

So terrible. So that's just me avoiding discomfort, right? I'm not saying, oh, this morning, if I did that'd be a different story.'cause when I woke up this morning, I was tired. But a lot of times I, if I'm being very honest with myself. There's times that I'm just avoiding the workout. I just don't wanna do it because I don't wanna be uncomfortable. I'm avoiding the discomfort. So it's not really that I'm too tired, it's just I don't wanna do that workout. But discomfort does not equal damage. Discomfort is something that you actually need to intentionally put your body through. If you want to improve, because in order to improve and adapt, you need to stress the body appropriately, then your body recovers and it builds back stronger than it was before. So if you're never, if you're just always just avoiding discomfort, then you're not getting better.

Kevin 19:13

And this is, goes right back to the warmup. Improves your overall feeling.

Angie 19:16

Yeah.

Kevin 19:17

that's a sign that you're trying to avoid the workout. if you do the warmup and you finish it and you feel better than you did at the start

19:24

Yeah.

Kevin 19:24

you're ready to go.

Angie 19:25

you're on point. you're okay to do that workout.

Kevin 19:27

You definitely are. Yeah. This came up at track practice today'cause it was a pretty warm day at practice and. I was trying to organize a few different groups, so I was in a few different places around the track and every time I went from one group to the next, the group that I just left just magically disappeared off the track. oh, I'm sorry. I had to go, I had to go get more water. It's really hot. And they were purely avoiding discomfort. Yeah. And then I was like, okay, I'm gonna

Angie 19:52

be surprise, they're high school kids.

Kevin 19:54

I know. I'm like, I'm gonna be with them for literally a minute. Or the one group. I said, I just have to walk down to the other end of the track'cause I'm going to time you. So you just have to wait till I get to the other end, and then you guys are gonna start so I can be at your finish line. And I walked down to the other end of the track and I turned back to see them at the start, and they were gone. I was like, that's, that is clearly avoiding discomfort. I'm literally, I'm like, are they hiding? I just, I lost

Angie 20:17

what happened to them?

Kevin 20:18

I lost two kids. Yeah. And that was purely avoiding discomfort. Because it was hot today. But the thing is that as track season goes, it just keeps getting hotter. Yeah. And so if they avoid the discomfort today, they're not gonna be able to hit the workout. Later in the week. Yeah. They're not gonna be able to hit next week. They're not gonna be able to race in three weeks when it just keeps getting hotter and hotter. Yeah. At some point you have to approach the discomfort and say, this is what we're doing today.

Angie 20:41

Yeah. It's funny because it's the opposite of cross country season. It's the

Kevin 20:44

exact opposite. I know.

Angie 20:44

Yeah. That's wild. Alright, so those are your green lights essentially. Like when you're feeling that way. You can proceed. I wouldn't even say with caution, like those are pretty much No, you're just going great lights, right? So this would be your next category would be when to adjust. So this would be your yellow light. Okay. Like I like, there we go. Look at that. I just came up with a stoplight analogy. Just like that. Wait, a stoplight analogy. Wait a stoplight analogy. Okay, so that was the green light. Your yellow light is when that fatigue is starting to build and you notice that you're not feeling up to it, this is a good time to adjust. What does that look like? It looks like your easy pace is feeling unusually hard. You go out, you're like, okay, yeah, this is my normal, easy pace. And today it is not feeling easy. Today it is definitely feeling more medium pace.

Kevin 21:33

Yeah. And this one also goes to what the pace on your watch might tell you. Which is why on this day it's usually a good idea to not follow the watch. this is a good adjustment if life stress is particularly high or sleep was particularly bad. And you don't have to check off all of these boxes. If you check off more and more of them, it's a sign that it's, it might not be a yellow light. We might be trending towards orange and red. my, my stoplight became a rainbow, I think. but. If you have one of these things, you might be able to be like, all right, I could probably push through this thing, but I need to make sure I'm paying attention. Yeah. But it's, as you start being like, my pace feels extra hard. Oh, I have been going through a whole lot of stress. I really slept terrible for the last three days. I'm just feeling off. Yeah. there's a lot of things that are going, that are building up that you're like, Ooh, this might not go well. And I probably have an idea of why.

Angie 22:25

You just feel flat overall, and again, going back to our perimenopause and hormone discussion, you might notice that, okay, let's even, let's go earlier than that. Maybe you're not in perimenopause yet. Maybe you're still someone. In your thirties or even your twenties, you might notice that certain times in your cycle you feel this way. And it's because of the different hormone changes that we as women go through in our cycle. And your hormones can affect you differently at different times in your cycle. But in perimenopause, your hormones are really all over the place. And so it, there's not really a predictability like there is. When our cycles are normal.

Kevin 23:04

Excellent.

Angie 23:05

And that's can be a really confusing time.

Kevin 23:06

and this also just generally connects to over training. And that's gonna mess up hormones of everybody. regardless of age or gender. Over training is just gonna throw your hormones out of whack. That

Angie 23:16

is

Kevin 23:16

true. Which then is going to increase your perception of stress. And it's going to mess up with your sleep. So that there's all sorts of reasons that are a lot of connected to hormones That are then going to put you into this yellow light zone.

Angie 23:30

Exactly. And you just mentioned about what the workout is on your watch. You know whether or not you're, you should follow that or adjust it. I was out of curiosity. I just wanted to check and see what my watch was gonna tell me my workout was for today, Uhhuh. So what is today's suggestion? Now keep in mind, I told you I woke up feeling very tired today.

Kevin 23:49

yes, you

23:49

did.

Angie 23:49

I did. I'm. Very tired right now recording this podcast. I've had to stop our recording a couple of times because I said to Kevin, I'm like, why can I not talk today? It's like

Kevin 23:59

sometimes sentences are hard

Angie 24:01

because you're tired. Like they're just hard to complete. you're right. Yeah.'cause like my thoughts are just not as clear as they normally are. however, my watch, because I believe I woke up with a body battery in the nineties, this morning. It definitely did not feel that way. My workout suggestion from my Garmin today is two threshold run. Two by 19 minutes.

Kevin 24:23

Yeah. Yeah. Double

Angie 24:24

threshold. Are you kidding?

Kevin 24:26

Nice.

Angie 24:26

It's never suggested something like this to me before.

Kevin 24:29

yeah. No, I just checked mine. Apparently I woke up with a body battery of 96. I don't know when that's happened last time. That's gotta be the highest that I've been

Angie 24:37

wild

Kevin 24:37

in months.

Angie 24:38

So weird.

Kevin 24:38

And yeah, my workout was pretty intense. Also,

Angie 24:40

two by 19 minutes. Are you kidding? I just told you how a one 20 minute. Tempo run. It sounds not like a good idea.

Kevin 24:47

Yeah, mine's just straight, straight through for 23. Yours is a double 19. that's a good

24:51

one.

Angie 24:51

Double 19 is out of control.

Kevin 24:53

I like it.

Angie 24:53

And 19 is such a random number.

Kevin 24:55

Ah, their numbers are weird.

Angie 24:56

Yeah. So anyway, if you are finding yourself in the yellow zone at a yellow light. Here are a couple ways that you can adjust. So number one, you can shorten your run, whatever run you are planning on doing that day. Say you were supposed to go out for six miles, you can make it a four miles. If you're supposed to go out for five, make it a three or four. You can shorten that run so that it's less overall stress and load on your body.

Kevin 25:21

So this is interesting when you approach a yellow light. It really depends on what kind of driver you are. And as you might suggest maybe you've been listening to this podcast for a little while, one of the two of us tends to take their foot off the gas pedal and one of us tends to push harder on the gas pedal. And so it's important that you recognize that a yellow light suggests that this is caution.

Angie 25:43

Can you guess which is which

Kevin 25:45

And that you should probably slow down. Rather than floor it.

Angie 25:48

Okay, so I don't floor it. First of all, I wanna say this. Because this is actually a funny thing. I usually do not press on the gas pedal. I'm usually not the person that pulls my foot off the gas, but I don't normally press down on the gas. I just maintain my speed because someone once told me

Kevin 26:08

this would be good,

Angie 26:08

someone once told me that you can't get a ticket if you don't accelerate through. if you just, yeah, no,

Kevin 26:15

that sounds

Angie 26:15

great. Continue on. And I know it. It's ridiculous. I know that. Clearly that's not true. But if you don't accelerate, then the cop is gonna be less likely to pull you over.

Kevin 26:25

'cause you're drawing less attention to yourself.

Angie 26:27

Yeah.

Kevin 26:27

As long as you're generally getting to the light.

Angie 26:28

I'm just maintaining my speed and normally I run, like if I go, I'm still. Through the intersection when the light is yellow.

Kevin 26:36

Yes, that is. That is very true. You do not actually hit the accelerator. Sometimes you choose to go through the yellow, and I'm like, you should really be pushing harder on the accelerator if we're going through this light.

Angie 26:46

But usually when I go through a yellow, it's because I don't wanna slam on the brakes.

Kevin 26:51

Yes.

Angie 26:52

So I feel like it. More. it's nicer for all of my passengers. Yes.

Kevin 26:56

So anyway, back to running. if you've got the yellow light, perhaps shorten the run, perhaps lower the intensity. It's usually a good idea to not be pushing a speed workout on this day.'cause look, if easy pace already feels hard. What is hard pace gonna feel like?

Angie 27:09

And you're gonna figure that out on your warmup.

Kevin 27:10

Yeah, you're gonna

Angie 27:11

feel it up

Kevin 27:11

pretty quickly

Angie 27:12

when you go out for your warmup, because no matter what run you have planned on your training calendar, you should always be doing a warmup. And I don't know if people actually know that, because some people follow generic training plans that they get from whatever app or whatever download that they have on, PDF that they've downloaded from the internet, and it just says five miles. All of those five miles should not be at the same pace, even if it's your easy run. There should be a period at the beginning of your run that is easier and slower as your body warms up, especially as you get older. It's really important to just gently allow your body to ease into that workout. So during that warmup. If you notice that your body is not starting to feel looser, it's not starting to feel good, it's still feeling very tired. That might be a good sign that, you know what, whatever speed workout you had planned for that day, it might be a good idea to. Abandon that and just make it an easy run

Kevin 28:06

or a cross training day would also be a nice option on this one because it's gonna take a lot of the stress off your body if you shift to a cross training method that is non-weight-bearing, low impact. if you're on a bike, if you're on an elliptical, that's a low impact kind of thing that might help you, even if you're pushing on that, there's not the impact on your body. So it depends on what's causing the yellow light. Yeah. But that's a good option too.

Angie 28:27

And so you could, if you did that, if you'd like, okay, you know what? Yep. Today's not the day I'm gonna make today an easy run. You could move that intensity to another day, just depending on what the rest of your week looks like.

Kevin 28:39

Yes. Which we'll get to.

Angie 28:40

Yes. So it's important for you to know that adjustment is not weakness, it's intelligent training, and this is really important. So I'm gonna say it again because I want you to hear it. Adjustment is not weakness. It's intelligent training because there are so many people that I talk to that think if they adjust it, if they shorten it, if they make it easier, that's me not following the plan. I'm not following the plan. I'm just weak. I suck, I'm not good enough. Like you have all of these other things that are running through your head, like Kevin mentioned before, and all of that mental chatter that's going on is just actually increasing the stress even more.

Kevin 29:22

And the thing is that. Basically any race that most people are listening to are participating in. Yeah. Is 99% aerobic and sure you need to have some faster training in it, but if you converted a lot of your running to just easy running You would in general keep improving. one of the biggest things to keep improving is to just actually keep layering consistency on it. So as long as you have. Some intensity during the week, you're gonna be fine.

Angie 29:49

And that's really one of the reasons that having. a mixture of different things that you do during your week. Like what we teach our clients with our hybrid training model, like some days are easy days, some days are harder speed days. Some days are strength and mobility days. Like you have different types of days on your calendar. And the nice thing about it is when you have all of those things laid out, then if you wake up that morning and say you're scheduled for a speed workout. And your body's just not feeling it. You can just swap days pretty easily and know that you're still going to hit that intensity. Hopefully, depending on how long you know your soreness or your fatigue or whatever it is lasts, you can just hit it later in the week. But you can very int inte intelligently start to shuffle things around to make sure that you're still. Be hitting all the things that you need to hit, but also honoring your body in the process.

Kevin 30:40

And the other thing is don't panic. if you need to be adjusting things Yeah. Don't freak out that it's not going exactly according to plan. Because your body takes longer to lose fitness, then most people would think. Yeah. And so if you're like, oh man, I had to adjust it to an easy day. This, my training plan is off. No, you're gonna be fine.

Angie 30:58

Yeah. Alright, now let's move on to your red light. When to take a full rest day and skip whatever workout you have on your plan. So you want to rest when you're feeling really run down. If you are just again, feeling that deep exhaustion, that is a sign that you need to take an off day If you have some sort of pain, especially pain that is getting worse. if you are someone that's rehabbing from an injury, this is. becomes a little bit of a gray area because if you are coming back from an injury, there is a period of time where it is okay that you're running with pain. But not if that pain is escalating, not if that pain is getting worse.

Kevin 31:39

Yeah. You were really good at bringing me back from hernia surgery.

Angie 31:42

Yeah,

Kevin 31:42

because everything hurt. It just always hurt when I ran. And you were like, you have to. Just try to run comfortably. And see if you see if after five minutes of running with some discomfort, does it start to relax and you can run normally? Yeah. And I was being so cautious. Yeah. And taking like constant walking breaks and I couldn't get myself going because it, it never really got warmed up. And you're like, no, just go run. It's gonna hurt for five minutes and then see what happens. It was, it goes back to the. the first mile might be a liar. Like in general, these are times to take a full rest day, but there are exceptions to the rule.

Angie 32:18

and one of those is when your pain is increasing. Okay. Another time that it's a good time to take a rest day is if you're sick, especially if it's early in your sickness. Like it's, if. Like days one, two, or three, that you're getting sick. You wanna give your body a rest and actually let it recover because if you decide to continue to train through your sickness, it could make your symptoms worse or prolong your illness as well.

Kevin 32:40

Yeah. If you can't breathe, it's gonna be awful to go out and run anyway. Yeah. it's debatable about how much you're really gonna get out of it. If you're feeling so sick that you're not really able to run all that much in the first place.

Angie 32:50

And when we talk about sickness, it also depends on what you're feeling. are you, do you have a headache and a migraine? You should not be running. No, don't run through that. You have a migraine, right? if the sickness is in your chest, you don't wanna be running. If you have GI issues, I don't think you wanna be running with GI issues, right? No one wants

Kevin 33:06

to run with GI

Angie 33:07

issues. Only wants that. If you've got a little head cold, it's probably okay. That's probably gonna put you more in The yellow light region?

Kevin 33:13

that's the suggestion of is the sickness above or below the neck. With the exception of migraines.

Angie 33:18

Yes.

Kevin 33:18

But that's where it goes. Yeah. Is if it's below, don't run with a stomach bug. That's gonna be disgusting unless you're training for an ultra and you wanna practice training with GI distress. That was a joke. Thank you. Thank you so much. I nailed that one.

Angie 33:31

That was a joke. Please. Somebody left. so another time that you're gonna wanna take a full rest day. Is when your recovery markers are just totally off. So those are things like your resting heart rate, your HRV. If you're somebody that tracks those things and you can tell, oh, there's a big difference today versus my normal other days this week. That might be a good sign that you need to take a rest day and just allow your body time to process that stress so that you don't end up sick or injured. or if you're just feeling emotionally overwhelmed, like there are just days that you just feel. Completely overwhelmed and completely stressed, like that might be a good time for you to take a rest day too.

Kevin 34:09

It might be time to take a nap. Yes. Like sometimes a nap would be,

Angie 34:13

oh, instead of a run.

Kevin 34:14

Yes.

Angie 34:14

Like use that 30 minutes or 60 minutes that you are gonna go out and run. Probably about 60. Because even if you're running for 30, you're gonna run and then you have to take a shower and Yes. Get ready. So you probably just bought yourself a 45 to 60 minute nap.

Kevin 34:27

And that really might be what your body needs. To try and. Your recovery markers to try and feel less rundown. To avoid the sickness or to get over the sickness. Yeah, to reduce the pain. A nap might be the answer and you're like, no. I need the mental therapy of going out for my run. No, you don't. You need to just feel better. Go take a nap.

Angie 34:44

And it's important to remember that rest is a part of training, so this is, another time to take a full rest day is once a week.

Kevin 34:53

yeah, that's

Angie 34:53

another one. like that's another one. you should not be training seven days a week. Most of you, like some of you, I don't know. I would say. most of you, I, we very highly recommend rest days here, especially if you are over 40 because your body just doesn't have the same level of resilience that it used to have when you were 20, and rest is a part of your training. Because adaptation happens in recovery, you do not gain the benefits of hard workouts during your workouts. You gain the benefits of those hard workouts and your body actually adapts when you are. Resting and recovering from those workouts. So if you have so much stress in your system and you just never feel like you're sleeping well, you never feel like you're getting rested, then your body's actually not adapting well to the training that you're putting it through. So you can push as hard as you're as you want, but if you aren't recovering and adapting to that training, you're not going to gain. What you wanna gain from it.

Kevin 35:49

Yes. That's a very good point. I think the full recommendation of the Real Life Runners podcast is take a rest day every single week. There is weird exceptions where you're trying to like, rework your schedule and you're like, normally I take Sunday as my rest day, but I can't run on Monday.

Angie 36:06

it's every seven to 10 days.

Kevin 36:07

That's the thing. If yes, it's a very strict, there should be a rest day every week. But sometimes with rescheduling things Yeah. You move something from the next week forward. I'm not sure the last time that I've run that I did seven days in a row.

Angie 36:21

Yeah.

Kevin 36:21

It's been a while. even in like the buildup right into a hundred mile race. Like honest more than. Normal. I would say I was very strict at making sure I was getting a rest day every week.

Angie 36:33

'cause your body needed it

Kevin 36:34

because I was running so much miles.

Angie 36:36

Yeah, because you were running so much. Exactly.

Kevin 36:37

that's why I needed that off day.

Angie 36:39

Yeah. I think that like another exception would be an easy cross training day or thi something like that too,

Kevin 36:44

if you can do it and it's not putting extra load on your body. Exactly. Sure.

Angie 36:48

Yeah. So those are your red light. You know when to take a full rest day. So then the next question becomes, okay, fine. Angie, Kevin, fine. I'll take a stupid rest today, but when. Do I have to fit that in? Do I have to make that up?

Kevin 37:05

Yes. The next day. Obvi obviously every single time, clearly cram it into the next day. And if you can't fit it on the next day, then double up the day after that.

Angie 37:13

And by that, Kevin means no, you don't need to make up missed workouts.

Kevin 37:19

Oh shoot. That

Angie 37:20

is the one short answer. Okay. So the short answer is if you miss one workout, you do not need to make it up. You don't have to try to go crazy and fit everything in. The longer answer is you assess. You have to figure out again, what kind of workout did you miss? What are you laughing about?

Kevin 37:36

Alright, so we have an outline that says, no, you don't have to make up a missed workout. Long answer, you assess. And I read it as, yes, this is definitely how I read.

Angie 37:48

You assess?

Kevin 37:49

You assess. I read that as, yes.

Angie 37:51

I thought you were gonna say you asses.

Kevin 37:53

No. Nope. I just read it as a really long enthusiastic Yes. Which I don't think is right at all. But it, that does get to the point of no, you actually carefully assess what was going on. What did you actually miss and why, and what is the purpose? But it goes, let's start again with, no, you don't have to make it up.

Angie 38:12

Okay. So how do we assess it then? So if you miss an easy run. what's the best course of action?

Kevin 38:19

Don't worry about it. Yeah. that day just came and went.

Angie 38:21

Yeah. If it's an easy run, you can just let that go.

Kevin 38:24

No, you're like, oh, but it was supposed to be five miles. should I carefully divide the five miles and split it out over the next four days? no. You don't not need to do that.

Angie 38:32

Yeah. if you miss a speed session, okay, so this could include that you decide to take a rest day that day. Or it can also include if you decide to ju adjust, if you're in the yellow light zone and you decide, okay, you know what? I don't have a speed workout in me today. I'm gonna, adjust this and make it an easy run instead. So what do you need to do about that speed session? So the answer to that one is maybe, so if you start recovering, if by you. Adjusting your training plan and making that an easy run or taking that rest day, you come back and you feel rested and you feel more recovered, then yes, if you have room somewhere in your training plan, you can put that speed session back in instead of one of the other easy runs on your plan. As long as you're not, you have to be careful though, because sometimes, there's only so many days in a week, sometimes seven, sometimes if. You have your speed session, say on a Wednesday or a Thursday, and you miss that, and then the next time for you to make it up is a Friday, but your long run is on a Saturday. That's probably not going to be the best choice because then you're putting two hard days back to back if you put a speed session and a long run. Next to each other.

Kevin 39:45

Yes. I may have a client that did that last week. Yeah. That bumped an early week speed session to late in the week. And then ended up with a speed session on Thursday and Friday and a long run on Saturday.

Angie 39:57

Oh, that's too much. Which

Kevin 39:58

is. it seemed the whole week just stayed the whole week. there was nothing that got new and added onto it. It just rearranged the order of it, and it put all of the difficulty at the end of the week. Yeah. And by the time it was Saturday long run, it's woo, I am tired through this long run. It's yes, because all of your difficult days, it went one hard day to the next. Yeah. And that just, you're, it's

Angie 40:20

compounding fatigue.

Kevin 40:21

Yeah. you're purposely putting yourself into the yellow.

Angie 40:24

Which is okay sometimes, depending on how healthy you are going into that. if you are feeling good going into that, usually we would not suggest that's not, something that's recommended. But putting two hard days back to back, you can do that. You just have to. Number one, make sure that your expectations are correct. So if you do a speed session on a Friday and then a long run on Saturday, like Kevin just said, you might ex you, you have to expect that your legs are probably gonna be more tired than normal during that long run on Saturday.

Kevin 40:53

Yeah. But if you're training for a particularly long race, this might actually be done on purpose.

Angie 40:58

It could be a good training strategy

Kevin 40:59

because you, in training, it's very difficult to simulate. Yeah. What ha, how your body feels at mile 20 of a marathon. you're not gonna want to go out and run 20 miles so that you can feel what those last six feel like. The answer is, bad. You also don't want somebody to just beat your thighs with a baseball bat and then send you out on a distance run. That's also a bad idea. It will give you a similar sensation, but it's, that's not an ideal scenario. So sometimes putting a difficult run and then saying, all right, and now I'm gonna do a long run the next day. On tired legs simulates it. It's not exactly the same sensation, but it gives you an idea of what running on already heavy legs are. Yeah. And then you plan carefully. Plan and make sure you follow through on the recovery afterwards. Yes. that's the thing, if you're adjusting and you're having to cram a little bit, you wanna make sure that you are thoroughly filling out the recovery afterwards so that you stay in the green light area.

Angie 41:55

Yes. And what about if you miss a long run? Okay, so this is where it gets a little bit trickier, like you might be able to adjust your week, but it's really important again, that you're not trying to just cram everything in and just adding more stress to your body.

Kevin 42:09

Yeah. Often if you miss a long run that sometimes gets bumped to the following week. Depending on how your plan works out, you might be able to just kick that thing down the road a little bit.

Angie 42:17

Yeah.

Kevin 42:18

if you are more experienced athlete, you could put speed into a medium long run and double things that direction. Not a suggestion. I would say for newer runners, if you've raced longer distances already Yeah. you've already knocked out a couple of half marathons. Then you might want to experiment of okay, instead of the long, I can adjust this and I can do a longer speed session. That's not full long run, but it's not super, super fast. It's a good way to Combine things without having to put all of the workouts on the same day.

Angie 42:50

And that's really where a coach comes in handy, that knows a lot about this and can help guide you in how to actually adjust that. And please don't do what Kevin just said. If you are a newer runner, if it's the first time, especially if it's the first time that you're training for a certain race distance, like a half marathon, a marathon. He said very clearly, this is, if you are an experienced runner, you already have plenty of experience at that level because when you stack stress, essentially what you're doing there is trying to add speed and a long run together. That's stacking stress to try to make sure you don't miss things. That increases your injury risk automatically. So the same way we, when we talked about. Putting a speed session on a Friday and a long run on a Saturday, that increases your injury risk because your body on Saturday is going to be more tired. So if your legs are more tired, your body is going to compensate more. You're not gonna have the same level of stability. You're gonna have more wear and tear. It's going to increase your injury risk. So if you're going to do this by stacking stress and stacking hard sessions, you have to make sure that you have the proper foundation built in order to be able to handle that. And so many runners are doing. Those crazy things without the proper foundation.

Kevin 44:05

'cause otherwise what you're essentially doing is driving down a street with a huge amount of stoplights. Yeah. And just revving it from one red light to the next red light to the next red light to the next red light. Because you're going so fast. You're like, oh, if I just keep going fast enough, I'll just live in the green. No, you just keep hitting one more red light. Yeah, you're going really fast, but you're not getting anywhere because you keep hitting red light. that's what's happening today,

Angie 44:29

right? So it's really important that you hear this. Missed workouts. Do not derail your progress. If you miss a workout or even two workouts, that's not going to completely derail you. Chronic overload will. Chronic overload will derail your progress. It'll plateau you and it'll actually make you decline even though you are still putting in the work, but your body is not able to actually adapt to that stress. And so it is much better for you to adjust or take a rest day than to just continuously and chronically overload yourself.

Kevin 45:05

Oh, it's better for everything.'cause ultimately we're looking for long-term progress.

Angie 45:08

Yes.

Kevin 45:08

And the best way for long-term progress is consistency. So no hero workouts is your best chance for consistency.

Angie 45:15

Yes. And so if you are someone that tends to push through, even when you are in a yellow light or a red light zone, you really have to take a look and ask yourself, are you trying to prove something? What? And if so, what are you trying to prove? are you training from a place of fear, like worry that if I don't do this, I'm not gonna get the results that I want. Or if I don't do this, it's gonna mean that I'm weak or that I'm not a runner, or that I'm fill in the blank, right? There's some sort of fear that is coming along with. Missing these workouts instead of actually just trusting the process.

Kevin 45:51

I think a lot of people, and it falls into this first one, trying to prove training from fear. Are you chasing the fountain of youth? I used to be able to do this. I should still be able to do this. there's a different training philosophy past the age of, quite frankly, past mid thirties. Like your body is just not quite recovering. Correct. Anymore, you need to make sure that you are getting enough recovery'cause you're not recovering at the same rate as you used to. So are you trying to prove that you're still capable instead of adjusting and taking a smart approach to long-term training? Because you can continue to improve. You just have to actually adjust what training looks like. Yeah, and

Angie 46:28

I think that this is something that so many people don't understand because they're just trying to. Do what they've always done instead of making the adjustment and thinking more long term. Because that strong runner, a sustainable runner, understands that consistency beats perfection every single time. And consistency like missing one workout does not mean that you're not consistent.'cause I think that's how a lot of people. Define consistency. If I'm gonna be consistent, it means I can't miss anything.

Kevin 46:56

No,

Angie 46:57

and that's not what consistency actually is.

Kevin 46:59

No. Consistency is being able to look at this is why I like your giant calendar hanging on the wall behind us. If you highlighted on a calendar. All of the days where you did what the plan suggested versus you didn't. It generally looks like you did everything. Are you going to have some days missed? Sure. But you never have like weeks blocked off where it's I then I missed this week and then I miss this week and then I miss this week. That's the lack of consistency that usually happens because you pushed through red lights, usually completely derails you and then. you're off, and then you have to rebuild from that because you keep. you keep missing periodically, weeks or several days. Yeah. And it, it loses your momentum. Like you just, you're back at inertia's. Tricky. Yeah. Inertia keeps you going, but it also keeps you stuck,

Angie 47:47

right? Because So you're on the wagon, off the wagon. On the wagon. Off the wagon, yeah. Like these are those people that just feel like I can never be consistent and they then say, I just need more motivation. But it has nothing to do with that. And if that's you go back to our last couple of episodes because that's gonna help you with that. If to, in summary, to sum all this up for you, if you miss one workout, essentially just let it go. It's probably not that big of a deal. If you miss two in a row, you're gonna wanna assess your recovery, make sure you're getting enough recovery so that. You, your body can actually support the training that you're trying to place on it. If you miss three workouts in a row, you really need to reevaluate your overall load. You need to reevaluate whatever it is that you're training for. Is the plan that you're on, is that the right plan for you? Is the goal that you're currently training for? The right goal for the season of life that you're in. Because if you're trying to train for a marathon, but you have a six week old baby that, those are two very stressful things and ver that's a lot of demand on the body. Most people can't do that.

Kevin 48:52

Yeah. No. if you are over the course of a week, three of the days are not going as planned, three of the days are turning into red light days, the plan is not working for you. But that's an issue. And then. the longer term is if you've got this fatigue that's building up for over a week, you're just showing chronic under recovery. Which could be coming from all sorts of sources. One of them might be lack of food, there could be lack of sleep. There could be,

Angie 49:17

yeah. We didn't even mention nutrition in

Kevin 49:18

this episode. I know like as soon as it said, you're under recovering. My first thought was, are you eating enough?

Angie 49:23

Yeah.

Kevin 49:23

are,

Angie 49:24

because that is a huge. Role in your recovery.

Kevin 49:27

And that also has a huge role in how your hormones are helping your recovery system.

Angie 49:30

It also has a huge role in how much fatigue you're feeling. Yes, too. Yes. so if you wake up and you're feeling really tired and you go out and you don't eat anything and then you go out and try to run, your body doesn't have any fuel. So maybe the answer is you just need to eat.

Kevin 49:43

Maybe have a snack and

Angie 49:44

a nap.

Kevin 49:44

Have a

Angie 49:44

snack. Have a snack and a nap that will fix everything.

Kevin 49:47

God, maybe we should just go back to kindergarten. We

Angie 49:50

all get

Kevin 49:50

juice box

Angie 49:51

and

Kevin 49:51

a nap.

Angie 49:52

Sounds good. So the goal is never to not feel tired, right? Like you are, we're going to feel tired. Welcome to life. Welcome to being human. The goal is to build the skill of knowing what to do when you are tired. Is it time to rest? Is it time to adjust or is it time to. Go ahead and push through. And that's really what it means to be an athlete, to be able to assess how you're feeling honestly, and then assess and figure out or decide, not really assess, but decide what to then do about it. And that's the best way. You'll maintain consistency and continue to get stronger after 40.

Kevin 50:31

Yeah. And that's the maturity, that's the having the honest answer. You do the assessment or as I read it, yes.

Angie 50:38

The assess,

Kevin 50:39

you assess, and, but you assess. Honestly, don't lie to yourself and be like, no, I'm feeling fine today. If you're not, you have to have the honest assessment of what color is that light in front of you. So that you can make the appropriate response.

Angie 50:50

Yeah. And while we were recording this podcast, I just decided that tomorrow morning, like based on how. I'm feeling right now. I'm very tired. I am going to sleep in tomorrow,'cause Tuesday is normally my 5:30 AM run with my friends and I just texted them and I was like, you know what? I'm gonna sleep in tomorrow guys, because I am just feeling really tired and I feel like if I wake up at 5:00 AM to do a speed workout, that's gonna just dig my hole a little bit deeper. So I'm gonna sleep in a little bit. I'm gonna adjust right now. Good.

Kevin 51:20

Adjust.

Angie 51:20

I'm gonna sleep in and then I'm going to see how I feel when I wake up and if I feel. Okay, then I will do my speed workout. I'll just do it a little bit later in the morning after the girls go to school. And then if I'm not feeling it, I will do an easy run and then I'll move my speed workout to Wednesday.

Kevin 51:34

That sounds like a wonderful plan.

Angie 51:36

Wondrous. Alright, so if you guys have any questions, we would love to hear from you. Reach out. We're on Instagram at Real Life Runners. You can always email us. You can get to us at hello@realliferunners.com. If you have any questions, we'd be happy to, to answer them. And if you found this episode helpful, if you could leave us a review. On Apple Podcasts or a comment on Spotify with a star rating that will help other runners who find this episode and this podcast so that we can help more people, which is gonna just be awesome. As always, thanks for spending this time with us. This has been The Real Life Runners podcast, episode number 452. Now, get out there and run your life.