Run the Reset: Reset the Body

This week on The Back of the Pack Podcast: Second Wind, we kick off a brand-new November series called Run the Reset — and it all starts with the body. After months of racing, training, sweating, and chasing goals, it’s time to slow down and rebuild. Kyle dives into why rest isn’t weakness, how active recovery keeps you healthy, and the mindset shift that turns “taking time off” into an essential part of progress. We’ll talk about listening to your body, fueling for repair instead of performance, and how to find balance between motion and maintenance. If you’ve been pushing hard all year and need permission to hit pause, this episode gives you exactly that — with the reminder that rest isn’t quitting; it’s the comeback phase.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hello, everyone, greetings and salutations. Welcome back to another episode
at the Back of the Back Podcast, second one. I'm
Skyle Walker. Thank you so much for tuning in. It's
November first Friday and November start of a brand new series.
But before we get to that, in just a here,
over twenty four hours from when this airs, I am
going to start greeting everyone in seeing all of you up.

(00:33):
But the Good Life haves the Expo and half Marathon
again their twelfth year, and they are sold out with
over eight thousand runners. So I am so excited to
be hitting the road and heading up to Lincoln to
go to the ex BO. I'm actually more excited about
the Expo than the race, not gonna lie. The Expo
last year was so great and we met so many

(00:54):
new people and we had so much fun. If we
get that same success again, it's gonna be right. The
race itself, it's looking like we're gonna have darn near
perfect weather. I haven't looked at the wind, but we
might be starting right around forty degrees but warming up
during the race, so the weather might be great. I

(01:14):
know my training is nowhere near what it was this
time last year. Good Life haves. He is still my
pr from twenty twenty four. I do not expect a
repeat performance in twenty twenty five. I don't think that
a sub two and a half hour half marathon is
in the cards for me. But you know what, I'm
gonna go give it my best shot because I really
enjoy that race. It's a fun atmosphere. The crowds help

(01:35):
keep you moving, and it's it's a good time. So
if I see it at the expo, awesome, please stop
by the booth and say hello. If I see you
at the race, awesome, make sure you say hi. Hopefully
we can get maybe a team picture together. If anyone
on the Good Life has a team, would like to
maybe meet up for dinner on Friday night as soon
as I'm done with the expo at six o'clock. It

(01:56):
takes me less than ten minutes to tear down. I
can meet you guys for dinner somewhere. But with everything
I've got going on, I don't know. Somebody suggest it
or arrange it or organize it and say, hey, let's
go to here, and I'll put the word out because
I'm just I'm out of bandwidth. There's no more bandwidth. Here,
but I can't wait to see everyone out there. It's
gonna be super fun time. So we will see up

(02:16):
in Lincoln for good luck. So what we're gonna talk
about for this series, Okay, we're gonna call this the
Run the Reset Series. Okay, it is not going to
pertain to everyone. I'm just gonna let you know that
right out of the shoot, right out of the gate.
If you still have a full marathon coming up this
the rest of twenty twenty five, which is now less

(02:37):
than two months, it may not pertain to you. If
you've got a marathon coming up in January or February,
this may not pertain to you. So I get it.
This isn't gonna speak to everyone, BITA, We'll speak to
most people, let's be honest. And the reason we're gonna
start this right now is all the big fall marathons
are done. Okay, at least like the world marathon majors,

(02:57):
like we just discussed on Monday. Okay, Chicago Marathon long
since done. That was done in October. Berlin Marathon long
since done. That was done in September. The New York
City Marathon just finished up less than a week ago.
So a lot of people who went just all out
during the summertime to train for their big fall marathon,
whatever that was World Marathon Major, or any of the

(03:20):
other eleventy billion races that happen in the fall. It's
now time, with your big accomplishment done, to kind of
start the rest to really you're getting out of crazy
marathon training mode, maybe just getting back into kind of
normal training mode. But oftentimes we really can screw up

(03:42):
the rest that comes after accomplishing your big event. I
know that I do not always practice what I preach
in this regard because of the podcast and because of
my crazy running schedule always trying to bring you guys more. Look,
I'm totally blaming you. I don't get this big rest period. Like,
I know this stuff doesn't pertain to me. But it
doesn't mean it's not important, doesn't mean I don't believe

(04:04):
in it. It just means I can't always follow it.
But I'm sure a lot of you can. And so
let's really figure out how we can kind of reset
by using rest over the course of this month. Okay,
and so today it's gonna be reset the body, which
is one of the most crucial things that we use
for running, is it not? So that's what we're gonna

(04:24):
talk about today is reset the body. I'm trying to
move my mouse here without shaking the camera too much.
This new desk is very wobbly. Good grief. So let's
talk about why rest isn't weakness. And I know that
is like the a number one thing. This is why
we put it a number one is because so many
times we think that if we're resting, we're being weak.
If we're resting, we're not doing the things we're supposed

(04:46):
to be doing. And we're resting, we're gonna lose the
ground that we made. There's a whole bunch of faux
pause around rest, and hopefully we can break some of
those down. Most runners feel guilty when they rest. That
is a myth. Your body absolutely needs rest, okay, And
again today we're talking about the body. And so when

(05:09):
you're resting, like your muscles have time to rebuild. You're
not constantly tearing them apart, which is what exercise does.
It tears your muscles apart, and then you rest so
that they can come back together, so the muscles rebuild,
your hormones rebalance. Crazy training cycles mess with your hormones. Yes,

(05:29):
I know that sounds weird, but it is true. And
then your long term endurance improves because your body has
rested and recovered, which is very important thing for your
body to do, so you can you can overtrain. And
when you overtrain, you know some of the signs are
fatigued irritability because your hormones, slow recovery, and nagging injuries.

(05:53):
So a lot of times when we get into marathon
cycle we overtrain. We might actually do more than it suggested,
because I've seen the people who they get their runs
in during the week and then they get their long
runs on the weekend. Well then they add a race
on top of it. Oh I got my twenty miles
that I was supposed to get this weekend, but oh
look the next day, there's a ten k I'm gonna
do that. You're actually overtraining at that point, which makes

(06:15):
this reset in this rest all the more important. Nobody
I'm venturing a guest, no bad day, follows their training
schedule one hundred percent to the letter. I will guarantee it.
I won't fight anyone who says differently. There are times
we undertrain, and there are times we overtrain and overtraining

(06:36):
syndrome is a thing. And I know a lot of you,
and I could call your names right now who do it.
But that's why, Look, you can do it. But that's
why the rest part becomes even more important. All right,
So after training all summer, all right, we're training hard,
we're doing things. How does my body personally respond to it? Well,
it decides the knee is gonna give out. That's the
first thing it responds to. But no, after we get

(06:58):
done with the heat of summer, the overtraining in the summer,
we actually are running good fall races. Again. I told
you at Monster Dash, I finally ran like the it was.
I looked at my spreadsheet. I ran my best five
K of the year at Monster Dash. Now it was
not a PR by any stretch, but it was a
twenty twenty five PR. And then I'm hoping because of
the summer running, even though I've slacked a little bit

(07:20):
because of injury, I'm hoping to have Still It's not
gonna be a PR good life havesie, but hopefully a
good good life havesy. Because we've trained all summer, the
temperature is going to be down, making it easier to
run in. Hopefully the wind is not a factor, Hopefully
the sun doesn't try and bake us out there. But
you know, we train all summer so that we can
run these better fall races, and that's it's just kind

(07:43):
of how our body reacts. And then rest often will
apply kind of off the running beaten path as well,
like when life gets hectic, taking a pause can prevent
the burnout, all right, So even if it's not running,
Even if it's not you can even overtrain in life.
You can train, getting the kids to all their events
and doing all the school stuff and doing the boy

(08:05):
Scouts and doing the girls soccer and doing the extracurriculars.
You can burn yourself out in regular life too, and
at times you must rest your body in order to
keep going. And the fall is normally a good time
for it, at least in my estimation. You know, the
holidays are coming up. Things I wouldn't say they slowed down,
Like if you have kids in school, I know you're

(08:26):
never gonna say that life slows down. But you know,
there's not as many barbecues you're being invited to, there's
not as many outdoor soccer games that you have to attend.
There's not as many family reunions, there's probably not as
many family vacations. There is time where life slows down
just a little bit as the holidays approach, where hopefully
you can find a little rest from all the running

(08:49):
in all the activities that life just throws at. Any
of us who have reached by age only adult status,
I still I don't think I'm an adult none, I
don't act like it. So anyway, the next part we're
going to talk about is active recovery. Excuse me, this
is moving without pressure. So this is a way to

(09:11):
continue to rest and not damage your body, but also
keep a little bit of motion to see you're not
feeling bad, you're not thinking that you're overly resting or
you're piece of junk cause you're resting. There's a thing
called active recovery. So active recovery is low impact movement
that promotes blood flow and mobility. Or we're not saying

(09:34):
weight loss and muscle gain. You know, we're not saying endurance. No,
we're saying blood flow, keep the blood moving, and mobility.
Something to us runners suck at. Our mobility is terrible. Yes,
we can run forward in straight lines. Go out there
and try and do something with any level of balance.
If you've been running long enough, you're like me. I
used to have great balance, man, when I was playing

(09:56):
different sports, I had great balance. Nowadays I have none.
It is amazing how fast that went away. I'm not
a fan, not a fan. Another thing that we can
do or something we can do. We can do easy runs,
conversational pace, and we lie our butts off about that.
But conversational pace. If you are running and you cannot

(10:17):
hold a conversation with someone without the you are running
too hard. Conversational pace. And that was the first lesson
back in twenty twenty four when I got certified as
a running coach. Lesson a number one. The first term
in the book conversational pace. So again, if you're running

(10:41):
harder than conversational pace, you are not active recovery, all right,
don't even lie, you know you're not easy runs walking, walking.
You can keep a conversational pace, keeps the blood flow moving,
all right. Yoga, that's what's gonna help with our flexibility
and mobility. So yoga is another good one. Swimmling. Swimmling's

(11:02):
a new term swimmeling now or swimming if you prefer
again another way you were getting exercise, but no impact.
All right, it's getting the blood flowing. And yeah, it
is more cardio than I might recommend, but everyone's swimming
abilities are different. Your ability is probably better than mine.
I don't find swimming as kind of a low thing

(11:22):
to do, like that's crazy hard work for me. But
if it works for you, it works for you. Cycling.
Cycling is another one, no impact. You can get your
blood flow going. You can also cycle at conversational pace.
No one says you've got a lance Armstrong this thing.
Maybe he's not the right example to use these days,
but you don't have to go all Tour de France
on the thing. You can get out there and just

(11:42):
kind of pedal around with a buddy, talk talk talk,
be safe for a helmet, where reflectors. But it's again
blood flow as opposed to full blown training. Yeah, strength
training with light weights, all right, Grab the little five
pound neoprene, get your little you know, army things going
until you're feeling a little hoo, I feel a burn,

(12:03):
not bad, not bad, and then you're done. All right.
You're not trying to bulk up, you are not trying
to enter mister Olympia or any of that stuff. No,
you just trying to keep things moving, keep it light,
but keep yourself moving. It really does help mentally, so
you know you're not sitting around just well, I'm never
gonna be able to run a game because I've sat
here for a week and ate bad food. No, No,
I mean we all do it. We all do it.

(12:24):
And if that's the way you mentally have to recover,
then that's how you mentally recover. But these are very
easy things for active recovery that you can do. They
help to flush the lactic acid out of you, which
is always good, keeps your metabolism stable at our age,
it's never gonna be good, it can be stable, and
then maintains mental connection to movement crazy important. You don't

(12:44):
ever want to just sit and feel like, oh you
can do is sit because it makes it feel more
daunting when you have to go back out and move,
makes me like I don't even know how to take
that first step out the door anymore. That is a
mental game, and we'll cover mental later weeks. But keep
yourself moving in some man, some way, shape or form.
Again with this active recovery, keep your effort conversational. Like

(13:05):
we said, if you can't talk easily, it is not recovery.
If you can't talk, you're working too hard. Keep it conversational.
I can't stress it enough now. I don't want you
to mess things up and continue the overtraining that you're
trying to break by just going out a little too hard.
All right, And then it's just like in life. Okay,

(13:27):
you can replace all out days at work or home
with lower stress activities and still bring fulfillment like a walk,
like light yard work, et cetera. All right, you still
feel like you're doing something even though you're not out
there trying to kill yourself, and that's good. All right.
There is some nutrition aspects to go along with this,
but of course, during training, fuel is about output. In recovery,

(13:52):
it's about rebuild. So you're rebuilding. You're not fueling to
go out and run twenty miles and yeah, that's heavy
on the carbs. We all know that you're not doing that.
But you're also not starving yourself because you feel like
you're not getting the exercise because that's not good either.
That's not going to help you rebuild. So protein intake,
protein inentrink intake is big, huge, must do, and it

(14:15):
can just be a protein shake. They make eleveny billion
of them and they give you darn near your daily
value of protein all in one shake, maybe two, and
you're getting the protein in. That's real easy on your body,
easy on the system. Something to do of course, hydration,
Hydration is key. Always hydrate. Always be drinking your water
or drinking your electrolytes, all the things. You know, that

(14:38):
is kind of the fluid part in your body that's
going to keep you moving, It's going to keep you mobile.
It's the lubricant that you need to keep this thing going.
You know, maybe my knee wouldn't be as garbage as
it was if I drink more water, who knows. And
then of course micro micro nutrients. You do the research
yourself on what your particular body style, type, shape, size

(15:02):
all that needs by way of micro nutrients. It is
not one size fits all, so make sure you go
check that out. I'm not even going to try and
break it down for you. And so things to avoid
is I'm not training, so I shouldn't eat as much.
That's a trap, that's not true. You need to be
careful of what you eat. You need to eat as
much protein, not as much carbs. You're not looking for

(15:24):
the fuel to burn, you're looking for the fuel to rebuild. Again.
It's just it's the mindset. You just got to change that.
Your body still needs nutrients for healing. So you can't
just go with well, I'm not gonna give it anything.
That's not the right way to do it. That's wrong.
Small resets that make a difference. Add a protein snack
within an hour after runs or workouts. Add your protein

(15:47):
shake after you and your buddy go for the walk. Okay,
then you're not putting the big toll on your body,
but you're still helping it rebuild by putting the protein
on top of it. Easy, easy, simple, simple solution. Include
colorful fruits and veggies for anti inflammatory benefits. Again, we're
resetting the body. We have to get the inflammation out

(16:08):
that months and months of marathon training built up. All right,
a lot of inflammation, lots of it, and it doesn't
go away overnight. Help it out with the colorful fruits
and veggies, and then stay hydrated even when temperatures drop.
We've talked about this before. When it gets cold outside,
it's a lot harder to stay hydrated, you are not
as prone to thinking, Oh I'm thirsty, Oh I want water.

(16:29):
Oh it's hot outside, I'm sweating. I meat all the water.
Even when it's cold, you can get dehydrated. And when
it's cold, you're just your mind tells you. I'm not
as thirsty. Stay up with your hydration. I'm sorry the
dang hiccups trying to get me right now while I'm
doing this. They're ridiculous anyway, So stay up on your hydration.
Even when it's cool outside, and it's getting cool outside.

(16:49):
It's beautiful, but it's cool. Let's see same principle as
stress recovery for like kind of the everyday life. Give
yourself nourishment, not punishment when slowing down. That is important.
The next one is listening to your bad day. Learn
the language of your body. Fatigue, soreness, motivation, and energy

(17:10):
are all data points. Yay, I like that. I like
that a lot. Now, look i am big. I'm huge
on wearables. I've got the garment Phoenix eight here all right,
I love this thing. Lots of data. I've got the
aura ring. Love this thing, lots of data. You get
all the data to learn the language of your body,

(17:33):
because what works for me may not work for you.
What works for you probably isn't gonna work for me.
If you are a one and five pound twenty eight
year old female marathon runner, you're gonna be a little
different than forty five fatty over here. Who's a dude.
We have different needs. Our bodies speak different languages, okay,

(17:53):
And so you had to learn the language of your
body because what mine says to you doesn't matter. It's
what yours says to you. So again you're looking at
you got to figure out what fatigues you, all right,
you're fatigue? What you need for soreness? Can you bounce
back in a day? Is it gonna take two days
to bounce back from that long run when you're in
training cycle, or what's it gonna take when you're not

(18:14):
in training cycle to bounce back from any kind of soreness? Motivation?
What motivates you? We just talked about on Monday. One
of my biggest motivations in the running world. That is
my fake, faux Hall of Fame resume that I build
up in my own mind that I want XYZ racist for.
That's one of my motivators. One of my motivators. As

(18:37):
stupid as it sounds, and it does not ever pop
in my head anymore, but it certainly used to remember.
I ran my very first full full marathon in twenty
eleven as nothing, as nothing but a gigantic middle finger
to my ex wife. That's it. I would love to

(18:57):
say I did it for the love of the sport,
or I wanted to be a better person, or I
wanted to just feel better about myself. I wanted to
get healthy, I wanted to do this, that and the other. No,
it was a giant f you to my ex wife
as we were deep in horrid divorcedness, and so that's
why I ran my first full marathon. You have to
find your motivation. It's part of the language of your body,

(19:20):
and it's important. Motivation is in and then energy our
data points, I'm sorry, and energy. Those are all data points.
As I said, energy, You've got to find what brings
you energy. You know, do you need do you need
the Monster drinks? Do you need the Red Bull cup
coffee in? Do you okay you? Do you need to
get better sleep? Do you need to improve your nutrition?

(19:40):
What is it's going to help your energy so that
you can kind of continue on to get the walks in,
to get the light workouts in, and not fall victim
to the sad the seasonal disorder, seasonal effectiveness disorder that
we're all gonna start dealing with because we're on this
side of daylight savings time now, so it's gonna be

(20:01):
dark at five o'clock. If five o'clock suns down, it's
gonna be real hard to find that motivation too, in
hard to find the energy to get out and do anything,
or even just get up and do anything. So it's
something that you're gonna have to worry about yourself. They
suggest using a recovery journal for two weeks, sleep hours, mood, soreness, motivation,

(20:23):
write it down every day for two weeks, just do
you know, do a sleep dash whatever it was, uh,
mood dash, whatever it was, soreness dash, whatever it is,
motivation dash, whatever it is was and could be. Shot
it down for two weeks. See if it helps, I mean, shoot,
it can't hurt, right, Let's see the one of the

(20:45):
let's see one of the common common runner panics. I
guess is the way to put it is. Losing your
fitness and rest builds stronger performance. For next season. Okay,
you cannot go all out twenty four seven three sixty five.
Your body won't last, all right. You do need periods
of rest fall November, especially even into December, if you

(21:06):
so desire, can be your season of rest, and it
will help you build back better for next running season.
When you start the training for whatever your spring marathon
is or the series of half marathons that you're going
to do. You can't go all out twenty four seven
three sixty five. You have to strategically find rest. Now.
It's kind of a good time to find rest, all right.

(21:28):
But rest is not going to break you. Now if
you rest for three months and eat nothing but fast food. Okay,
you put yourself behind a little bit of an eight
ball there, Yep, you sure are. But if you can rest,
you know, and do kind of the active recovery, I
think you're going to be just fine come spring racing
season or winter when you start gearing up for spring,

(21:48):
let's see. And then, yeah, like my knee situation has
forced me to slow down a lot. Have I done
active recovery perfectly? No? Is a room for a permit, yes,
but there there's gonna be things that slow you down.
There's gonna be things that like this forces me more
into recovery than it was, you know, a decision to.
But I'm trying to tell you you get into the

(22:10):
act of recovery before you're forced. Do it as it's needed,
and after a long summer training cycle, in your fall marathon,
it might be needed right now. So but only you
can answer that. You take a look, you tell me,
you know it's one of those things we talked about
it before we're running Mirror's life. Periods of push and
rest are both vital. There are times in running and
life you have to go hard. There are times in

(22:33):
running in life you gotta dial it back. All right,
Let's see, think beyond your miles, where where else in
your life could you use a reset for the body?
Think about it? Is it just your your marathon training?
Could it be Could it be maybe you need to
back off on the on the drink you drink a
little bit kind of reset that liver. I mean that

(22:54):
that can always be a thing. You need to back
off on a certain kind of food that you've been
enjoying a little too much of lately. That can be
a thing. But there's certainly places where you might want
to kind of reset the body by backing off something
and then sleep, nutrition, movement, even posture behind a desk.
These are all things that can help you with your
active recovery. All Right, you can't pour from an empty cup,

(23:17):
but you can't and you can't run on an empty tank. Sorry,
I wanted to get that out there. So that is
going to really do it for this one. This is rest, rebuild, recover.
This is kind of reset the body after the long
training cycle, and it is important. So I want you
to schedule one intentional rest weekend in November with no

(23:37):
miles and no guilt. So find one. Okay, last weekend,
I didn't have a race. That was kind of my reset.
That was my rest in reset. I didn't go out
for a long run. I feel like I should have,
but I'm not gonna beat myself up over it. But
I took a weekend with no races, and so I
challenge you, you guys, do that one weekend in November

(23:59):
with no miles and then you can't feel bad about it.
Not allowed, not gonna do it? All right, So next Friday,
we're shifting focus from the body to the brain, so
it'll be reset the mind, and we'll talk about motivation, slumps,
post race blues and finding your why again because that
question never goes away again. My why in twenty eleven
is much different than my why in twenty twenty five.

(24:22):
All Right, they are not the same. I no longer
run as a big middle finger to my ex wife.
It might be a little middle finger, it might be
very tiny, but it's not a big one. So we're
gonna go with that, right all right, So just keep
in mind sometime sometimes slowing down is the only way
to move forward. All right. Again, I try and put
on a few lines here to kind of help you out.

(24:42):
So that's gonna do it for this week's episode. By
that one kind of quick of back of the pack
second win. I hope it helps you know, let me
know what you think about it. Again, this is not
one size fits all. I know some people can't get
to this point. Right now. You're still, you're working hard,
you're getting ready. We're the Gulf Coast Marathon in Mississippi

(25:02):
and December, or Gulf Shores Marathon in Alabama in January.
You know, kind of dead center of winter. Races are difficult.
It's hard to to gauge when you have to really
push and when you can pull back a little bit,
like I get that, you know, for me, if I
were to follow the sixteen week program for Tokyo that
begins the week of Thanksgiving. So the rest part of it,

(25:26):
it's gonna be it's gonna be tricky, tricky to balance.
But again, not one size fits all, but we'll get
it figured out and we'll move forward because that we're
runners and that's what we do right right, all right,
that's gonna do it. For this week's episode of the
Back to Back podcast, second Win, I'm your Scott Walker.
It is my pleasure as always. I am on my
way now to Nebraska, to the great City of Lincoln
for good life haves the weekend. I can't wait. I'm

(25:48):
getting out of here. Everyone, have a safe week of training,
safe travels to Lincoln. We will see you next week.
Pasta Kina, past into Qua Minster, Penasia