February 6, 2025 • 46 mins
In this episode, we hosts discuss how runners over 40 can redefine their running goals and mindset to focus on strength, endurance, and enjoyment. We challenge the narrative that aging means decline, instead advocating for an evolution in running. The conversation touches on shifting perspectives from losing weight to building muscle, the importance of strength training, the benefits of intelligent training, and the psychological impacts of changing paces. We encourage runners to focus on long-term health and resilience, redefine what progress looks like, and embrace the joy of running in their new, evolved identities.
00:55 Mindset Shift: Aging as a Blessing
11:36 Adapting Training for Longevity
22:48 Shifting Focus: From Speed to Strength
23:42 Training for Health and Longevity
25:25 The Importance of Strength Training
27:18 Redefining Progress and Success
30:32 Balancing Running with Life
33:33 Embracing a New Running Identity
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Angie (00:00):
So many runners over 40 start to feel like their best
(00:02):
running days are behind them.
The narrative around aging oftenfocuses on decline rather than
adaptation and strength.
So today we want to shift thatperspective.
Aging doesn't necessarily meanslowing down.
It means evolving.
Evolving your running.
Evolving the way that you thinkabout your running.
Evolving your goals.
(00:23):
So let's dive into how yourmindset and how the way that you
think Aging as a runner affectsyour training, your results, and
your enjoyment of running.
So stay tuned.
(00:55):
What's up, runners?
Welcome to the show today.
We are digging into one of myfavorite topics.
mindset in general is one of myfavorite things to talk about.
Let's be honest, right?
Kevin (01:06):
Is your favorite topic getting older?
Because that seems like an oddtopic.
Angie (01:09):
It's starting to be.
let's be honest with what I'vebeen researching and creating
lately, it has been a lot aboutgetting older and really
starting to shift ourperspectives around this as
really a blessing to get older,not this negative decline that
so many narratives have told usin the past.
that's
Kevin (01:27):
true.
You are aging like a fine wine.
So this is helpful.
Angie (01:30):
thank you, my love.
But yes.
And I think that.
That really should be all of ourgoals, really, to age like a
fine wine, to get better withage.
Because I do feel, as a womanwho is about, actually, you know
what?
When this episode releases, it'smy birthday.
Kevin (01:44):
Yes, it is.
Because it's actually Happybirthday! Thank
Angie (01:46):
you! It's birthday week right now when we're recording
this.
And so yes Let's not
Kevin (01:50):
kid ourselves, it's birthday month.
Angie (01:51):
It is birthday month, you're right.
But there's a lot of stuff goingon this month, so I'm not
probably going to have as manybirthday celebrations as I have
in the past, that's why we'redoing the party so I can like
Condense a lot of it.
Condense some things?
Condense a lot of it into one.
But anyway, so yes, it, I, it ismy birthday month and so yes, I
am turning another Number older,another age older.
(02:14):
So this actually is
Kevin (02:15):
very
Angie (02:16):
appropriate.
I actually didn't even thinkabout that when we were at, when
I outlined this, episode.
So yes, I'm another year older,which is really only a day older
if you think about it.
but that's a good way to thinkabout this too.
How.
Are we choosing to age?
How are we choosing to look atour life and our longevity?
And I really hope by the end ofthis episode, you will start to
(02:39):
have a shift in yourperspective.
If you have any sort of negativeaura is not the word I'm looking
for negative feelings,connotations, or feelings around
getting older.
I hope that we can start toshift the way you think about it
by the end of today's episode.
Kevin (02:56):
Yeah, no, it's not getting older.
It's just finding new agebrackets to race inside of.
Yeah,
Angie (03:00):
it's getting better.
It's changing.
Like it's not worse.
It's different.
And I think that's really one ofthe biggest things because it's
not that we want you to thinkabout, Oh, like I'm just
declining and getting worse.
And we're like, no.
Everything's getting better andyou're getting faster and
everything's fine.
Like we still have to.
Be one with reality andunderstand that our bodies are
(03:21):
definitely changing like me at44 is not the same as Angie at
24 Why are you laughing so much?
One
Kevin (03:27):
with reality is just a fantastic phrase.
I like
Angie (03:30):
it.
It just sometimes it just comesout of me.
So So, we do have to understandthat things are changing and we
have to accept those changes andalso understand how much control
we do have over the way that wechange and the way that we
experience the change as we getolder.
Kevin (03:48):
okay.
There's also like yourchronological age, like
literally how many times you'vecircled the sun, but there's
also your training age.
So just because you're pastwhatever certain Number on the
calendar does not mean you'reactually necessarily immediately
going to slow down.
If you're pretty new to running,you might still be in that part
of training where everythingjust keeps getting faster
because you're at that point oftraining.
Angie (04:09):
Which is great.
And it's, I love working withrunners like that.
Even when, especially whenthey're 60 years old, and I just
started running a year ago andwow, look at all this stuff that
I can do.
Like we have people.
In our program, like on ourtraining team that's their
current experience.
And it's the most beautifulthing to see.
I just absolutely love it.
Kevin (04:28):
It's super exciting because that was the excitement
and joy I had when I was like14.
So it's cool to see it at allsorts of age levels.
It
Angie (04:35):
is.
So let's first talk about whatwe might experience, like the
psychological impact of seeingyour pace change, because a lot
of runners, especially if you'vebeen running for a long time,
you might.
Start to notice that your paceis starting to slow down.
Maybe your old 5K PR is a coupleminutes, you're running a couple
(04:57):
minutes slower than that now, orhalf marathon, pick whatever
race, or maybe just your normaltraining paces where you go out
on your normal run.
And you're starting to noticethat your paces are slower than
they used to be.
Why is this so emotionallychallenging for us, Kevin?
Can you speak on this?
Because I think, I feel like youhave a very good perspective on
this because you've been runningfor a much longer time than I
(05:18):
have.
And we've talked, in the pastabout how you have.
Basically has hit a lot of PRswhen you were a teenager, right?
So it's I'm not touching thosetimes again.
So what is the kind ofpsychological and emotional
experience that you have whenthat starts to happen?
I'm getting there.
Like I'm starting to get intothis realm right now, but I
still have some possibilitiesstill on my brain, but
Kevin (05:40):
there's always still possibilities.
The possibilities still exist,but like you said, we have to
become one with reality.
I think this is particularly.
The case inside of the world ofrunning because there's so many
numbers so the ability tocompare Yes is so easily
available.
It's right there.
It's there.
it's on your wrist every timeyou're like, This is my
(06:00):
neighborhood loop and maybe youdon't know the exact distance.
Maybe it's not maybe it's arandom distance.
It's 3.
8 miles, okay, but normally ittakes me You know, I don't know,
40 minutes, and now suddenlyit's taking me 43 minutes.
What is going on here?
You can't ignore the fact thatthe number is changing.
You raced a 5k a few years ago,and you hit it in 25.
(06:22):
And you raced it this year, youfelt just as tired, and you hit
26.
there's no ignoring that.
And I think that's part of whatmakes it so tricky in running,
is there's no kind of pretendingthat it's not happening.
In other sports, you can belike, oh, aging quarterbacks in
the NFL, they don't quite havethe same zip, they don't have
the same evasiveness in thepocket, but they can read the
(06:43):
field so much better.
And their knowledge changes andyou can still put up great
stats.
In running, there's the time onthe clock when you cross the
finish line.
Angie (06:53):
Yeah, but I think that aging quarterback is actually a
pretty good analogy to usebecause as a runner Maybe you
don't have the same speed butnow you have a different level
of wisdom You know your body alot better, especially if you've
been doing it for a while.
Kevin (07:07):
Yeah, this is I mean We're I think I had on your
outline here, but the mastery ofrunning a race is something that
I was just so bad at when I wasyounger and, coaching track.
Now I'm talking to these kidsabout like, how do you race a
half a mile?
I'm like, you find the fastestthat you can run one lap.
And then you do it just ever soslightly slower and then repeat
(07:29):
it for the second lap.
They're like, I don't even knowwhat that means.
I'm like, I know it takes a lotof practice.
It took me years to be able todo this correctly, to be able to
race a 5k effectively and not goso hard on the opening mile that
you are crumbling on mile three,but not go so slow on the first
mile that on the last half mile,you're looking to watch and
you're like, I have so muchleft.
(07:49):
Why did I not go faster earlier?
it's tricky and it requiresyears of racing experience to
get there.
Angie (07:55):
Yeah.
And not just years, butrepetitions, right?
Like how many races did you do?
It's not just about the numberof years that you've run.
You've run so many races.
Like I've been running for along time, but the number of
races that I've done compared toyou is so small.
Even though, I ended if youcompare, ratio wise.
(08:15):
races.
Kevin (08:15):
I'm sure we could go to my mom's house and find the
stack of my cross countrynumbers.
Angie (08:20):
She definitely still has them all.
Kevin (08:21):
Definitely.
and it's a tall stack of bibsthere.
Those were, that's 5k racinghistory.
That's a lot of racing.
And then, track through highschool, I would run two or three
races every meet.
We'd have, What?
15 meets over the course of theseason because our school was
big.
So we had dual meets like that'sa lot of races and they're all
different distances, but youjust learn how to race so well.
(08:44):
Like we've been talking aboutthis.
I think we talked about it a fewepisodes ago.
I can beat people in a 5k thaton paper, I probably shouldn't
be able to beat in a 5k.
Yeah,
Angie (08:53):
because you know how to psychologically beat them.
Yeah,
Kevin (08:55):
because if it's a high school kid and we're close, I
can beat that kid.
if it's close.
If that kid Because
Angie (09:01):
of the strategy.
Yeah, I can
Kevin (09:02):
out strategize that kid.
if that kid literally can justbeat me by two minutes, I can't
out think that kid to the finishline.
But if we're close I canprobably take him.
Angie (09:12):
Yeah.
And I don't think that a lot ofrunners necessarily think this
way if they haven't beeninvolved in things like cross
country and.
Competitive racing in the waythat you have a lot of runners,
especially the ones that listento this podcast, who we
absolutely love you guys are.
I'm thinking a lot of you areprobably more like me where you
started to run after highschool.
(09:33):
You started to run a little bitlater in your life.
And so you didn't necessarilyhave that same competitive
experience, right?
So understand what race strategyeven is.
A lot of people are just goingout there and trying to race the
clock and just trying to dofaster every time.
And I think that's why runningcan feel so emotionally
challenging because you start tosee that number decline or
(09:54):
increase, depending on how youlook at it.
And that can trigger thefeelings of frustration or loss,
or even that fear of oh my gosh,am I just going to keep getting
slower from here on out?
are my best running days behindme?
And I think that this is whatleads a lot of runners.
Runners.
When we get into this, phase ofour lives into training harder
(10:16):
and then breaking themselves,right?
They see those numbers changing.
They don't like the change thatthey're seeing.
And so they train as if theywere still younger and say, Oh,
if I just push more, if I justdo more mileage, then I'll get
those times back.
And that's a very dangerous wayto train after
Kevin (10:31):
40.
Because when you were younger,you could get away with that.
if I just push a little bitmore, I'll get faster that
method in theory works.
You can push a little bit moreand you'll be able to get more
out of it.
It's if you squeeze the sponge alittle bit more, you can get a
little bit more water out ofthat thing.
Angie (10:48):
I'm a master at getting toothpaste.
That was going to be mymetaphor.
I'm
Kevin (10:51):
like, Oh, I should've gone with a toothpaste.
Yes.
So are both of our kids.
Their toothpaste tubes are emptywhen they toss them like they
are empty.
but there's, that's I thinkinstead of the racing of what
can I get, against other people,even if you're looking at the
clock, you can think about maybethere's a little bit more that I
can get out of this thing andtrying to get more out of
(11:12):
yourself.
And a lot of people then defaultto pushing harder in all of
their training efforts.
And after the age of 40.
Pushing harder in all yourtraining efforts is not a good
setup for success.
that is most likely going toderail you.
It's going to derail you a lotmore often than it did in your
twenties and thirties.
Angie (11:31):
Yeah.
And so I think we have to reallystart thinking about our
training differently.
We have to think, start thinkingabout what improvement means,
because I think for a lot of us,We equate improving with getting
faster.
And so we have to start toreframe this and stop focusing
so much just on speed.
And I'm not saying that youcan't get faster.
(11:52):
That is definitely not.
So if that's what you'rehearing, do not hear that at
all.
Okay.
You can get faster after the ageof 40, you can continue to get
faster.
That is not, you just have totrain a lot differently, but.
What we really want to startfocusing on is strength instead
of focusing just on speed whenwe start to focus instead on
(12:12):
Strength and endurance andresilience all of that can
definitely still improve so wehave to start flipping our
mindset Okay, aging doesn't meandecline aging doesn't mean I
can't get better.
It does not mean I can't makeprogress It just means Progress
might look a little difference.
I need to start adapting andthinking and training a lot
(12:34):
smarter than I definitely wastraining before.
Like what you just said, youcould make stupid decisions in
your training when you wereyounger and your body would
probably adapt and.
You would gain benefits.
And so there's a lot of runnersthat were like, Oh, it used to
work.
Why does it not work anymore?
And it's because your body'sdifferent.
So you have to start doingthings differently.
Kevin (12:55):
Yeah.
when you're in your twenties,you can throw a lot of random
training theory at your body.
Some of it's Sticking, some ofit is not working at all, but
you just throw a bunch of it atyou and you're going to be able
to make some adaptations andyou're probably not even sure
exactly what it's coming frombecause you're just throwing
everything at it.
And because you're in yourtwenties, you're then also able
(13:15):
to recover and feel fine thenext day.
You try and do that in yourforties and fifties, you throw
everything at your body.
You're not getting back up.
Angie (13:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kevin (13:23):
Yeah.
You're just, you're not likethat's going to be, you might be
able to get through thatworkout, maybe pull it for a
couple of days, but it's goingto go south real quick.
Angie (13:34):
Yeah.
So we have to really start toshift our training to focus on
longevity because I think if Iasked any runner and I want you
to answer this question rightnow to yourself, if I asked you,
do you want to have a, an end toyour running?
What would the answer be?
Like, do you want your runningto end at some point?
(13:56):
And I'm hoping that most of youlistening would probably say no.
So we need to start shifting to,okay, how can I increase my
longevity as a runner?
How can I increase my strengthand my endurance and my
longevity?
In order to do that, we have tostart focusing on different
things.
We can't be so obsessed with ourmile splits and our paces.
And instead, we have to focusmore on our effort, on our
(14:18):
strength, and our runningefficiency.
And where running efficiencygets really cool is what we talk
about when it comes to that isthat Your body requires less
energy to do the same things.
You become more efficient atdoing the task of running and
you do that by especiallyincreasing your strength because
when you increase strength, whenyou increase the number of
(14:40):
muscles that you have firing atany given time, you're using up
less energy and you can lastlonger, which is why a lot of
runners see an increase in theirendurance, especially as they
get older as well.
Yeah.
Kevin (14:52):
Yeah.
you also, like you're.
The one of the reality thingsthat's happening is your muscle
fibers are actually changingfrom like fast twitch to slow
twitch It's more involved inthat but to since I'm the one
explaining it instead of thedoctor explaining it Let's say
in general your fast twitch areswitching over to slow twitch
fibers Which allows you to bebetter at endurance?
but the con the flip of that isyou literally are losing some of
(15:16):
your speed and Unless you arepurposely training your speed
because you can purposely trainit.
If you don't, it really fallsunder the use it or lose it.
So if you don't train yourspeed, it goes away where when
you were younger, if you didn'ttrain your speed, you're like,
I'll knock out some strides andin two weeks, all of your speed
is back.
That's not going to workanymore.
Angie (15:37):
Yeah, you have to be much more intentional about.
Everything when it comes to yourtraining, and so that's one of
the things is, and we weretalking about this and we're,
brainstorming over dinnertonight too.
Sprinting is a very good thingfor you to start incorporating
as a runner over 40, but itneeds to be in very small doses
because if you are like, okay, Iwant to get faster.
(15:58):
I'm just going to go out and I'mgoing to sprint every day.
That'll last maybe a week ifthat, and then you're probably
going to be hurt.
You're going to be injured.
You're going to be, fatigued andburnt out.
Like it's just not going to workbecause you need to recover.
Hard efforts are very good foryour body.
It doesn't matter what ageyou're at.
if you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s,70s, it's still important for
(16:20):
you to push hard sometimes.
a little bit of the time.
Not a lot.
Most of your training shouldfeel easy, and that is a really
big shift for a lot of people tomake.
Kevin (16:32):
at any age, most of your training should feel easy.
But in, when you were younger,you could get away with Pushing
your like medium workouts tomedium hard workouts and your
hard workouts to really hardworkouts a lot more often Like I
remember being in high schoollike we tended to have real hard
workouts on Thursdays like theback end of the week There was a
(16:55):
really difficult workout or ifthere was a race in the middle
it got thrown But there wasessentially one really hard
workout almost every single weekand you got fired up.
You're like, oh, alright, it'sThursday Let's go for this thing
I can't necessarily pull thatoff anymore.
Like, when I was training on myown in my 30s, it was like,
alright, hard workout on Monday,hard workout on Thursday, and
(17:15):
then long run over the weekend.
knock out a hard one, knock outa hard one, knock out a long
one, get it all done.
I don't have that same routineanymore.
you've gotta be careful and pickand choose your training battles
of Alright, I'm feeling a littletired and worn out today.
So it's gonna be a speedworkout, but I'm gonna reduce
the volume.
Or I might pull back a littlebit on the intensity.
(17:37):
It was supposed to be, I don'tknow, let's just make up a
thing.
It was supposed to be 6, 400meters.
I'm going to pull back and makeit three 400 meters, and then
I'll add that distance onto mycool down So I'll still have the
same volume, but I won't have asmuch of the intensity If you've
got some training years behindyou, you don't need a ton of
training intensity.
(17:57):
You don't need a ton of trainingvolume.
You just need enough so thatyour body remembers it, so that
your body can hold on to thetraining that it already has.
Angie (18:06):
Yeah.
And I wanted to just point outwhat you just said here because
people often get confused andthey're like, that means I'm not
doing enough.
But what Kevin just described isthe training load that you're
applying to your body, you'vehelped to decrease, which is a
good thing in this sense.
if you are feeling tired and youdon't have as much energy that
day, you're still getting in thevolume.
(18:28):
So the mileage or the kilometersis the same, but the number of
speed repetitions you're doinghas decreased.
So it's not as much load ontoyour body, which means you're
going to be able to recoverbetter from it.
It means that you're also goingto be able to hit those three
repetitions More effectivelythan if you were trying to
stretch it out and do all six
Kevin (18:49):
Yeah, I mean that goes for a lot of new runners Also,
if you tell them that you've gota workout and you have to do ten
repetitions at a certain paceThey're probably gonna go out
and be like, oh my god This isgonna be super hard and go out
super slow on the first fewHoping that they'll be able to
hang on by the time it gets tothe end If you tell somebody
you're only doing two reps.
Angie (19:06):
Yeah,
Kevin (19:07):
there's not a reason to hang on So you're able to
actually hit the pace because itdoesn't feel mentally as
overwhelming.
Angie (19:12):
Yeah.
And that plays a huge role thatpeople often don't really
understand, which is that how ittaps into your nervous system.
if you are stressed out about aworkout before you even go into
it, before you even take thatfirst step or start your watch,
that workout is going to beharder because you are
activating.
That stress response in yourbody, your heart rate's probably
(19:34):
going to be higher.
Your cortisol levels are goingto be higher.
And this is like the secret thatso many runners don't understand
is that really helping toregulate and manage your nervous
system response affects the waythat your training response like
affects your training responsein your body.
Kevin (19:50):
that's, I'd argue the biggest benefit of a cool down
is not physically getting in acouple of miles.
back in like the late nineties,people were like, you got to
make sure that you move and youget a little jogging afterwards
that you quote unquote flush outthe lactic acid, right?
that was the trainingphilosophy.
Flush out the lactic acid.
That's not why Some of thebiggest benefit of the cooldown
(20:14):
is you and your friends got totalk and it changed you from
workout mentality to cooldownmentality.
And you got to tell me whichsympathetic, parasympathetic I'm
in.
Angie (20:24):
But sympathetic is fight or flight, the hard stuff.
So
Kevin (20:26):
you lose, you leave sympathetic and you move over
chatting with your buddies.
Into parasympathetic and yourbody naturally flips over into
restoration mode,
Angie (20:36):
right?
I wouldn't say that for mostpeople that when they're still
jogging they're like getting inthere But you are definitely
starting to decrease yoursympathetic activation, but
Kevin (20:44):
mentally you're making that flip also true And that
helps the nervous system be ableto say like, all we're done with
the physically challenging stuffthe part that like could go
wrong and you may still be outthere your heart rate's still a
little elevated because you'restill out there and running If
you can do it with other people,or that's when you flip on the,
you don't need the peppy music,the gung ho we're going for
(21:05):
music, change the music mood onthat one.
maybe it's a podcast on the cooldown that just brings you down
and mellows everything out.
Angie (21:11):
There you go.
I like it.
Okay.
So now that you start.
You're starting to understandlike the importance of starting
to look at this differently.
Part of that is starting toreframe your goals also, right?
Because if your goal used to be,I want to PR in every race and
you're noticing, okay, my speedis starting to slow down.
(21:32):
Maybe the speed PRs.
might be behind me.
And this is what you and I havetalked about with your, a lot of
your PRs that you hit when youwere in your teenage years.
So instead of you trying tochase those PRs and think about
them and being like, okay, I'mjust going to do whatever I can
to be as fast as I was backthen, whatever it was, like in
(21:53):
my twenties, in my thirties, inmy forties, wherever you are,
and you're thinking back on whatyou used to be able to do, we
have to start reframing yourgoals and coming up with.
Different goals because ifyou're just trying to PR in
every race and you run that raceand you cross that line and it's
not a PR, how are you going tofeel?
You're probably going to feelfrustrated.
(22:13):
You're going to feel defeated.
And then if you continue to feelthat way, race after race, how
joyful will running be for you?
How long do you think you willcontinue to do it?
And this is where a lot ofpeople start to burn out because
they have, The wrong goals andthe wrong expectations for where
they are right now, they keep inthis cycle of frustration and
(22:35):
defeat and comparison, andthey're just trapped.
And so it's really important forus to start shifting our goals
into, okay, Maybe I'm not goingto set a PR for this.
Not saying that it's notpossible.
Again, things are stillpossible.
But what do you want to focus oninstead?
And that's where the key is.
Instead of focusing on thespeed, the time, the pace, let's
(22:56):
shift our focus over to, okay,how can I become better?
The strongest, the mostresilient runner that I've ever
been, because when you start tofocus on, okay, how can I get
stronger?
A lot of times, this is thereally cool part.
The speed comes along with it.
And when we start to let go ofour need for the numbers and the
PRs and the paces, and we werelike, okay, I'm just going to
(23:18):
focus on getting stronger.
I'm going to focus on feelinggood.
I'm going to feel us on focus onbalancing my training better.
All of a sudden, you unlock newlevels of speed that you didn't
even know you had.
Kevin (23:29):
so you can do a comparison to a previous version
of yourself.
Maybe it's not this, the bestidea for me from a frustration
level to compare my mile time tomy high school mile time.
I'm not getting that.
Mainly Because I have no desireto get that, but I can train in
a way now that is way different,way healthier than I used to.
(23:52):
And this is a path that I'vebeen on since 2017 of completely
overhauling my training to makeit the healthiest way to train
while still seeing how hard Ican push my body.
Not can I push my body?
I'll sleep when I'm dead.
That's a bad choice.
But how hard can I push my body?
(24:13):
And still have some, have anoutside opinion, look at what
I'm doing and say, yeah, you'retraining as a healthy
individual.
They may think it's nuts how farI'm going for a run, but outside
of periodic random days where Irun really far distances, they
would look at most of it and belike, that is a healthy
lifestyle that you're living.
You've got good nutrition comingin, you're sleeping
(24:33):
appropriately, your stresslevels seem to be balanced.
This is an overall healthy wayof living and then sometimes you
run really far.
Angie (24:41):
So how do you tend to think about yourself right now
then?
Like when you think about,
Kevin (24:46):
I
Angie (24:49):
agree.
but when you think about yourgoals and like what you're
trying to do, what do you thinkabout?
Like, how do you set a goal?
what is your kind of overarchinggoals?
Cause you have these smallergoals of I want to run this 100
mile race, or I want to run thismarathon, or those are like your
smaller goals along the way, butwhat's your overarching goal of
what you're trying toaccomplish?
Kevin (25:09):
Continue pushing my body while being healthy.
Angie (25:13):
Okay.
Kevin (25:13):
That's what I'm going for.
So
Angie (25:15):
strong.
is there a strength in there?
Kevin (25:17):
There's a strength in there.
we, the, if you caught thepodcast, what last week or two
weeks ago, I don't know.
One of the recap things yousaid, what is one of your
takeaways from running the ahundred?
And I said, I need more strengthtraining.
And that's part of it is I ahundred percent need more
strength training.
It's going to help me not justrun really long distances, but
run for many more years, not,Oh, I knocked off these couple
(25:39):
more hundred mile races, but nowI will never be able to run
again.
Cause my knees don't work.
I want to make sure that I cando this in a healthy way.
And a huge component of that is,is the strength.
Angie (25:50):
So you're more like, I want to be the healthiest runner
that I, Ever have been.
Kevin (25:56):
Yeah, the healthiest runner will still really
training hard.
There's a level of I thinkmastery to it And I think
mastery is very difficult todefine in the world of running I
think that you talk to almostany runner after anyway, they
could be setting world recordsAnd if you ask them the right
questions, they can nitpick thatrace apart and be like, I could
(26:17):
have done this I could have donethat.
So I think mastery of runningand racing Is a goal that you
can't ever quite get to
Angie (26:25):
I agree.
It's an endless pursuit and aninfinite game,
Kevin (26:28):
right?
and so running has flipped to meto an infinite game as opposed
to What seems like an endlessseries of finite games?
Sure, there are races along theway There are some finite games
that I get to play along the wayBut I see them so much more as
playing and so much lesspressure on the races.
Yeah,
Angie (26:47):
so Bringing back that concept of an infinite game, the
goal of an infinite game is tokeep playing.
Kevin (26:53):
Right.
Angie (26:54):
And that, I think, is the key, right?
It's not that there's some endthat you're trying to get to,
and I think that's what we startto realize if we're just chasing
numbers and PRs, it's like, towhat end?
Like, when will this, when willI stop chasing this number?
And not, again, not to say thatit's bad to chase numbers, those
numbers are fun to chase.
It's fun to chase numbers.
(27:14):
But it's how much pressure areyou putting on yourself for that
number?
If you are Noticing that you'reslowing down and that is making
you feel angry or frustrated ordefeated or down on yourself or
not good enough, like it's timeto reevaluate that goal, right?
So it's time to start shiftingthe way that you're thinking.
So instead of saying, I'mslowing down, I can't believe
(27:37):
I'm getting slower.
We can focus and shift over to,I'm training in a way that
supports my longterm health andmy running longevity
essentially, which is whatyou're saying here.
Kevin (27:47):
Yeah.
Running longevity seems like agreat way to go for this.
And we could, I could talk agood game probably a few years
ago on the podcast.
I probably did.
I'm sure you could go back andfind a podcast a few years ago.
I didn't personally buy in asmuch to it.
I theoretically bought into it.
I'm like, yes, runninglongevity.
That sounds awesome.
But also how fast can I run thisupcoming marathon?
(28:08):
And I've really over more miles,you get real philosophical when
races start getting double digithours.
You
Angie (28:16):
mean, I was going to say, you mean triple digits, triple
digit distances,
Kevin (28:20):
double digit hours.
You just, you got a long time tothink about running and it's
just like, how long do I want todo this?
In terms of how many more years,not how many more hours do I
have left in this race, but howmany years do I want to keep
doing this because it'senjoyable,
Angie (28:34):
probably not as enjoyable when you're at like mile 62 of
your 100 mile as much.
Kevin (28:39):
No, we've covered by mile 62.
I'm punchy right around mile 50.
I'm a giant a hole.
Angie (28:44):
47 is the worst.
I think that's the one.
So we just have to startthinking about this.
And I would invite all of you tostart to redefine what.
What progress means for you as arunner and what does strength
mean for you as a runner?
what does it mean to be astronger runner?
If you right now in your mind isa stronger runner means I'm
(29:04):
faster.
Okay.
Is that the definition you wantto keep after you hear this?
Because you can totally keepthat definition or do you want
to start to shift it to.
A stronger runner means that Iam focusing on improving my
endurance, my strength and myoverall performance.
My, becoming a stronger runneris actually learning how to
(29:25):
train smarter and get betterresults with less training.
that's a cool definition, right?
we can start to define thesethings however we want to
because there's not one correctway.
Kevin (29:36):
I think that we've got, I know we have some clients, I'm
sure we have some listeners alsothat may be inspired possibly by
some craziness that I've done,that they're like, how far could
I run?
And that doesn't necessarilymean how far can I run and can I
do it as fast as possiblebecause there's a point where
it's I've run a marathon, soI've covered 26 miles, but the
(29:58):
race that I want to run is 50miles, 60 miles, 75, but like
some crazy does a hundred miles.
The pace is no longer the firstthing that you're looking at.
we talk to train people all thetime.
First time they do a marathon,it's like.
Is your goal a number on a clockor is your goal to cross the
finish line?
And almost all of them are like,I want to cross the finish line.
(30:20):
And there may be a number in theback of their head that's yeah,
that'd be neat, but it's so muchlower on the priority list.
So it's just, it's interestingto go out and do things.
like you love having thatmindset of curiosity.
As we age as runners, having acurious mindset of, what if I
trained in a different way andtried to, maximize the benefits
(30:42):
out of lower training.
can I improve my runningefficiency and train less and
still be able to run at the samelevel?
Angie (30:48):
Yeah.
And I think that's a really coolthing.
And this is one of the thingsthat even my business coach
challenges us on.
what do you want your businessto look like?
Do you want to work every day?
Do you want to work four days aweek?
Do you want to wait?
Work, work three days a week,like what kind of life do you
want to live and how can youbuild your business to support
that and how, like, how can youachieve the results that you
(31:09):
want within the boundaries inthe confines of the business
that you're choosing here?
So it's okay, I want to be ableto work.
20 hours a week or 30 hours aweek, and I want to be able to
make X amount of dollars.
Okay, what is that going torequire?
And so that we can look at ourrunning the same way, which is
super cool.
It's okay, I want to be able torun a half marathon.
I want to be able to go out onmy with my friends every
(31:30):
Saturday morning and run doubledigits.
I want to be able to do X, Y orZ.
Here's the results I want.
How can I be most efficient withmy training in order to do that
so that I'm not just like gassedand exhausted all week long?
Kevin (31:43):
Or maybe there's a certain number of running days
that you want to do.
I like to run every other day.
maybe that's something that youwant.
that doesn't mean how many daysper week, because if you run
every other day, you're going torun three days, one week and for
the next, I like to run five orsix days out of the week.
So I need to train.
Outside of those runningwindows, I need to train in a
(32:03):
way that allows me to continueto run five or six days out of
the way, which means I need tofigure out, do I need to cut a
run short so that I can increasethe amount of strength training
on that day?
Because I can't just run sixdays.
I could pull this off when I wasa little bit younger by high
school, younger before I startedreally upping the mileage.
And then my knees got all screwybecause.
(32:25):
I was fine at lower mileage, butnow running six days out of the
week is a decent amount ofvolume.
I need enough strength trainingthat my body can handle six days
of running a week.
Angie (32:35):
It's so funny.
Like you and I are just sodifferent.
Like you're like, how can I?
Maximize the number of runningdays that I'm able to stay
healthy with.
Kevin (32:43):
I thought it was, it's like the opposite.
Cause you mentioned the businessone.
Now, most people are like, can Irun a business and only work
three days a week?
I'm like, can I have a run whereI still go six days a week?
Angie (32:53):
But it's true.
And there are runners that arelike you that just love going
out for a run.
that is a very relaxing part oftheir day.
They want to be able to havethat.
The number of days there, andthen there are other runners
like me that would say, okay, Istill want to be able to
accomplish these things on theleast amount of running days
possible, because I like tofocus on doing other things.
I like strength training.
I like yoga.
(33:14):
There's other things that I liketo incorporate in my fitness
routine outside of running.
And so I still love running andI want to keep it.
As a part of my fitness routine,but okay, how can I still
maximize the benefits in aslittle time as possible,
Kevin (33:28):
right?
And that's why you need both ofus on the podcast.
We got a very different anglescoming at
Angie (33:33):
this, and I think that there's definitely listeners
that can relate to both of us.
the last thing we really want totalk about is one of the most
major shifts that I want you tostart making, especially if you
are a woman out there.
Okay, so I am
Kevin (33:46):
Not only woman, just to contribute.
Angie (33:48):
Okay.
Yeah, I'm just going to
Kevin (33:49):
put that in there.
You continue.
Angie (33:51):
Alright, I want to, I would love to hear more of your
perspective on this because Mostof us over 40, most of us women
over 40, were raised with theidea of being smaller is better.
I want to get skinnier.
It's one of the reasons that Istarted running.
If I'm being totally honest, Iwanted to lose weight.
I wanted to be skinnier.
I wanted to look like a quoteunquote a runner, right?
(34:14):
And running was that way for meto try to get skinny or stay
skinny rather than a way tobuild power.
And research Continues to showus that muscle is that key to
longevity to metabolism and toinjury prevention.
And this is why you guys haveprobably noticed we've, we
(34:34):
always talked about strengthtraining on the podcast, but
obviously our podcast.
Now we're on year eight, likewe've completed seven years of
the podcast.
We're now in our eighth year onthe podcast.
And so during our time on thepodcast, both of us have turned
40 and we're now into ourforties.
And I'm really starting to digso much more into the science of
(34:56):
longevity, right?
And of making sure that I amstaying strong and avoiding any
sort of potential disability inthe future.
And so after 40, we really needto start shifting our focus to
muscle preservation and buildingmore muscle.
Because that is not only key forrunning longevity, but it also
is key just for our health ingeneral.
(35:17):
Because We start losing musclemass after the age of 30 at the
rate of about 3 to 8 percent perdecade if we don't do anything
about it.
And if we're running too much,if we're, if we are just pushing
ourselves really hard on ourruns, if we're not strength
training, that's actually goingto accelerate our muscle loss.
A lot of people think thatrunning makes them stronger, and
that's not true.
(35:38):
Running can make you physicallyor mentally stronger, but
Physically, if you are notbalancing your running and your
strength training, it canactually start to weaken your
muscles.
Because if you're running toomuch, if you're pushing too
hard, you can actually bebreaking your muscles down in
that process.
You can be breaking your bonesdown in that process, especially
if you're not giving yourselfgood nutrition.
(35:59):
And so we really have to startfocusing and shifting from
wanting to be skinny, wanting tolose weight.
Into I want to be strong, I wantto build stronger muscles,
stronger bones I want to buildand so this is one of the topics
that we talked about in our mostrecent five day challenge is
shifting from skinny to strongand from losing to building
(36:19):
instead of thinking about losingweight, especially as those of
us start to notice, weight gainfrom menopause and from the
hormone changes that we'reexperiencing, there's a lot of
women that are noticing thatmenopause belly and other weight
gain, especially around thestomach area.
And so Most women I see shiftback into that diet mentality of
I just have to start restrictingI have to start exercising more
(36:43):
and that can make your hormoneseven worse.
And so we really have to startshifting our focus to building
muscle building bone becauseagain.
The same way we were talkingabout earlier of how, when we
start to shift our focus, wemight actually get the results
that we want.
That's what's going to happenhere as well.
If we shift our focus away frombeing skinny and away from
losing weight and focus insteadon building muscle and getting
(37:05):
stronger, you will most likelylose weight in the process.
So it's like that unintendedbyproduct or, desired byproduct
just by changing your focus onthings.
Kevin (37:16):
Yeah, I mean my goal again, let's go back to running
longevity You say that you knowmost many women over 40 were
raised the idea of this like theskinny mentality in culture
Okay, there's a subset of menwhose heroes were Olympic
athlete runners.
You look at runners in the 90sThere was very little variation
(37:39):
in body You look at the mostrecent Olympics, and you're
like, Ooh, that runner's he's alittle thicker.
She's a little thicker.
And then you look at himstanding next to a normal
person, and you're like, Oh,never mind, they're tiny.
But there's at least somevariation.
Back in the 90s, it wasliterally, it was a race to how
light could you get.
The runners who looked strongerwere very few and far between.
And so the posters and thepictures and the magazine
(38:01):
cutouts that I had up on my wallin high school, those dudes were
rails.
And so I was like, that's where,I would like to be as fast as
them, so that's the look thatI'm going for.
That's
Angie (38:11):
what my body needs to look like.
This is
Kevin (38:12):
what, this is the aim.
And was it worse on the femalecross country team?
I'm sure it was.
I went to an all guys school,but research suggests that it
was drastically worse on thefemale side.
But it was certainly there insmall subcultures of male side
of society.
Now I'm looking at people thatI'm still looking at, running
(38:33):
heroes that I'm looking towardsand they're running stupidly far
distances and doing incrediblyfast.
They're all strong.
Like you can notice muscles offof them.
They're not huge because there'sstill, it's still a group of,
skinny runners out there, butyou can see a whole heck of a
lot more muscle definition.
And even on the top athletes inthe Olympics, you can see
muscles defined.
(38:53):
It's a different look than 20,30 years ago.
Angie (38:57):
Yeah, you're right.
And I think that's because a lotof the trainers and the elite
athletes, the professionals, andobviously the scientific
research is showing us thatstrength training.
It actually improves our speed,our endurance, our metabolism.
And so women, especially over40, when we're in perimenopause
and menopause, if you liftheavier weights, you maintain
(39:20):
more muscle and more bonedensity than people that don't
lift heavier weights that don'tdo the resistance training.
And so it's this shift of okay,I've got this new identity of
this person.
I don't want to be this skinnyrunner anymore.
I want to be a strong,resilient.
Athlete, a runner that isathletic, that is strong, that
(39:41):
can do whatever she wants.
And so that's really what youhave to ask yourself, is who do
you want to be?
which one of these do you wantto be?
Do you want to be a runner whois always looking back to the
past and chasing your past?
Or do you want to be a runnerwho's building a future and
looking ahead to see, okay, howcan I be the strongest?
The most, not most enduringversion of myself, but right?
(40:05):
the most enduring, sure.
Most enduring.
what if races wasn't just aboutyour time, but how you felt
crossing that finish line,crossing the finish line,
feeling stronger and energizedand unstoppable because when you
start to focus on strength,running not only gets easier,
but it's a lot more fun.
Kevin (40:22):
Yeah.
And You can cross the finishline and feel like you're super
strong.
You can cross the finish lineand feel like you gave it your
all and you're like, you'recollapsing to the ground.
And while there might be adifferent number on the clock,
the feeling of crossing a 5k,when you raced a 5k well, like
you just know.
And the more years that you run,the less you care what that
(40:42):
number on the clock says,because crossing the line,
whether you legitimately racedthe 5k or not, regardless of
what the number on the clocksays.
And that's why.
The more you do it, the moreit's Oh, it was windy and rainy.
And whatever the thing is, itdoesn't matter when you cross
the finish line, you physicallyknow the clock is irrelevant.
if you raced a 5k or if you tookit easy on yourself, if you went
out too fast and you burned upat the back end, I don't need to
(41:05):
know what the clock says.
I can tell you whether or not Iran an effective 5k.
I'm curious what that feels likeas I run more.
hundred miles because I'm notsure what that feels like if I
did it well or not, but I cantell you at the finish line of
5k if it went well, regardlessof what the number on the clock
says.
Angie (41:20):
Yeah.
And I absolutely love that.
So as a little recap of like thethree main shifts that we talked
about in this podcast, numberone, focus on strength, not
speed.
Okay.
You need as a runner, you needto be resistance training.
Two to three times per week.
Okay.
That is essential.
It is no longer optional foryou.
(41:41):
It really never was, a lot ofus, a lot of us never thought
about it.
And like we said, multiple timesyou could get away with it
before you can't get away withit anymore.
It's absolutely essential.
Crucial.
You have to be strength trainingand you have to be doing so in a
way that's right for a runner.
I think that's another piecethat we really don't have time
to get into today, but.
(42:01):
runner specific strengthtraining.
Yes, regular strength trainingis good.
But if you have goals to improveas a runner, you can make your
strength training more effectivealso.
Okay.
And there's more effective andless effective ways to strength
train.
So working on hill running andsprints can also really help you
to improve your strength as arunner and then shifting from
(42:23):
the focus on weight loss or ongetting skinnier or smaller to
Muscle, building more muscle andfueling your body for the
activities that you want to do.
Kevin (42:32):
Yeah, when you mention that hill running and sprint
intervals, it's making sure thatyou know why you're doing the
workouts, that you're actuallygetting the benefit out of the
workout, and that you're notjust throwing miles in for the
sake of miles.
Once you've been running forenough years, cross training is
super beneficial because itincreases It allows you to
maintain the cardio without thepounding of running, and if you
(42:53):
can do some speed stuff onhills, it also reduces the
impact of the pounding becauseyou're on a hill.
make sure that you're stillactually doing the hard stuff.
But do it intelligently.
Angie (43:04):
Absolutely.
The second shift we talked aboutis to really rethink and
redefine what progress lookslike for you now.
Okay.
So tracking how you feel, notjust what your paces are, not
just what those numbers arecelebrating better recovery,
more energy and endurance over.
Just raw pace and then startingto let go of comparison to your
(43:26):
past self training for therunner that you are today and
the runner that you want to bein the future.
I think that's really important.
And then the third main shift wetalked about is really starting
to define that new runningidentity of what kind of runner.
Are you now?
What kind of runner do you wantto be right now?
do you want to think of yourselfas an older, slower runner?
(43:47):
Or do you want to think ofyourself as a stronger,
resilient, powerful runnerbecause you have that option as
well.
And when you stop chasing thatolder version of yourself, it
allows you to step into the newversion, the athlete that you
want to be, that you have thepotential to be.
And that is just so much morefun, don't you think?
Kevin (44:09):
It's funny.
It allows you to use theexperience and use your
intelligence as a runner, yourhistory as a runner, your
knowledge of running in a waythat you're not used to.
So you're not getting older,you're getting smarter and
stronger.
The experience allows you totrain and race in far more
effective ways and not wastetime doing things that are not
(44:30):
really all that beneficial toyou.
Angie (44:31):
Yeah.
And focus more on joy.
Kevin (44:33):
Yeah, always joy.
Angie (44:34):
Always the joy.
Like I, we had our team call theother day and it was just so
wonderful.
People were like, I was out ofmy run today and I just was
focusing on the birds.
Like the beauty of nature aroundme, like the songs of the birds,
like how cool is that?
Like we can, there's joy allaround us.
And I think that's one of thebeautiful things about getting
(44:54):
older is like you start to seethe So much more joy around you
if you start to pay attention toit.
And I think that we start toshift more to that as we get
older, too.
Yeah.
Kevin (45:05):
It's always there.
We're just able to see it now.
Angie (45:07):
Yeah.
that's more along that, beingwiser, smarter and wiser.
Yes.
There you go.
All right.
So if you guys liked thisepisode, I would absolutely love
for you to reach out to us onInstagram at real life runners,
leave us a review on Applepodcasts, share this podcast
with a friend.
By you sharing, by you leaving areview, you are helping us
spread this message.
You are helping us to help morerunners to start to make these
(45:30):
shifts and get away from injuryand get away from frustration
and defeat and find more joy intheir running.
And isn't that something thatyou want to be a part of?
By you leaving us a review, yousharing this podcast with other
people, that's what you'redoing.
You're helping us to spread morejoy in the world.
And I think.
I would love for you to be apart of that.
So as always, thanks for beinghere.
This is the real life runnerspodcast, episode number 396.
(45:53):
Now get out there and run yourlife.
So many runners over 40 start to feel like their best
(00:02):
running days are behind them.
The narrative around aging oftenfocuses on decline rather than
adaptation and strength.
So today we want to shift thatperspective.
Aging doesn't necessarily meanslowing down.
It means evolving.
Evolving your running.
Evolving the way that you thinkabout your running.
Evolving your goals.
(00:23):
So let's dive into how yourmindset and how the way that you
think Aging as a runner affectsyour training, your results, and
your enjoyment of running.
So stay tuned.
(00:55):
What's up, runners?
Welcome to the show today.
We are digging into one of myfavorite topics.
mindset in general is one of myfavorite things to talk about.
Let's be honest, right?
Kevin (01:06):
Is your favorite topic getting older?
Because that seems like an oddtopic.
Angie (01:09):
It's starting to be.
let's be honest with what I'vebeen researching and creating
lately, it has been a lot aboutgetting older and really
starting to shift ourperspectives around this as
really a blessing to get older,not this negative decline that
so many narratives have told usin the past.
that's
Kevin (01:27):
true.
You are aging like a fine wine.
So this is helpful.
Angie (01:30):
thank you, my love.
But yes.
And I think that.
That really should be all of ourgoals, really, to age like a
fine wine, to get better withage.
Because I do feel, as a womanwho is about, actually, you know
what?
When this episode releases, it'smy birthday.
Kevin (01:44):
Yes, it is.
Because it's actually Happybirthday! Thank
Angie (01:46):
you! It's birthday week right now when we're recording
this.
And so yes Let's not
Kevin (01:50):
kid ourselves, it's birthday month.
Angie (01:51):
It is birthday month, you're right.
But there's a lot of stuff goingon this month, so I'm not
probably going to have as manybirthday celebrations as I have
in the past, that's why we'redoing the party so I can like
Condense a lot of it.
Condense some things?
Condense a lot of it into one.
But anyway, so yes, it, I, it ismy birthday month and so yes, I
am turning another Number older,another age older.
(02:14):
So this actually is
Kevin (02:15):
very
Angie (02:16):
appropriate.
I actually didn't even thinkabout that when we were at, when
I outlined this, episode.
So yes, I'm another year older,which is really only a day older
if you think about it.
but that's a good way to thinkabout this too.
How.
Are we choosing to age?
How are we choosing to look atour life and our longevity?
And I really hope by the end ofthis episode, you will start to
(02:39):
have a shift in yourperspective.
If you have any sort of negativeaura is not the word I'm looking
for negative feelings,connotations, or feelings around
getting older.
I hope that we can start toshift the way you think about it
by the end of today's episode.
Kevin (02:56):
Yeah, no, it's not getting older.
It's just finding new agebrackets to race inside of.
Yeah,
Angie (03:00):
it's getting better.
It's changing.
Like it's not worse.
It's different.
And I think that's really one ofthe biggest things because it's
not that we want you to thinkabout, Oh, like I'm just
declining and getting worse.
And we're like, no.
Everything's getting better andyou're getting faster and
everything's fine.
Like we still have to.
Be one with reality andunderstand that our bodies are
(03:21):
definitely changing like me at44 is not the same as Angie at
24 Why are you laughing so much?
One
Kevin (03:27):
with reality is just a fantastic phrase.
I like
Angie (03:30):
it.
It just sometimes it just comesout of me.
So So, we do have to understandthat things are changing and we
have to accept those changes andalso understand how much control
we do have over the way that wechange and the way that we
experience the change as we getolder.
Kevin (03:48):
okay.
There's also like yourchronological age, like
literally how many times you'vecircled the sun, but there's
also your training age.
So just because you're pastwhatever certain Number on the
calendar does not mean you'reactually necessarily immediately
going to slow down.
If you're pretty new to running,you might still be in that part
of training where everythingjust keeps getting faster
because you're at that point oftraining.
Angie (04:09):
Which is great.
And it's, I love working withrunners like that.
Even when, especially whenthey're 60 years old, and I just
started running a year ago andwow, look at all this stuff that
I can do.
Like we have people.
In our program, like on ourtraining team that's their
current experience.
And it's the most beautifulthing to see.
I just absolutely love it.
Kevin (04:28):
It's super exciting because that was the excitement
and joy I had when I was like14.
So it's cool to see it at allsorts of age levels.
It
Angie (04:35):
is.
So let's first talk about whatwe might experience, like the
psychological impact of seeingyour pace change, because a lot
of runners, especially if you'vebeen running for a long time,
you might.
Start to notice that your paceis starting to slow down.
Maybe your old 5K PR is a coupleminutes, you're running a couple
(04:57):
minutes slower than that now, orhalf marathon, pick whatever
race, or maybe just your normaltraining paces where you go out
on your normal run.
And you're starting to noticethat your paces are slower than
they used to be.
Why is this so emotionallychallenging for us, Kevin?
Can you speak on this?
Because I think, I feel like youhave a very good perspective on
this because you've been runningfor a much longer time than I
(05:18):
have.
And we've talked, in the pastabout how you have.
Basically has hit a lot of PRswhen you were a teenager, right?
So it's I'm not touching thosetimes again.
So what is the kind ofpsychological and emotional
experience that you have whenthat starts to happen?
I'm getting there.
Like I'm starting to get intothis realm right now, but I
still have some possibilitiesstill on my brain, but
Kevin (05:40):
there's always still possibilities.
The possibilities still exist,but like you said, we have to
become one with reality.
I think this is particularly.
The case inside of the world ofrunning because there's so many
numbers so the ability tocompare Yes is so easily
available.
It's right there.
It's there.
it's on your wrist every timeyou're like, This is my
(06:00):
neighborhood loop and maybe youdon't know the exact distance.
Maybe it's not maybe it's arandom distance.
It's 3.
8 miles, okay, but normally ittakes me You know, I don't know,
40 minutes, and now suddenlyit's taking me 43 minutes.
What is going on here?
You can't ignore the fact thatthe number is changing.
You raced a 5k a few years ago,and you hit it in 25.
(06:22):
And you raced it this year, youfelt just as tired, and you hit
26.
there's no ignoring that.
And I think that's part of whatmakes it so tricky in running,
is there's no kind of pretendingthat it's not happening.
In other sports, you can belike, oh, aging quarterbacks in
the NFL, they don't quite havethe same zip, they don't have
the same evasiveness in thepocket, but they can read the
(06:43):
field so much better.
And their knowledge changes andyou can still put up great
stats.
In running, there's the time onthe clock when you cross the
finish line.
Angie (06:53):
Yeah, but I think that aging quarterback is actually a
pretty good analogy to usebecause as a runner Maybe you
don't have the same speed butnow you have a different level
of wisdom You know your body alot better, especially if you've
been doing it for a while.
Kevin (07:07):
Yeah, this is I mean We're I think I had on your
outline here, but the mastery ofrunning a race is something that
I was just so bad at when I wasyounger and, coaching track.
Now I'm talking to these kidsabout like, how do you race a
half a mile?
I'm like, you find the fastestthat you can run one lap.
And then you do it just ever soslightly slower and then repeat
(07:29):
it for the second lap.
They're like, I don't even knowwhat that means.
I'm like, I know it takes a lotof practice.
It took me years to be able todo this correctly, to be able to
race a 5k effectively and not goso hard on the opening mile that
you are crumbling on mile three,but not go so slow on the first
mile that on the last half mile,you're looking to watch and
you're like, I have so muchleft.
(07:49):
Why did I not go faster earlier?
it's tricky and it requiresyears of racing experience to
get there.
Angie (07:55):
Yeah.
And not just years, butrepetitions, right?
Like how many races did you do?
It's not just about the numberof years that you've run.
You've run so many races.
Like I've been running for along time, but the number of
races that I've done compared toyou is so small.
Even though, I ended if youcompare, ratio wise.
(08:15):
races.
Kevin (08:15):
I'm sure we could go to my mom's house and find the
stack of my cross countrynumbers.
Angie (08:20):
She definitely still has them all.
Kevin (08:21):
Definitely.
and it's a tall stack of bibsthere.
Those were, that's 5k racinghistory.
That's a lot of racing.
And then, track through highschool, I would run two or three
races every meet.
We'd have, What?
15 meets over the course of theseason because our school was
big.
So we had dual meets like that'sa lot of races and they're all
different distances, but youjust learn how to race so well.
(08:44):
Like we've been talking aboutthis.
I think we talked about it a fewepisodes ago.
I can beat people in a 5k thaton paper, I probably shouldn't
be able to beat in a 5k.
Yeah,
Angie (08:53):
because you know how to psychologically beat them.
Yeah,
Kevin (08:55):
because if it's a high school kid and we're close, I
can beat that kid.
if it's close.
If that kid Because
Angie (09:01):
of the strategy.
Yeah, I can
Kevin (09:02):
out strategize that kid.
if that kid literally can justbeat me by two minutes, I can't
out think that kid to the finishline.
But if we're close I canprobably take him.
Angie (09:12):
Yeah.
And I don't think that a lot ofrunners necessarily think this
way if they haven't beeninvolved in things like cross
country and.
Competitive racing in the waythat you have a lot of runners,
especially the ones that listento this podcast, who we
absolutely love you guys are.
I'm thinking a lot of you areprobably more like me where you
started to run after highschool.
(09:33):
You started to run a little bitlater in your life.
And so you didn't necessarilyhave that same competitive
experience, right?
So understand what race strategyeven is.
A lot of people are just goingout there and trying to race the
clock and just trying to dofaster every time.
And I think that's why runningcan feel so emotionally
challenging because you start tosee that number decline or
(09:54):
increase, depending on how youlook at it.
And that can trigger thefeelings of frustration or loss,
or even that fear of oh my gosh,am I just going to keep getting
slower from here on out?
are my best running days behindme?
And I think that this is whatleads a lot of runners.
Runners.
When we get into this, phase ofour lives into training harder
(10:16):
and then breaking themselves,right?
They see those numbers changing.
They don't like the change thatthey're seeing.
And so they train as if theywere still younger and say, Oh,
if I just push more, if I justdo more mileage, then I'll get
those times back.
And that's a very dangerous wayto train after
Kevin (10:31):
40.
Because when you were younger,you could get away with that.
if I just push a little bitmore, I'll get faster that
method in theory works.
You can push a little bit moreand you'll be able to get more
out of it.
It's if you squeeze the sponge alittle bit more, you can get a
little bit more water out ofthat thing.
Angie (10:48):
I'm a master at getting toothpaste.
That was going to be mymetaphor.
I'm
Kevin (10:51):
like, Oh, I should've gone with a toothpaste.
Yes.
So are both of our kids.
Their toothpaste tubes are emptywhen they toss them like they
are empty.
but there's, that's I thinkinstead of the racing of what
can I get, against other people,even if you're looking at the
clock, you can think about maybethere's a little bit more that I
can get out of this thing andtrying to get more out of
(11:12):
yourself.
And a lot of people then defaultto pushing harder in all of
their training efforts.
And after the age of 40.
Pushing harder in all yourtraining efforts is not a good
setup for success.
that is most likely going toderail you.
It's going to derail you a lotmore often than it did in your
twenties and thirties.
Angie (11:31):
Yeah.
And so I think we have to reallystart thinking about our
training differently.
We have to think, start thinkingabout what improvement means,
because I think for a lot of us,We equate improving with getting
faster.
And so we have to start toreframe this and stop focusing
so much just on speed.
And I'm not saying that youcan't get faster.
(11:52):
That is definitely not.
So if that's what you'rehearing, do not hear that at
all.
Okay.
You can get faster after the ageof 40, you can continue to get
faster.
That is not, you just have totrain a lot differently, but.
What we really want to startfocusing on is strength instead
of focusing just on speed whenwe start to focus instead on
(12:12):
Strength and endurance andresilience all of that can
definitely still improve so wehave to start flipping our
mindset Okay, aging doesn't meandecline aging doesn't mean I
can't get better.
It does not mean I can't makeprogress It just means Progress
might look a little difference.
I need to start adapting andthinking and training a lot
(12:34):
smarter than I definitely wastraining before.
Like what you just said, youcould make stupid decisions in
your training when you wereyounger and your body would
probably adapt and.
You would gain benefits.
And so there's a lot of runnersthat were like, Oh, it used to
work.
Why does it not work anymore?
And it's because your body'sdifferent.
So you have to start doingthings differently.
Kevin (12:55):
Yeah.
when you're in your twenties,you can throw a lot of random
training theory at your body.
Some of it's Sticking, some ofit is not working at all, but
you just throw a bunch of it atyou and you're going to be able
to make some adaptations andyou're probably not even sure
exactly what it's coming frombecause you're just throwing
everything at it.
And because you're in yourtwenties, you're then also able
(13:15):
to recover and feel fine thenext day.
You try and do that in yourforties and fifties, you throw
everything at your body.
You're not getting back up.
Angie (13:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Kevin (13:23):
Yeah.
You're just, you're not likethat's going to be, you might be
able to get through thatworkout, maybe pull it for a
couple of days, but it's goingto go south real quick.
Angie (13:34):
Yeah.
So we have to really start toshift our training to focus on
longevity because I think if Iasked any runner and I want you
to answer this question rightnow to yourself, if I asked you,
do you want to have a, an end toyour running?
What would the answer be?
Like, do you want your runningto end at some point?
(13:56):
And I'm hoping that most of youlistening would probably say no.
So we need to start shifting to,okay, how can I increase my
longevity as a runner?
How can I increase my strengthand my endurance and my
longevity?
In order to do that, we have tostart focusing on different
things.
We can't be so obsessed with ourmile splits and our paces.
And instead, we have to focusmore on our effort, on our
(14:18):
strength, and our runningefficiency.
And where running efficiencygets really cool is what we talk
about when it comes to that isthat Your body requires less
energy to do the same things.
You become more efficient atdoing the task of running and
you do that by especiallyincreasing your strength because
when you increase strength, whenyou increase the number of
(14:40):
muscles that you have firing atany given time, you're using up
less energy and you can lastlonger, which is why a lot of
runners see an increase in theirendurance, especially as they
get older as well.
Yeah.
Kevin (14:52):
Yeah.
you also, like you're.
The one of the reality thingsthat's happening is your muscle
fibers are actually changingfrom like fast twitch to slow
twitch It's more involved inthat but to since I'm the one
explaining it instead of thedoctor explaining it Let's say
in general your fast twitch areswitching over to slow twitch
fibers Which allows you to bebetter at endurance?
but the con the flip of that isyou literally are losing some of
(15:16):
your speed and Unless you arepurposely training your speed
because you can purposely trainit.
If you don't, it really fallsunder the use it or lose it.
So if you don't train yourspeed, it goes away where when
you were younger, if you didn'ttrain your speed, you're like,
I'll knock out some strides andin two weeks, all of your speed
is back.
That's not going to workanymore.
Angie (15:37):
Yeah, you have to be much more intentional about.
Everything when it comes to yourtraining, and so that's one of
the things is, and we weretalking about this and we're,
brainstorming over dinnertonight too.
Sprinting is a very good thingfor you to start incorporating
as a runner over 40, but itneeds to be in very small doses
because if you are like, okay, Iwant to get faster.
(15:58):
I'm just going to go out and I'mgoing to sprint every day.
That'll last maybe a week ifthat, and then you're probably
going to be hurt.
You're going to be injured.
You're going to be, fatigued andburnt out.
Like it's just not going to workbecause you need to recover.
Hard efforts are very good foryour body.
It doesn't matter what ageyou're at.
if you're in your 40s, 50s, 60s,70s, it's still important for
(16:20):
you to push hard sometimes.
a little bit of the time.
Not a lot.
Most of your training shouldfeel easy, and that is a really
big shift for a lot of people tomake.
Kevin (16:32):
at any age, most of your training should feel easy.
But in, when you were younger,you could get away with Pushing
your like medium workouts tomedium hard workouts and your
hard workouts to really hardworkouts a lot more often Like I
remember being in high schoollike we tended to have real hard
workouts on Thursdays like theback end of the week There was a
(16:55):
really difficult workout or ifthere was a race in the middle
it got thrown But there wasessentially one really hard
workout almost every single weekand you got fired up.
You're like, oh, alright, it'sThursday Let's go for this thing
I can't necessarily pull thatoff anymore.
Like, when I was training on myown in my 30s, it was like,
alright, hard workout on Monday,hard workout on Thursday, and
(17:15):
then long run over the weekend.
knock out a hard one, knock outa hard one, knock out a long
one, get it all done.
I don't have that same routineanymore.
you've gotta be careful and pickand choose your training battles
of Alright, I'm feeling a littletired and worn out today.
So it's gonna be a speedworkout, but I'm gonna reduce
the volume.
Or I might pull back a littlebit on the intensity.
(17:37):
It was supposed to be, I don'tknow, let's just make up a
thing.
It was supposed to be 6, 400meters.
I'm going to pull back and makeit three 400 meters, and then
I'll add that distance onto mycool down So I'll still have the
same volume, but I won't have asmuch of the intensity If you've
got some training years behindyou, you don't need a ton of
training intensity.
(17:57):
You don't need a ton of trainingvolume.
You just need enough so thatyour body remembers it, so that
your body can hold on to thetraining that it already has.
Angie (18:06):
Yeah.
And I wanted to just point outwhat you just said here because
people often get confused andthey're like, that means I'm not
doing enough.
But what Kevin just described isthe training load that you're
applying to your body, you'vehelped to decrease, which is a
good thing in this sense.
if you are feeling tired and youdon't have as much energy that
day, you're still getting in thevolume.
(18:28):
So the mileage or the kilometersis the same, but the number of
speed repetitions you're doinghas decreased.
So it's not as much load ontoyour body, which means you're
going to be able to recoverbetter from it.
It means that you're also goingto be able to hit those three
repetitions More effectivelythan if you were trying to
stretch it out and do all six
Kevin (18:49):
Yeah, I mean that goes for a lot of new runners Also,
if you tell them that you've gota workout and you have to do ten
repetitions at a certain paceThey're probably gonna go out
and be like, oh my god This isgonna be super hard and go out
super slow on the first fewHoping that they'll be able to
hang on by the time it gets tothe end If you tell somebody
you're only doing two reps.
Angie (19:06):
Yeah,
Kevin (19:07):
there's not a reason to hang on So you're able to
actually hit the pace because itdoesn't feel mentally as
overwhelming.
Angie (19:12):
Yeah.
And that plays a huge role thatpeople often don't really
understand, which is that how ittaps into your nervous system.
if you are stressed out about aworkout before you even go into
it, before you even take thatfirst step or start your watch,
that workout is going to beharder because you are
activating.
That stress response in yourbody, your heart rate's probably
(19:34):
going to be higher.
Your cortisol levels are goingto be higher.
And this is like the secret thatso many runners don't understand
is that really helping toregulate and manage your nervous
system response affects the waythat your training response like
affects your training responsein your body.
Kevin (19:50):
that's, I'd argue the biggest benefit of a cool down
is not physically getting in acouple of miles.
back in like the late nineties,people were like, you got to
make sure that you move and youget a little jogging afterwards
that you quote unquote flush outthe lactic acid, right?
that was the trainingphilosophy.
Flush out the lactic acid.
That's not why Some of thebiggest benefit of the cooldown
(20:14):
is you and your friends got totalk and it changed you from
workout mentality to cooldownmentality.
And you got to tell me whichsympathetic, parasympathetic I'm
in.
Angie (20:24):
But sympathetic is fight or flight, the hard stuff.
So
Kevin (20:26):
you lose, you leave sympathetic and you move over
chatting with your buddies.
Into parasympathetic and yourbody naturally flips over into
restoration mode,
Angie (20:36):
right?
I wouldn't say that for mostpeople that when they're still
jogging they're like getting inthere But you are definitely
starting to decrease yoursympathetic activation, but
Kevin (20:44):
mentally you're making that flip also true And that
helps the nervous system be ableto say like, all we're done with
the physically challenging stuffthe part that like could go
wrong and you may still be outthere your heart rate's still a
little elevated because you'restill out there and running If
you can do it with other people,or that's when you flip on the,
you don't need the peppy music,the gung ho we're going for
(21:05):
music, change the music mood onthat one.
maybe it's a podcast on the cooldown that just brings you down
and mellows everything out.
Angie (21:11):
There you go.
I like it.
Okay.
So now that you start.
You're starting to understandlike the importance of starting
to look at this differently.
Part of that is starting toreframe your goals also, right?
Because if your goal used to be,I want to PR in every race and
you're noticing, okay, my speedis starting to slow down.
(21:32):
Maybe the speed PRs.
might be behind me.
And this is what you and I havetalked about with your, a lot of
your PRs that you hit when youwere in your teenage years.
So instead of you trying tochase those PRs and think about
them and being like, okay, I'mjust going to do whatever I can
to be as fast as I was backthen, whatever it was, like in
(21:53):
my twenties, in my thirties, inmy forties, wherever you are,
and you're thinking back on whatyou used to be able to do, we
have to start reframing yourgoals and coming up with.
Different goals because ifyou're just trying to PR in
every race and you run that raceand you cross that line and it's
not a PR, how are you going tofeel?
You're probably going to feelfrustrated.
(22:13):
You're going to feel defeated.
And then if you continue to feelthat way, race after race, how
joyful will running be for you?
How long do you think you willcontinue to do it?
And this is where a lot ofpeople start to burn out because
they have, The wrong goals andthe wrong expectations for where
they are right now, they keep inthis cycle of frustration and
(22:35):
defeat and comparison, andthey're just trapped.
And so it's really important forus to start shifting our goals
into, okay, Maybe I'm not goingto set a PR for this.
Not saying that it's notpossible.
Again, things are stillpossible.
But what do you want to focus oninstead?
And that's where the key is.
Instead of focusing on thespeed, the time, the pace, let's
(22:56):
shift our focus over to, okay,how can I become better?
The strongest, the mostresilient runner that I've ever
been, because when you start tofocus on, okay, how can I get
stronger?
A lot of times, this is thereally cool part.
The speed comes along with it.
And when we start to let go ofour need for the numbers and the
PRs and the paces, and we werelike, okay, I'm just going to
(23:18):
focus on getting stronger.
I'm going to focus on feelinggood.
I'm going to feel us on focus onbalancing my training better.
All of a sudden, you unlock newlevels of speed that you didn't
even know you had.
Kevin (23:29):
so you can do a comparison to a previous version
of yourself.
Maybe it's not this, the bestidea for me from a frustration
level to compare my mile time tomy high school mile time.
I'm not getting that.
Mainly Because I have no desireto get that, but I can train in
a way now that is way different,way healthier than I used to.
(23:52):
And this is a path that I'vebeen on since 2017 of completely
overhauling my training to makeit the healthiest way to train
while still seeing how hard Ican push my body.
Not can I push my body?
I'll sleep when I'm dead.
That's a bad choice.
But how hard can I push my body?
(24:13):
And still have some, have anoutside opinion, look at what
I'm doing and say, yeah, you'retraining as a healthy
individual.
They may think it's nuts how farI'm going for a run, but outside
of periodic random days where Irun really far distances, they
would look at most of it and belike, that is a healthy
lifestyle that you're living.
You've got good nutrition comingin, you're sleeping
(24:33):
appropriately, your stresslevels seem to be balanced.
This is an overall healthy wayof living and then sometimes you
run really far.
Angie (24:41):
So how do you tend to think about yourself right now
then?
Like when you think about,
Kevin (24:46):
I
Angie (24:49):
agree.
but when you think about yourgoals and like what you're
trying to do, what do you thinkabout?
Like, how do you set a goal?
what is your kind of overarchinggoals?
Cause you have these smallergoals of I want to run this 100
mile race, or I want to run thismarathon, or those are like your
smaller goals along the way, butwhat's your overarching goal of
what you're trying toaccomplish?
Kevin (25:09):
Continue pushing my body while being healthy.
Angie (25:13):
Okay.
Kevin (25:13):
That's what I'm going for.
So
Angie (25:15):
strong.
is there a strength in there?
Kevin (25:17):
There's a strength in there.
we, the, if you caught thepodcast, what last week or two
weeks ago, I don't know.
One of the recap things yousaid, what is one of your
takeaways from running the ahundred?
And I said, I need more strengthtraining.
And that's part of it is I ahundred percent need more
strength training.
It's going to help me not justrun really long distances, but
run for many more years, not,Oh, I knocked off these couple
(25:39):
more hundred mile races, but nowI will never be able to run
again.
Cause my knees don't work.
I want to make sure that I cando this in a healthy way.
And a huge component of that is,is the strength.
Angie (25:50):
So you're more like, I want to be the healthiest runner
that I, Ever have been.
Kevin (25:56):
Yeah, the healthiest runner will still really
training hard.
There's a level of I thinkmastery to it And I think
mastery is very difficult todefine in the world of running I
think that you talk to almostany runner after anyway, they
could be setting world recordsAnd if you ask them the right
questions, they can nitpick thatrace apart and be like, I could
(26:17):
have done this I could have donethat.
So I think mastery of runningand racing Is a goal that you
can't ever quite get to
Angie (26:25):
I agree.
It's an endless pursuit and aninfinite game,
Kevin (26:28):
right?
and so running has flipped to meto an infinite game as opposed
to What seems like an endlessseries of finite games?
Sure, there are races along theway There are some finite games
that I get to play along the wayBut I see them so much more as
playing and so much lesspressure on the races.
Yeah,
Angie (26:47):
so Bringing back that concept of an infinite game, the
goal of an infinite game is tokeep playing.
Kevin (26:53):
Right.
Angie (26:54):
And that, I think, is the key, right?
It's not that there's some endthat you're trying to get to,
and I think that's what we startto realize if we're just chasing
numbers and PRs, it's like, towhat end?
Like, when will this, when willI stop chasing this number?
And not, again, not to say thatit's bad to chase numbers, those
numbers are fun to chase.
It's fun to chase numbers.
(27:14):
But it's how much pressure areyou putting on yourself for that
number?
If you are Noticing that you'reslowing down and that is making
you feel angry or frustrated ordefeated or down on yourself or
not good enough, like it's timeto reevaluate that goal, right?
So it's time to start shiftingthe way that you're thinking.
So instead of saying, I'mslowing down, I can't believe
(27:37):
I'm getting slower.
We can focus and shift over to,I'm training in a way that
supports my longterm health andmy running longevity
essentially, which is whatyou're saying here.
Kevin (27:47):
Yeah.
Running longevity seems like agreat way to go for this.
And we could, I could talk agood game probably a few years
ago on the podcast.
I probably did.
I'm sure you could go back andfind a podcast a few years ago.
I didn't personally buy in asmuch to it.
I theoretically bought into it.
I'm like, yes, runninglongevity.
That sounds awesome.
But also how fast can I run thisupcoming marathon?
(28:08):
And I've really over more miles,you get real philosophical when
races start getting double digithours.
You
Angie (28:16):
mean, I was going to say, you mean triple digits, triple
digit distances,
Kevin (28:20):
double digit hours.
You just, you got a long time tothink about running and it's
just like, how long do I want todo this?
In terms of how many more years,not how many more hours do I
have left in this race, but howmany years do I want to keep
doing this because it'senjoyable,
Angie (28:34):
probably not as enjoyable when you're at like mile 62 of
your 100 mile as much.
Kevin (28:39):
No, we've covered by mile 62.
I'm punchy right around mile 50.
I'm a giant a hole.
Angie (28:44):
47 is the worst.
I think that's the one.
So we just have to startthinking about this.
And I would invite all of you tostart to redefine what.
What progress means for you as arunner and what does strength
mean for you as a runner?
what does it mean to be astronger runner?
If you right now in your mind isa stronger runner means I'm
(29:04):
faster.
Okay.
Is that the definition you wantto keep after you hear this?
Because you can totally keepthat definition or do you want
to start to shift it to.
A stronger runner means that Iam focusing on improving my
endurance, my strength and myoverall performance.
My, becoming a stronger runneris actually learning how to
(29:25):
train smarter and get betterresults with less training.
that's a cool definition, right?
we can start to define thesethings however we want to
because there's not one correctway.
Kevin (29:36):
I think that we've got, I know we have some clients, I'm
sure we have some listeners alsothat may be inspired possibly by
some craziness that I've done,that they're like, how far could
I run?
And that doesn't necessarilymean how far can I run and can I
do it as fast as possiblebecause there's a point where
it's I've run a marathon, soI've covered 26 miles, but the
(29:58):
race that I want to run is 50miles, 60 miles, 75, but like
some crazy does a hundred miles.
The pace is no longer the firstthing that you're looking at.
we talk to train people all thetime.
First time they do a marathon,it's like.
Is your goal a number on a clockor is your goal to cross the
finish line?
And almost all of them are like,I want to cross the finish line.
(30:20):
And there may be a number in theback of their head that's yeah,
that'd be neat, but it's so muchlower on the priority list.
So it's just, it's interestingto go out and do things.
like you love having thatmindset of curiosity.
As we age as runners, having acurious mindset of, what if I
trained in a different way andtried to, maximize the benefits
(30:42):
out of lower training.
can I improve my runningefficiency and train less and
still be able to run at the samelevel?
Angie (30:48):
Yeah.
And I think that's a really coolthing.
And this is one of the thingsthat even my business coach
challenges us on.
what do you want your businessto look like?
Do you want to work every day?
Do you want to work four days aweek?
Do you want to wait?
Work, work three days a week,like what kind of life do you
want to live and how can youbuild your business to support
that and how, like, how can youachieve the results that you
(31:09):
want within the boundaries inthe confines of the business
that you're choosing here?
So it's okay, I want to be ableto work.
20 hours a week or 30 hours aweek, and I want to be able to
make X amount of dollars.
Okay, what is that going torequire?
And so that we can look at ourrunning the same way, which is
super cool.
It's okay, I want to be able torun a half marathon.
I want to be able to go out onmy with my friends every
(31:30):
Saturday morning and run doubledigits.
I want to be able to do X, Y orZ.
Here's the results I want.
How can I be most efficient withmy training in order to do that
so that I'm not just like gassedand exhausted all week long?
Kevin (31:43):
Or maybe there's a certain number of running days
that you want to do.
I like to run every other day.
maybe that's something that youwant.
that doesn't mean how many daysper week, because if you run
every other day, you're going torun three days, one week and for
the next, I like to run five orsix days out of the week.
So I need to train.
Outside of those runningwindows, I need to train in a
(32:03):
way that allows me to continueto run five or six days out of
the way, which means I need tofigure out, do I need to cut a
run short so that I can increasethe amount of strength training
on that day?
Because I can't just run sixdays.
I could pull this off when I wasa little bit younger by high
school, younger before I startedreally upping the mileage.
And then my knees got all screwybecause.
(32:25):
I was fine at lower mileage, butnow running six days out of the
week is a decent amount ofvolume.
I need enough strength trainingthat my body can handle six days
of running a week.
Angie (32:35):
It's so funny.
Like you and I are just sodifferent.
Like you're like, how can I?
Maximize the number of runningdays that I'm able to stay
healthy with.
Kevin (32:43):
I thought it was, it's like the opposite.
Cause you mentioned the businessone.
Now, most people are like, can Irun a business and only work
three days a week?
I'm like, can I have a run whereI still go six days a week?
Angie (32:53):
But it's true.
And there are runners that arelike you that just love going
out for a run.
that is a very relaxing part oftheir day.
They want to be able to havethat.
The number of days there, andthen there are other runners
like me that would say, okay, Istill want to be able to
accomplish these things on theleast amount of running days
possible, because I like tofocus on doing other things.
I like strength training.
I like yoga.
(33:14):
There's other things that I liketo incorporate in my fitness
routine outside of running.
And so I still love running andI want to keep it.
As a part of my fitness routine,but okay, how can I still
maximize the benefits in aslittle time as possible,
Kevin (33:28):
right?
And that's why you need both ofus on the podcast.
We got a very different anglescoming at
Angie (33:33):
this, and I think that there's definitely listeners
that can relate to both of us.
the last thing we really want totalk about is one of the most
major shifts that I want you tostart making, especially if you
are a woman out there.
Okay, so I am
Kevin (33:46):
Not only woman, just to contribute.
Angie (33:48):
Okay.
Yeah, I'm just going to
Kevin (33:49):
put that in there.
You continue.
Angie (33:51):
Alright, I want to, I would love to hear more of your
perspective on this because Mostof us over 40, most of us women
over 40, were raised with theidea of being smaller is better.
I want to get skinnier.
It's one of the reasons that Istarted running.
If I'm being totally honest, Iwanted to lose weight.
I wanted to be skinnier.
I wanted to look like a quoteunquote a runner, right?
(34:14):
And running was that way for meto try to get skinny or stay
skinny rather than a way tobuild power.
And research Continues to showus that muscle is that key to
longevity to metabolism and toinjury prevention.
And this is why you guys haveprobably noticed we've, we
(34:34):
always talked about strengthtraining on the podcast, but
obviously our podcast.
Now we're on year eight, likewe've completed seven years of
the podcast.
We're now in our eighth year onthe podcast.
And so during our time on thepodcast, both of us have turned
40 and we're now into ourforties.
And I'm really starting to digso much more into the science of
(34:56):
longevity, right?
And of making sure that I amstaying strong and avoiding any
sort of potential disability inthe future.
And so after 40, we really needto start shifting our focus to
muscle preservation and buildingmore muscle.
Because that is not only key forrunning longevity, but it also
is key just for our health ingeneral.
(35:17):
Because We start losing musclemass after the age of 30 at the
rate of about 3 to 8 percent perdecade if we don't do anything
about it.
And if we're running too much,if we're, if we are just pushing
ourselves really hard on ourruns, if we're not strength
training, that's actually goingto accelerate our muscle loss.
A lot of people think thatrunning makes them stronger, and
that's not true.
(35:38):
Running can make you physicallyor mentally stronger, but
Physically, if you are notbalancing your running and your
strength training, it canactually start to weaken your
muscles.
Because if you're running toomuch, if you're pushing too
hard, you can actually bebreaking your muscles down in
that process.
You can be breaking your bonesdown in that process, especially
if you're not giving yourselfgood nutrition.
(35:59):
And so we really have to startfocusing and shifting from
wanting to be skinny, wanting tolose weight.
Into I want to be strong, I wantto build stronger muscles,
stronger bones I want to buildand so this is one of the topics
that we talked about in our mostrecent five day challenge is
shifting from skinny to strongand from losing to building
(36:19):
instead of thinking about losingweight, especially as those of
us start to notice, weight gainfrom menopause and from the
hormone changes that we'reexperiencing, there's a lot of
women that are noticing thatmenopause belly and other weight
gain, especially around thestomach area.
And so Most women I see shiftback into that diet mentality of
I just have to start restrictingI have to start exercising more
(36:43):
and that can make your hormoneseven worse.
And so we really have to startshifting our focus to building
muscle building bone becauseagain.
The same way we were talkingabout earlier of how, when we
start to shift our focus, wemight actually get the results
that we want.
That's what's going to happenhere as well.
If we shift our focus away frombeing skinny and away from
losing weight and focus insteadon building muscle and getting
(37:05):
stronger, you will most likelylose weight in the process.
So it's like that unintendedbyproduct or, desired byproduct
just by changing your focus onthings.
Kevin (37:16):
Yeah, I mean my goal again, let's go back to running
longevity You say that you knowmost many women over 40 were
raised the idea of this like theskinny mentality in culture
Okay, there's a subset of menwhose heroes were Olympic
athlete runners.
You look at runners in the 90sThere was very little variation
(37:39):
in body You look at the mostrecent Olympics, and you're
like, Ooh, that runner's he's alittle thicker.
She's a little thicker.
And then you look at himstanding next to a normal
person, and you're like, Oh,never mind, they're tiny.
But there's at least somevariation.
Back in the 90s, it wasliterally, it was a race to how
light could you get.
The runners who looked strongerwere very few and far between.
And so the posters and thepictures and the magazine
(38:01):
cutouts that I had up on my wallin high school, those dudes were
rails.
And so I was like, that's where,I would like to be as fast as
them, so that's the look thatI'm going for.
That's
Angie (38:11):
what my body needs to look like.
This is
Kevin (38:12):
what, this is the aim.
And was it worse on the femalecross country team?
I'm sure it was.
I went to an all guys school,but research suggests that it
was drastically worse on thefemale side.
But it was certainly there insmall subcultures of male side
of society.
Now I'm looking at people thatI'm still looking at, running
(38:33):
heroes that I'm looking towardsand they're running stupidly far
distances and doing incrediblyfast.
They're all strong.
Like you can notice muscles offof them.
They're not huge because there'sstill, it's still a group of,
skinny runners out there, butyou can see a whole heck of a
lot more muscle definition.
And even on the top athletes inthe Olympics, you can see
muscles defined.
(38:53):
It's a different look than 20,30 years ago.
Angie (38:57):
Yeah, you're right.
And I think that's because a lotof the trainers and the elite
athletes, the professionals, andobviously the scientific
research is showing us thatstrength training.
It actually improves our speed,our endurance, our metabolism.
And so women, especially over40, when we're in perimenopause
and menopause, if you liftheavier weights, you maintain
(39:20):
more muscle and more bonedensity than people that don't
lift heavier weights that don'tdo the resistance training.
And so it's this shift of okay,I've got this new identity of
this person.
I don't want to be this skinnyrunner anymore.
I want to be a strong,resilient.
Athlete, a runner that isathletic, that is strong, that
(39:41):
can do whatever she wants.
And so that's really what youhave to ask yourself, is who do
you want to be?
which one of these do you wantto be?
Do you want to be a runner whois always looking back to the
past and chasing your past?
Or do you want to be a runnerwho's building a future and
looking ahead to see, okay, howcan I be the strongest?
The most, not most enduringversion of myself, but right?
(40:05):
the most enduring, sure.
Most enduring.
what if races wasn't just aboutyour time, but how you felt
crossing that finish line,crossing the finish line,
feeling stronger and energizedand unstoppable because when you
start to focus on strength,running not only gets easier,
but it's a lot more fun.
Kevin (40:22):
Yeah.
And You can cross the finishline and feel like you're super
strong.
You can cross the finish lineand feel like you gave it your
all and you're like, you'recollapsing to the ground.
And while there might be adifferent number on the clock,
the feeling of crossing a 5k,when you raced a 5k well, like
you just know.
And the more years that you run,the less you care what that
(40:42):
number on the clock says,because crossing the line,
whether you legitimately racedthe 5k or not, regardless of
what the number on the clocksays.
And that's why.
The more you do it, the moreit's Oh, it was windy and rainy.
And whatever the thing is, itdoesn't matter when you cross
the finish line, you physicallyknow the clock is irrelevant.
if you raced a 5k or if you tookit easy on yourself, if you went
out too fast and you burned upat the back end, I don't need to
(41:05):
know what the clock says.
I can tell you whether or not Iran an effective 5k.
I'm curious what that feels likeas I run more.
hundred miles because I'm notsure what that feels like if I
did it well or not, but I cantell you at the finish line of
5k if it went well, regardlessof what the number on the clock
says.
Angie (41:20):
Yeah.
And I absolutely love that.
So as a little recap of like thethree main shifts that we talked
about in this podcast, numberone, focus on strength, not
speed.
Okay.
You need as a runner, you needto be resistance training.
Two to three times per week.
Okay.
That is essential.
It is no longer optional foryou.
(41:41):
It really never was, a lot ofus, a lot of us never thought
about it.
And like we said, multiple timesyou could get away with it
before you can't get away withit anymore.
It's absolutely essential.
Crucial.
You have to be strength trainingand you have to be doing so in a
way that's right for a runner.
I think that's another piecethat we really don't have time
to get into today, but.
(42:01):
runner specific strengthtraining.
Yes, regular strength trainingis good.
But if you have goals to improveas a runner, you can make your
strength training more effectivealso.
Okay.
And there's more effective andless effective ways to strength
train.
So working on hill running andsprints can also really help you
to improve your strength as arunner and then shifting from
(42:23):
the focus on weight loss or ongetting skinnier or smaller to
Muscle, building more muscle andfueling your body for the
activities that you want to do.
Kevin (42:32):
Yeah, when you mention that hill running and sprint
intervals, it's making sure thatyou know why you're doing the
workouts, that you're actuallygetting the benefit out of the
workout, and that you're notjust throwing miles in for the
sake of miles.
Once you've been running forenough years, cross training is
super beneficial because itincreases It allows you to
maintain the cardio without thepounding of running, and if you
(42:53):
can do some speed stuff onhills, it also reduces the
impact of the pounding becauseyou're on a hill.
make sure that you're stillactually doing the hard stuff.
But do it intelligently.
Angie (43:04):
Absolutely.
The second shift we talked aboutis to really rethink and
redefine what progress lookslike for you now.
Okay.
So tracking how you feel, notjust what your paces are, not
just what those numbers arecelebrating better recovery,
more energy and endurance over.
Just raw pace and then startingto let go of comparison to your
(43:26):
past self training for therunner that you are today and
the runner that you want to bein the future.
I think that's really important.
And then the third main shift wetalked about is really starting
to define that new runningidentity of what kind of runner.
Are you now?
What kind of runner do you wantto be right now?
do you want to think of yourselfas an older, slower runner?
(43:47):
Or do you want to think ofyourself as a stronger,
resilient, powerful runnerbecause you have that option as
well.
And when you stop chasing thatolder version of yourself, it
allows you to step into the newversion, the athlete that you
want to be, that you have thepotential to be.
And that is just so much morefun, don't you think?
Kevin (44:09):
It's funny.
It allows you to use theexperience and use your
intelligence as a runner, yourhistory as a runner, your
knowledge of running in a waythat you're not used to.
So you're not getting older,you're getting smarter and
stronger.
The experience allows you totrain and race in far more
effective ways and not wastetime doing things that are not
(44:30):
really all that beneficial toyou.
Angie (44:31):
Yeah.
And focus more on joy.
Kevin (44:33):
Yeah, always joy.
Angie (44:34):
Always the joy.
Like I, we had our team call theother day and it was just so
wonderful.
People were like, I was out ofmy run today and I just was
focusing on the birds.
Like the beauty of nature aroundme, like the songs of the birds,
like how cool is that?
Like we can, there's joy allaround us.
And I think that's one of thebeautiful things about getting
(44:54):
older is like you start to seethe So much more joy around you
if you start to pay attention toit.
And I think that we start toshift more to that as we get
older, too.
Yeah.
Kevin (45:05):
It's always there.
We're just able to see it now.
Angie (45:07):
Yeah.
that's more along that, beingwiser, smarter and wiser.
Yes.
There you go.
All right.
So if you guys liked thisepisode, I would absolutely love
for you to reach out to us onInstagram at real life runners,
leave us a review on Applepodcasts, share this podcast
with a friend.
By you sharing, by you leaving areview, you are helping us
spread this message.
You are helping us to help morerunners to start to make these
(45:30):
shifts and get away from injuryand get away from frustration
and defeat and find more joy intheir running.
And isn't that something thatyou want to be a part of?
By you leaving us a review, yousharing this podcast with other
people, that's what you'redoing.
You're helping us to spread morejoy in the world.
And I think.
I would love for you to be apart of that.
So as always, thanks for beinghere.
This is the real life runnerspodcast, episode number 396.
(45:53):
Now get out there and run yourlife.
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