September 5, 2025 • 26 mins
This week on The Back of the Pack Podcast: Second Wind, we kicked off our Stress Month series with a deep dive into how stress affects the nervous system and the cardiovascular system. Stress isn’t just in your head—it hijacks your body, too.
We break down how constant tension can make runners feel overtrained without the miles, why recovery slows when your nervous system won’t shut down, and how elevated heart rates can sabotage both training and daily life. From poor reaction time on the trails to pounding hearts during morning meetings, we show how stress hits everyone, not just athletes.
If you’ve ever wondered why your easy runs feel hard, or why your heart pounds at the wrong times, this episode unpacks the physical toll stress takes on your head and heart.
We break down how constant tension can make runners feel overtrained without the miles, why recovery slows when your nervous system won’t shut down, and how elevated heart rates can sabotage both training and daily life. From poor reaction time on the trails to pounding hearts during morning meetings, we show how stress hits everyone, not just athletes.
If you’ve ever wondered why your easy runs feel hard, or why your heart pounds at the wrong times, this episode unpacks the physical toll stress takes on your head and heart.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello, everyone, greetings and salitations. Welcome back to another episode
at the Back of the Back podcast A Second went.
I'm your host Knwalker. Thank you so much for tuning
in first. Right off the bat, I think it's finally
my turn. I think I'm coming down with the summer cold.
So if I sound a little weird too, I'm sorry
about that. I'm doing the best I can to project,
but I definitely am starting to feel a little off,
which stinks because we're coming up to a plaza ten
(00:34):
K weekend. Hopefully it does not affect my run too
terribly much, but tis the season, the little summer colds
are going around, and my day job by working an
office building, and when one person gets sick, then you
know it's gonna spread like the freaking black plague, and
we're all going to get something in our little fluorescent
tomb that we all work in. It's super great times.
(00:55):
So sorry if I sound a little weird to you,
that's my bad. Nothing I can do about it. Next,
I want to since it was just last night, I
want to again thank everyone who twice now have come
out to the Chasing Rabbits running Club. All right, I've
talked about it before, so I'm not going to regurgitate
all that. But man, we have had two runnings of
(01:15):
the run Club and two amazing turnouts, so I want
to thank everyone who's come out. We're meeting some new
people who maybe were fans of the Brewery of Discourse,
who were like, what the heck is this? We want
to learn about it, We're going to participate in it.
So that is super great. And then last night, as
we did it, so I added a new wrinkle I
(01:36):
carried with me last night. A flag. It is a
flag of a turtle holding a beer, dressed like a pirate.
It doesn't make a lick of sense, and I don't care.
I love that flag and we are now pirate turtles.
As I was telling everyone last night, but as I'm
bringing up the rear, as I will always do, because
I will always be the last on the course, you
will never be last person out there. I was doing
(01:59):
my walk, I had my flag. This guy stops in
the minivan at the stop signed next to me is like, Hey,
what's this? And so I told him all about it
and he seemed pretty excited about it. It's like, oh cool,
I'll be there next time. I hope that he is,
but we are having super fun with it. Thank you
to everyone who's come out there. The next next one
is gonna be in two weeks. I'm trying to think
(02:20):
that's September eighteenth, and we are doing Octoberfest, so it
is going to be an october Fest themed run Chasing
Rabbit's Run Club night Boy. There's a lot of words
I gotta be thrown out there on this one. So
last night we did football because it was the opening
night of the NFL season. It was the Cowboys versus
the Eagles. Interesting game that that was. And then next
(02:42):
time in two weeks, we are doing Octoberfest, so we're
gonna try and have themes on each one, so it's
gonna be fun. I hope you will consider joining us.
And again, I am not trying to take you away
from your current run club. I am not trying to
take you away from your current brew crew. If you've
got a thing and you like it, then I hope
you stick with it. You have a wonderful time. If
you're looking for a run club home, if you're looking
(03:03):
for a brew crew home, if you're looking for that
group that's not gonna leave you in the dust. And
then you come on out every other Thursday the Discourse
Brewery and you run with us the Chasing You Rabbit
Trunk Club, brought to you ish by the Back of
the Pack podcast, right toda. Okay, So, as we've been
doing on Second Wind episodes, and I think I think
people are liking this, so we're gonna keep it going.
(03:26):
We've been using Second Wind episodes more for doing like
a month long series, all right. So in June we
did Mental Health, in July we did Run the Nation,
and in August we did the March to two hundred episodes.
So just kind of a look back and look forward
and a look at where we currently were. So we
did the March to two hundred in August. Now in September,
(03:48):
because I've I've been rather honest with people open you know,
I'm never gonna stand up here in ps you. In September,
we're gonna talk about stress, all right, because here at
Casa de Walker, here at Back of the Pack Home Central,
we have been going through some very stressful times. And
I'm not going to bore you with the details, but
(04:10):
things have been rough around here lately. There's just a
lot of things going on a lot of adulting that
has to be done, as many of us will have
to do. And it is affected my mental health. It
has affected the mental health of the household, and that
can also affect your running. And it has certainly affected
my running as well. So we are going to use
(04:31):
the month of September to really break down how stress
is going to affect our running, how it does, and
it can affect our running. It affects our day to day.
It affects our bodies more than you might think. Now again,
I will preface this like I preface most things. I
am not a doctor. I am not a doctor, nor
do I play one on TV, nor did I stay
(04:53):
at a holiday and express last night. I am not
a doctor. You can take what I have found with
a grain of salt. If any of it speaks to you,
if you're like, hey, this makes sense to me. I
feel this personally. I can understand this to be true
because I have experienced it, then super great. You are
not going to get full blown medical advice and opinion
(05:13):
from me, And if anything sounds like it, maybe ignore it,
Like Okay, that's not like medical advice. But he's not
a doctor, so I'm not gonna listen to what that
chucklehead said, because I'm definitely gonna try not to do that.
I do not want to give out actual medical advice.
I'm just gonna try and point a few things out
that might pertain to you, and if it speaks to you,
maybe it's something you can act on. If you act
on it, maybe things get better, whether it be personal
(05:35):
life or running life. And then we have accomplished our
goal with what we want to do for this series. Okay,
so stress. Stress is not just in your head. That's
the first thing. It actually rewires your entire body. And
that's what we're gonna be really breaking down. All right,
So we're gonna break down how stress shows up in
different systems. Runners or not. You'll probably hear something and say, oh,
(05:56):
that's me, Like we just said. So today we're gonna
talk about the nervous system, and we're going to talk
about the cardiovascular system. Again, not a doctor, but I'm
also not an idiot. In cardiovascular system, as you know,
after my two open heart surgeries, is something I have
slightly above average knowledge about. Again, not a doctor, but
(06:18):
I know a lot more heart stuff than the average
joe because of how much crap I had to go
through nine years ago when doing two open heart surgeries,
which was super fun. Okay, So the nervous system, all right,
So what stress can do? Stress can really kick off
your fight or fight or flight, all right. So that
is the adrenaline in cortisol. And I know people are
(06:40):
tired of hearing. The current buzzword right now is corsol,
adrenaline cortisol. All right. It is useful in short burst,
but it is damaging if it's never shut off. And
when you are under stress, it is never shut off.
Your adrenaline is always high and your cortisol is always
high when you're under severe stress. So what does that
do for your running? Okay? So you have a feeling
(07:01):
of overtraining without the mileage, all right, and I can
definitely relate to that. Right now, I am not putting
down the miles that I need to be putting down,
especially whether fifty mile a coming up, but my body
feels it. I feel like I have just been training
my ass off and I'm not seeing any results. If anything,
my results are getting worse, not better. But that's because
of all the stress that's been in my life for
(07:23):
the last little bit. Shall we say, and so it
is really a big thing. So runners, you may feel flat, sluggish,
or irritable, like you've hit an overtraining wall. Okay, so
even your weekly mileage it's not going up because you
just really can't, like you physically can't get out there
and do more miles just because the stress is keeping
(07:44):
your body kind of so weighed down. In the daily life.
For someone not running, you may notice brain fog at work.
That is a sign of it. Trouble focusing or snapping
at small frustrations and again non running related. I definitely
the smallest inconvenience right now can just push me into
a dimension of piste off like I have never been
(08:06):
in before. Should it No? Does it? Yes? Okay? So
another thing poor reaction time. All right, So runners, your
slower reflexes. If you're doing a trail run, you might
be finding that you're tripping more. You're not catching the
roots in time, you're tripping over that rock. A lot
of us in Ottawa had that problem. And I'll this
(08:26):
all pertains. So in Ottawa, if you remember doing that
half marathon mile five when we got to the really
crappy part of the trail, how many of us were
so pissed off by that stretch. How many of us
were so pissed off by the rocks that we kept clipping.
I remember, and I said it on that podcast. I
clipped the side of a rock with the right side
(08:47):
of my foot, which is kind of the bad side
of my foot anyway, and it just felt like a
cut directly into the bottom of my foot, and it hurt.
And it made me irrationally angry at that point because
now my foot hurt, I'm dodging rocks. I'm apparently not
dodging rocks well, because I just clipped this big one
that hurt my foot. And again, that is just the
(09:09):
outside stress that has taken this little thing, like a
rock on a path that we knew was not gonna
be a paved road, and completely pissed me off, and
it ticked off a lot of people. So I know
that a lot of people were affected by this very
same thing. Take a look, you're all a little stressed out,
got a little stress going on in your life right now.
I bet you might have more than you think. And again,
(09:29):
we're all grown adults, we all have it. I get it.
I get it. So yeah, you got slow reflexes on
the trail, you're tripping on route, or reacting a second
too late in a crowded race. Pack right, So like
if you bump into someone at the race, it either
takes you off, you're like mine, I shouldn't have bumped
into them. That can all be kind of part and
parcel of this. In daily life, maybe you slam your
brakes just a little too late in traffic, or you
(09:50):
drop a dish that you normally would have caught. Okay,
just a little example. There heightened risk injury. So runners
chronically tight ca quads or hamstrings, they pull easier when
you are under stress, and that makes injuries more likely
because again, if you were constantly in that stressed out,
(10:11):
tense fer your muscles are tighter. Everything is tighter. You're
grinding your teeth, you're clinching your jaw, you're just constantly
in this state of gurror. Your muscles are in that state,
and your muscles will tear easier, they'll pull easier. You
will fight injury more when you're stressed out. And then
(10:33):
of course when you're injured, you're stressed out about your injury,
especially in this time of year where you're getting ready
for your fall marathon. You're like, I cannot afford injury.
I cannot afford to take two weeks off to let
this hamstring heal. I can't afford to do any of
these things because of all the things that I want
to do. And it's stressing you out even more. Do
you see these are like they're all a circle. It's
(10:54):
crazy how this works out. We get super stressed about life,
and then we get stressed about running, and then we
get hurt, and then it creases our stress about life
and running. Just around and around we go. It's I'm
getting stressed up just talking about it in your daily life.
The heightened injury risk. You know, constantly tense shoulders and
neck lead to headaches or muscle strains just from sitting
(11:17):
at a desk, And I get that when you're just
you're so you go t REXL on this situation because
you're so stressed out, and that can lead to injury
even when you're not running. And then the last one
for the nervous system slower recovery. So for the runners,
even after easy runs, your legs feel heavy and sore
(11:37):
for days because your body never switches into repair mode.
Because again you're keeping that fight or flight, you're keeping
that adrenaline and cortisol up, and so your body's never
just relaxing, like, hey man, we just got to relax.
It can't do it when you're under huge amounts of stress.
And then in your daily life you notice cuts, heal slower,
or you wake up feeling unrested, even after full night's sleep.
(12:01):
And what one of us doesn't wake up a lot
of time is feeling unresting. This guy right here, me yep,
would be me. So that is just a quick look
into the nervous system. What of that spoke to you?
Any of it? Some of it, all of it, most
of it? Yeah, me too. Jeez. Stress stinks. You know
that adulting stinks sometimes. All right, let's go down to
(12:22):
the cardiovascular system. That's gonna be hot, all right. So
stress hormones increase blood pressure. And look, we all know
high blood pressure equals bad. We know this doesn't take
a doctor to tell you that. Yeah, So it increases
your blood pressure and your heart rate. Your body is
ready to fight or flee even when you're just answering emails.
(12:42):
All right, So that's true because again, when the adrening
this for me talking. When my adrenaline really gets pumping,
I can feel it, like I can feel it in
my chest and in my heart and things are just beaten,
and yeah, you can really kind of feel it. And
so yeah, that's where I feel like the heart is
kind of where the fight or flight really kicks off.
You can just kind of feel it from inside. I
don't know if that makes any sense, but that's kind
(13:02):
of how I am. You might be different, all right,
So runners elevated resting heart rate. As runners, we love
and brag and boast that our resting heart rate can
get so low. All right. My watch will alarm when
I go under forty and on a quiet morning, sitting
at my desk doing little to nothing, I will get
the alert that my resting heart rate drop to a
(13:25):
thirty eight or thirty nine. And you know, as a runner,
we're like, ha ha, we're so hard healthy. So when
you're under stress and your heart rate keeps going up
and your resting heart rate goes up and you're not
getting to that low point that you like to boast
and brag about, it can be the stress that is
causing your heart rate to stay up and you don't
want your heart rate to stay up. You want it
in the nice sweet spot you get with your doctor.
(13:46):
Find out what your sweet spot is. Do you want
your nice little sweet spot for me? For a lot
of runners, it's in the forties. When you're just resting,
resting heart rate, it's somewhere in the forties, and you're
doing fine and you're feeling good and life is grand.
But when you're getting high, then you might want to
look at your stress levels and if you get too low,
you've gone deady bien, and you don't want to do that.
Don't do that, Okay, cool, cool, good, glad, we agree.
(14:08):
So yeah, So the morning heart rate check that you
track with your watch creeps up five to ten beats,
even though your training hasn't changed. That can be one
sign that stress is messing with your cardiovascular system. For
the daily life, you feel your heart pounding when stuck
in traffic or before a stressful meeting. How many of
us get that? I get that a lot, all right,
(14:29):
Where I'm about to go into a situation that I
know might be unpleasant, or it might be stressful, or
it might be just you know, kind of high anxiety,
and I just feel it. Ba boom, ba boom, your
heart just kind of beating out of your chest, and
it's like, Hugh, is this it? Is this how I go? No, Nope,
just stress, and sometimes it definitely feels like it. Next.
You can have erratic heart rate during workouts, so an
easy run for runners suddenly spikes into like tempo zone
(14:53):
on your watch, leaving you gasping, and then you're confused, like,
wait a minute, I'm not running hard enough to feel
this bad. Okay, Well, or heartbreak can be irregular when
you're dealing with all this stress. And I think this
has to do a lot with my current running situation
and why my times are going up not down, and
why a run that I might have done this time
a year ago where things weren't nearly as stressful this
(15:15):
year is kicking my butt. That's kind of where I'm
at right now. I did those three races last weekend.
I had a not great for me half marathon time
and not great for me five k and a not
great for me five k and every time I'm thinking, Okay,
this will be the race that I do it, and
then in the starting shoot you're building it up, You're like, okay,
I have to have a good race. I have to
have this time, I have to do this, I have
(15:36):
to do that, And you're stressing yourself out. And we
do that as runners. So many times we'll get in
the starting craw and we'll start stressing ourselves out, setting
expectations of ourself that maybe we can or maybe we
can't reach. And then we get stressed in the starting
shoot before the race even begins, because we're already getting
stressed out and upset about what we did or didn't do.
(15:56):
You haven't done it yet, and you're getting worried about
it and will directly affect your run when you get
out on that course, when you cross that start line
and you're already worked up and you're already spiking adrenaline,
then yeah, you might not run a great race, but
you're already freaked out about it. There are getting things
to keep in mind. So and then for normal life,
(16:16):
you might get the irregular and erratic i'm sorry, eratic heartbeat.
While your your heart might just race when you're climbing
case of stairs or when you're walking into a tough conversation.
All right, So that's where it can get erratic, all right.
Another one for the cardiovascular system. And this, this is
gonna speak to every runner out there. Okay, reduced endurance
(16:39):
on long runs. You fatigue faster than usual because stress
shunts blood away from your muscles. Right again, this is
your body getting rewired. Stress shunts blood away from your muscles.
Here's the example that I know of on this, because
I've seen I've seen y'all. I've seen all y'all out
there who are getting ready for full marathon's, getting read
(17:00):
for all races, and tell me this hasn't appen you
people are getting ready for their long run, a long run,
all right. You know, in a normal sixteen fourteen week
marathon training plan, you have your one really long run
and then you have supporting long runs around it that
just aren't quite the twenty mile or whatever. And so
I see everyone they're getting stressed about their long run.
(17:21):
They're getting really worked up about it. They know their
long run is coming, or they know a long run
is coming, and so they're ready. And I've seen this,
and they're they're jazzed up, and they're getting stressed about it,
and they're worried about it. And then they go out
on it and because they have already started completely stressed out,
completely spiked out. Then they fatigue faster and they bunk.
(17:42):
How many people have you seen bonk on their sixteen
to twenty miler? I was gonna go out for sixteen
night to stop at eleven because I just I was.
I couldn't do it. My energy was gone. I bonked whatever.
That's why, before you even began, you started talking yourself
out of that run. You started putting a stress on there.
You started to rewire your body, and you started to
(18:04):
just get oh my god, I can't do it. And
you went out there and you couldn't do it. You
wired your body for that failure. And again, it sucks
when I say that that sounds so accusatory. I'm not
blaming you. I'm not saying that you completely screwed up.
You just have to know that it's there. When we
get stressed about what is upcoming, we will normally sabotage
(18:25):
ourselves because we've rewired our body and it can't do
what we wanted to do because we were stressed out.
The heart couldn't take all the stress, and you fatigue
faster and you bonk, and you're done, and long run
late asunder, it's finished. Elfine, So keep that in mind.
Just stuff to keep in mind in your daily daily life.
(18:45):
You're wiped out after normal chores mowing the lawn or
grocery shopping feels harder than it should. You know, that's
no line this year especially, and look, I'm getting older,
I get it, but this year, especially because of the
way things have gone around here, there is a a
I mowed the lawn and it was a hot day,
and I have backyard, front yard, side yard. I did
(19:06):
all that and I had never been that tired in
my life. Even I didn't feel that tired after the
Baton Memorial death March in twenty eighteen as I did
on that hot day doing yard work, just because there
was so much other stuff going on and like I
had to do yardwork to kind of escape situations. And
I just remember, I have never felt that tired after
(19:28):
mowing a lawn before in my life. And yeah, I
have a push mower, but it even has a little
help self propel kind that will help you get up
the hill. Thing. Even with that, it was now granted
all right sidebark that damn mow was stressing me out
because missus back of the Back podcast wanted to save
the environment at some point in time and made me
get a damn electric mower that runs on batteries instead
(19:49):
of gasoline. And so those batteries, as they've gotten older,
don't hold charges as long, and so I'm constantly flipping
out batteries and worrying about getting it done before all
the batteries run out, and I gotta wait for him
to recharge. And you see where stress might come in
while you're doing some of this stuff, when you're racing
the batteries and it's a hot day, and again I
(20:10):
felt like I was gonna die afterwards. All stress, all stress. Man,
you see how this is all connected. I told you
one big circle, one big circle. All right, let's see
what are we here? Reduced in Jersey? I did that,
all right? Performance setbacks runners. You train consistently, but stress
cancels the games. You feel flat or underprepared on race day.
(20:33):
Who among us has not shown up on race day
feeling flat? Me? I have you have, I guarantee you have.
I know you have. You've shown up on race day
where you just felt like man, I just I don't
have it today. The legs aren't feeling it today, Like
I'm here How many times you? Hey, how you doing today?
I'm here? Okay, Well, that I'm here pretty much means
I'm flat. It means I know I'm not gonna have
(20:55):
a good race. I'm already shown up to the start
line pretty defeated. What have we said about that? You
can't show to the start line defeated. If you do,
you're gonna have a bad race, or you're gonna have
a flat race. And we don't want the flat. We
don't want the bad. We don't want any of those things.
But that's what you're gonna get when the stress is
rewiring your body, so you just show up flat. So
it's a performance setback. Can you recover from these things?
(21:16):
Yes you can, but that is definitely set back in
your daily life at work, you can't perform at your best.
Your presentations lack energy, or you struggle to find words
you normally know. Have you noticed lately how much I
stutter and stammer through these episodes? Yeah? See, I knew
when I got to that one and be like, oh crap,
I gotta call myself out on that. Yeah, yeah, I
know I have. I know there are times I'm fumbling
(21:38):
over words that I normally wouldn't. I tend to think
of myself as a mildly decent speaker. But there are times,
even in this episode, where I've fumbled a word, combined
two words together, whatever the case might be. That's because life, man,
life and stress has really sunk its claws into me lately,
and it is affecting my running, and it is affecting
(21:59):
the personal aspects of my life and the running aspects
of my life. And that's kind of how this works.
So you know, we've done the nervous system, so reaction, recovery,
injury risk, and then the cardiovascular system, heart rate, endurance
and long term health. All right, those are the things
that stress can really jack with on these two systems.
And so if your run is feeling harder, your resting
(22:21):
heart rate is climbing, it is not just the training,
all right, It is life. It is stress, and it
is hijacking your performance. So don't add more stress wondering
what the hell is wrong with you? Why am I
training and things aren't getting better? Why am I training
and bonking? Why am I training and nothing's going the
(22:42):
way I want? Take a look at the stress level
in your life. If you can sit there and say
I have no stress and I don't know what's going on.
Then I have no answer for you. I don't know
what's going on any there. I don't see a doctor,
but I am willing to bet ninety nine times out
of one hundred, we can point to, well, I am
in that feud with the neighbor. Or I know my
(23:02):
company is going to sell and I don't know if
they're going to keep me. Or I have all this
school stuff because I went back to school as an adult,
and man, homework is just kicking my butt. My teenage
kid is really off the rails right now. My young
kid is struggling in school. I can't pay the bills
(23:24):
right now, so I can't get to all the races
that I want to do. Whatever it looks like in
the adulting world, we all have to deal with it,
and that can directly affect our performance when we're running.
And again, this is a running podcast, so I can
speak to the running part. I can't tell you everything
else about your job and your kids in your school
(23:44):
and your whatever. We're all on our own on that one.
Believe you me, been there, done that, As I now
have an eighteen sixteen year old daughter and a wonderful
hat collection, because trust me, there ain't much going on
underneath here. So that's where we are. On that I
wish I had like better news. All I can say is,
look at the stress in your life, really look at it.
(24:05):
Look at where you can improve it, look at where
you can deal with it better. Look at where you
can hopefully eliminate it so that you don't have to
worry about it. But don't let your youth, your fall
marathon training, don't let that be the source of your stress.
If you've got issues, if you've got problems, and if
any of the spoke to you, okay, now you can
kind of put a finger on it. Now maybe you
(24:26):
can do something about it. And it's not you, it's
not your physical ability, it's not I'm just a shit
runner and I should never have signed up for this
race and I'm not going to do it now. No, no, no, no.
Look at the other things extimuating circumstances, my friends, take
a look at that, and see what you can change
or rearrange or just do a little bit differently, and
(24:46):
see if you're running doesn't get back on track after
you do, after you make those positive changes, to eliminate
the stress that is rewiring your system right right right,
that's it. Next week we're going to go into week
two on this one, so we are going to talk
about lungs and stomach. Okay, so we're gonna be talking
real mid section. That's what we're gonna talk about next week.
(25:08):
Lungs and stomach and how that relates to our running
and daily stress. So I hope you enjoyed the series.
Please feedback is always welcome. We'd love to know what
you think. Do you enjoy the series? Do you not?
Is this a stupid topic? Is it not? Let me know.
I'm als up for the feedback. We will be seeing
everyone Sunday at the Placid ten k only race that
the podcast has this weekend. Thankfully, I could use a
(25:29):
little bit of rest and got to catch up on
some stuff around the house, hopefully stress free, here's hoping,
and so we'll see you Sunday. Right all right, that's
gonna do it for another episode of the Back of
the Back podcast, second one. I'm your Kyle Walker. Thank
you so much for tuning in. Everyone, have a safe
week of training. We'll see you Sunday at the Pleasant
ten k and If not, we'll see you next week.
(26:01):
Be
Hello, everyone, greetings and salitations. Welcome back to another episode
at the Back of the Back podcast A Second went.
I'm your host Knwalker. Thank you so much for tuning
in first. Right off the bat, I think it's finally
my turn. I think I'm coming down with the summer cold.
So if I sound a little weird too, I'm sorry
about that. I'm doing the best I can to project,
but I definitely am starting to feel a little off,
which stinks because we're coming up to a plaza ten
(00:34):
K weekend. Hopefully it does not affect my run too
terribly much, but tis the season, the little summer colds
are going around, and my day job by working an
office building, and when one person gets sick, then you
know it's gonna spread like the freaking black plague, and
we're all going to get something in our little fluorescent
tomb that we all work in. It's super great times.
(00:55):
So sorry if I sound a little weird to you,
that's my bad. Nothing I can do about it. Next,
I want to since it was just last night, I
want to again thank everyone who twice now have come
out to the Chasing Rabbits running Club. All right, I've
talked about it before, so I'm not going to regurgitate
all that. But man, we have had two runnings of
(01:15):
the run Club and two amazing turnouts, so I want
to thank everyone who's come out. We're meeting some new
people who maybe were fans of the Brewery of Discourse,
who were like, what the heck is this? We want
to learn about it, We're going to participate in it.
So that is super great. And then last night, as
we did it, so I added a new wrinkle I
(01:36):
carried with me last night. A flag. It is a
flag of a turtle holding a beer, dressed like a pirate.
It doesn't make a lick of sense, and I don't care.
I love that flag and we are now pirate turtles.
As I was telling everyone last night, but as I'm
bringing up the rear, as I will always do, because
I will always be the last on the course, you
will never be last person out there. I was doing
(01:59):
my walk, I had my flag. This guy stops in
the minivan at the stop signed next to me is like, Hey,
what's this? And so I told him all about it
and he seemed pretty excited about it. It's like, oh cool,
I'll be there next time. I hope that he is,
but we are having super fun with it. Thank you
to everyone who's come out there. The next next one
is gonna be in two weeks. I'm trying to think
(02:20):
that's September eighteenth, and we are doing Octoberfest, so it
is going to be an october Fest themed run Chasing
Rabbit's Run Club night Boy. There's a lot of words
I gotta be thrown out there on this one. So
last night we did football because it was the opening
night of the NFL season. It was the Cowboys versus
the Eagles. Interesting game that that was. And then next
(02:42):
time in two weeks, we are doing Octoberfest, so we're
gonna try and have themes on each one, so it's
gonna be fun. I hope you will consider joining us.
And again, I am not trying to take you away
from your current run club. I am not trying to
take you away from your current brew crew. If you've
got a thing and you like it, then I hope
you stick with it. You have a wonderful time. If
you're looking for a run club home, if you're looking
(03:03):
for a brew crew home, if you're looking for that
group that's not gonna leave you in the dust. And
then you come on out every other Thursday the Discourse
Brewery and you run with us the Chasing You Rabbit
Trunk Club, brought to you ish by the Back of
the Pack podcast, right toda. Okay, So, as we've been
doing on Second Wind episodes, and I think I think
people are liking this, so we're gonna keep it going.
(03:26):
We've been using Second Wind episodes more for doing like
a month long series, all right. So in June we
did Mental Health, in July we did Run the Nation,
and in August we did the March to two hundred episodes.
So just kind of a look back and look forward
and a look at where we currently were. So we
did the March to two hundred in August. Now in September,
(03:48):
because I've I've been rather honest with people open you know,
I'm never gonna stand up here in ps you. In September,
we're gonna talk about stress, all right, because here at
Casa de Walker, here at Back of the Pack Home Central,
we have been going through some very stressful times. And
I'm not going to bore you with the details, but
(04:10):
things have been rough around here lately. There's just a
lot of things going on a lot of adulting that
has to be done, as many of us will have
to do. And it is affected my mental health. It
has affected the mental health of the household, and that
can also affect your running. And it has certainly affected
my running as well. So we are going to use
(04:31):
the month of September to really break down how stress
is going to affect our running, how it does, and
it can affect our running. It affects our day to day.
It affects our bodies more than you might think. Now again,
I will preface this like I preface most things. I
am not a doctor. I am not a doctor, nor
do I play one on TV, nor did I stay
(04:53):
at a holiday and express last night. I am not
a doctor. You can take what I have found with
a grain of salt. If any of it speaks to you,
if you're like, hey, this makes sense to me. I
feel this personally. I can understand this to be true
because I have experienced it, then super great. You are
not going to get full blown medical advice and opinion
(05:13):
from me, And if anything sounds like it, maybe ignore it,
Like Okay, that's not like medical advice. But he's not
a doctor, so I'm not gonna listen to what that
chucklehead said, because I'm definitely gonna try not to do that.
I do not want to give out actual medical advice.
I'm just gonna try and point a few things out
that might pertain to you, and if it speaks to you,
maybe it's something you can act on. If you act
on it, maybe things get better, whether it be personal
(05:35):
life or running life. And then we have accomplished our
goal with what we want to do for this series. Okay,
so stress. Stress is not just in your head. That's
the first thing. It actually rewires your entire body. And
that's what we're gonna be really breaking down. All right,
So we're gonna break down how stress shows up in
different systems. Runners or not. You'll probably hear something and say, oh,
(05:56):
that's me, Like we just said. So today we're gonna
talk about the nervous system, and we're going to talk
about the cardiovascular system. Again, not a doctor, but I'm
also not an idiot. In cardiovascular system, as you know,
after my two open heart surgeries, is something I have
slightly above average knowledge about. Again, not a doctor, but
(06:18):
I know a lot more heart stuff than the average
joe because of how much crap I had to go
through nine years ago when doing two open heart surgeries,
which was super fun. Okay, So the nervous system, all right,
So what stress can do? Stress can really kick off
your fight or fight or flight, all right. So that
is the adrenaline in cortisol. And I know people are
(06:40):
tired of hearing. The current buzzword right now is corsol,
adrenaline cortisol. All right. It is useful in short burst,
but it is damaging if it's never shut off. And
when you are under stress, it is never shut off.
Your adrenaline is always high and your cortisol is always
high when you're under severe stress. So what does that
do for your running? Okay? So you have a feeling
(07:01):
of overtraining without the mileage, all right, and I can
definitely relate to that. Right now, I am not putting
down the miles that I need to be putting down,
especially whether fifty mile a coming up, but my body
feels it. I feel like I have just been training
my ass off and I'm not seeing any results. If anything,
my results are getting worse, not better. But that's because
of all the stress that's been in my life for
(07:23):
the last little bit. Shall we say, and so it
is really a big thing. So runners, you may feel flat, sluggish,
or irritable, like you've hit an overtraining wall. Okay, so
even your weekly mileage it's not going up because you
just really can't, like you physically can't get out there
and do more miles just because the stress is keeping
(07:44):
your body kind of so weighed down. In the daily life.
For someone not running, you may notice brain fog at work.
That is a sign of it. Trouble focusing or snapping
at small frustrations and again non running related. I definitely
the smallest inconvenience right now can just push me into
a dimension of piste off like I have never been
(08:06):
in before. Should it No? Does it? Yes? Okay? So
another thing poor reaction time. All right, So runners, your
slower reflexes. If you're doing a trail run, you might
be finding that you're tripping more. You're not catching the
roots in time, you're tripping over that rock. A lot
of us in Ottawa had that problem. And I'll this
(08:26):
all pertains. So in Ottawa, if you remember doing that
half marathon mile five when we got to the really
crappy part of the trail, how many of us were
so pissed off by that stretch. How many of us
were so pissed off by the rocks that we kept clipping.
I remember, and I said it on that podcast. I
clipped the side of a rock with the right side
(08:47):
of my foot, which is kind of the bad side
of my foot anyway, and it just felt like a
cut directly into the bottom of my foot, and it hurt.
And it made me irrationally angry at that point because
now my foot hurt, I'm dodging rocks. I'm apparently not
dodging rocks well, because I just clipped this big one
that hurt my foot. And again, that is just the
(09:09):
outside stress that has taken this little thing, like a
rock on a path that we knew was not gonna
be a paved road, and completely pissed me off, and
it ticked off a lot of people. So I know
that a lot of people were affected by this very
same thing. Take a look, you're all a little stressed out,
got a little stress going on in your life right now.
I bet you might have more than you think. And again,
(09:29):
we're all grown adults, we all have it. I get it.
I get it. So yeah, you got slow reflexes on
the trail, you're tripping on route, or reacting a second
too late in a crowded race. Pack right, So like
if you bump into someone at the race, it either
takes you off, you're like mine, I shouldn't have bumped
into them. That can all be kind of part and
parcel of this. In daily life, maybe you slam your
brakes just a little too late in traffic, or you
(09:50):
drop a dish that you normally would have caught. Okay,
just a little example. There heightened risk injury. So runners
chronically tight ca quads or hamstrings, they pull easier when
you are under stress, and that makes injuries more likely
because again, if you were constantly in that stressed out,
(10:11):
tense fer your muscles are tighter. Everything is tighter. You're
grinding your teeth, you're clinching your jaw, you're just constantly
in this state of gurror. Your muscles are in that state,
and your muscles will tear easier, they'll pull easier. You
will fight injury more when you're stressed out. And then
(10:33):
of course when you're injured, you're stressed out about your injury,
especially in this time of year where you're getting ready
for your fall marathon. You're like, I cannot afford injury.
I cannot afford to take two weeks off to let
this hamstring heal. I can't afford to do any of
these things because of all the things that I want
to do. And it's stressing you out even more. Do
you see these are like they're all a circle. It's
(10:54):
crazy how this works out. We get super stressed about life,
and then we get stressed about running, and then we
get hurt, and then it creases our stress about life
and running. Just around and around we go. It's I'm
getting stressed up just talking about it in your daily life.
The heightened injury risk. You know, constantly tense shoulders and
neck lead to headaches or muscle strains just from sitting
(11:17):
at a desk, And I get that when you're just
you're so you go t REXL on this situation because
you're so stressed out, and that can lead to injury
even when you're not running. And then the last one
for the nervous system slower recovery. So for the runners,
even after easy runs, your legs feel heavy and sore
(11:37):
for days because your body never switches into repair mode.
Because again you're keeping that fight or flight, you're keeping
that adrenaline and cortisol up, and so your body's never
just relaxing, like, hey man, we just got to relax.
It can't do it when you're under huge amounts of stress.
And then in your daily life you notice cuts, heal slower,
or you wake up feeling unrested, even after full night's sleep.
(12:01):
And what one of us doesn't wake up a lot
of time is feeling unresting. This guy right here, me yep,
would be me. So that is just a quick look
into the nervous system. What of that spoke to you?
Any of it? Some of it, all of it, most
of it? Yeah, me too. Jeez. Stress stinks. You know
that adulting stinks sometimes. All right, let's go down to
(12:22):
the cardiovascular system. That's gonna be hot, all right. So
stress hormones increase blood pressure. And look, we all know
high blood pressure equals bad. We know this doesn't take
a doctor to tell you that. Yeah, So it increases
your blood pressure and your heart rate. Your body is
ready to fight or flee even when you're just answering emails.
(12:42):
All right, So that's true because again, when the adrening
this for me talking. When my adrenaline really gets pumping,
I can feel it, like I can feel it in
my chest and in my heart and things are just beaten,
and yeah, you can really kind of feel it. And
so yeah, that's where I feel like the heart is
kind of where the fight or flight really kicks off.
You can just kind of feel it from inside. I
don't know if that makes any sense, but that's kind
(13:02):
of how I am. You might be different, all right,
So runners elevated resting heart rate. As runners, we love
and brag and boast that our resting heart rate can
get so low. All right. My watch will alarm when
I go under forty and on a quiet morning, sitting
at my desk doing little to nothing, I will get
the alert that my resting heart rate drop to a
(13:25):
thirty eight or thirty nine. And you know, as a runner,
we're like, ha ha, we're so hard healthy. So when
you're under stress and your heart rate keeps going up
and your resting heart rate goes up and you're not
getting to that low point that you like to boast
and brag about, it can be the stress that is
causing your heart rate to stay up and you don't
want your heart rate to stay up. You want it
in the nice sweet spot you get with your doctor.
(13:46):
Find out what your sweet spot is. Do you want
your nice little sweet spot for me? For a lot
of runners, it's in the forties. When you're just resting,
resting heart rate, it's somewhere in the forties, and you're
doing fine and you're feeling good and life is grand.
But when you're getting high, then you might want to
look at your stress levels and if you get too low,
you've gone deady bien, and you don't want to do that.
Don't do that, Okay, cool, cool, good, glad, we agree.
(14:08):
So yeah, So the morning heart rate check that you
track with your watch creeps up five to ten beats,
even though your training hasn't changed. That can be one
sign that stress is messing with your cardiovascular system. For
the daily life, you feel your heart pounding when stuck
in traffic or before a stressful meeting. How many of
us get that? I get that a lot, all right,
(14:29):
Where I'm about to go into a situation that I
know might be unpleasant, or it might be stressful, or
it might be just you know, kind of high anxiety,
and I just feel it. Ba boom, ba boom, your
heart just kind of beating out of your chest, and
it's like, Hugh, is this it? Is this how I go? No, Nope,
just stress, and sometimes it definitely feels like it. Next.
You can have erratic heart rate during workouts, so an
easy run for runners suddenly spikes into like tempo zone
(14:53):
on your watch, leaving you gasping, and then you're confused, like,
wait a minute, I'm not running hard enough to feel
this bad. Okay, Well, or heartbreak can be irregular when
you're dealing with all this stress. And I think this
has to do a lot with my current running situation
and why my times are going up not down, and
why a run that I might have done this time
a year ago where things weren't nearly as stressful this
(15:15):
year is kicking my butt. That's kind of where I'm
at right now. I did those three races last weekend.
I had a not great for me half marathon time
and not great for me five k and a not
great for me five k and every time I'm thinking, Okay,
this will be the race that I do it, and
then in the starting shoot you're building it up, You're like, okay,
I have to have a good race. I have to
have this time, I have to do this, I have
(15:36):
to do that, And you're stressing yourself out. And we
do that as runners. So many times we'll get in
the starting craw and we'll start stressing ourselves out, setting
expectations of ourself that maybe we can or maybe we
can't reach. And then we get stressed in the starting
shoot before the race even begins, because we're already getting
stressed out and upset about what we did or didn't do.
(15:56):
You haven't done it yet, and you're getting worried about
it and will directly affect your run when you get
out on that course, when you cross that start line
and you're already worked up and you're already spiking adrenaline,
then yeah, you might not run a great race, but
you're already freaked out about it. There are getting things
to keep in mind. So and then for normal life,
(16:16):
you might get the irregular and erratic i'm sorry, eratic heartbeat.
While your your heart might just race when you're climbing
case of stairs or when you're walking into a tough conversation.
All right, So that's where it can get erratic, all right.
Another one for the cardiovascular system. And this, this is
gonna speak to every runner out there. Okay, reduced endurance
(16:39):
on long runs. You fatigue faster than usual because stress
shunts blood away from your muscles. Right again, this is
your body getting rewired. Stress shunts blood away from your muscles.
Here's the example that I know of on this, because
I've seen I've seen y'all. I've seen all y'all out
there who are getting ready for full marathon's, getting read
(17:00):
for all races, and tell me this hasn't appen you
people are getting ready for their long run, a long run,
all right. You know, in a normal sixteen fourteen week
marathon training plan, you have your one really long run
and then you have supporting long runs around it that
just aren't quite the twenty mile or whatever. And so
I see everyone they're getting stressed about their long run.
(17:21):
They're getting really worked up about it. They know their
long run is coming, or they know a long run
is coming, and so they're ready. And I've seen this,
and they're they're jazzed up, and they're getting stressed about it,
and they're worried about it. And then they go out
on it and because they have already started completely stressed out,
completely spiked out. Then they fatigue faster and they bunk.
(17:42):
How many people have you seen bonk on their sixteen
to twenty miler? I was gonna go out for sixteen
night to stop at eleven because I just I was.
I couldn't do it. My energy was gone. I bonked whatever.
That's why, before you even began, you started talking yourself
out of that run. You started putting a stress on there.
You started to rewire your body, and you started to
(18:04):
just get oh my god, I can't do it. And
you went out there and you couldn't do it. You
wired your body for that failure. And again, it sucks
when I say that that sounds so accusatory. I'm not
blaming you. I'm not saying that you completely screwed up.
You just have to know that it's there. When we
get stressed about what is upcoming, we will normally sabotage
(18:25):
ourselves because we've rewired our body and it can't do
what we wanted to do because we were stressed out.
The heart couldn't take all the stress, and you fatigue
faster and you bonk, and you're done, and long run
late asunder, it's finished. Elfine, So keep that in mind.
Just stuff to keep in mind in your daily daily life.
(18:45):
You're wiped out after normal chores mowing the lawn or
grocery shopping feels harder than it should. You know, that's
no line this year especially, and look, I'm getting older,
I get it, but this year, especially because of the
way things have gone around here, there is a a
I mowed the lawn and it was a hot day,
and I have backyard, front yard, side yard. I did
(19:06):
all that and I had never been that tired in
my life. Even I didn't feel that tired after the
Baton Memorial death March in twenty eighteen as I did
on that hot day doing yard work, just because there
was so much other stuff going on and like I
had to do yardwork to kind of escape situations. And
I just remember, I have never felt that tired after
(19:28):
mowing a lawn before in my life. And yeah, I
have a push mower, but it even has a little
help self propel kind that will help you get up
the hill. Thing. Even with that, it was now granted
all right sidebark that damn mow was stressing me out
because missus back of the Back podcast wanted to save
the environment at some point in time and made me
get a damn electric mower that runs on batteries instead
(19:49):
of gasoline. And so those batteries, as they've gotten older,
don't hold charges as long, and so I'm constantly flipping
out batteries and worrying about getting it done before all
the batteries run out, and I gotta wait for him
to recharge. And you see where stress might come in
while you're doing some of this stuff, when you're racing
the batteries and it's a hot day, and again I
(20:10):
felt like I was gonna die afterwards. All stress, all stress. Man,
you see how this is all connected. I told you
one big circle, one big circle. All right, let's see
what are we here? Reduced in Jersey? I did that,
all right? Performance setbacks runners. You train consistently, but stress
cancels the games. You feel flat or underprepared on race day.
(20:33):
Who among us has not shown up on race day
feeling flat? Me? I have you have, I guarantee you have.
I know you have. You've shown up on race day
where you just felt like man, I just I don't
have it today. The legs aren't feeling it today, Like
I'm here How many times you? Hey, how you doing today?
I'm here? Okay, Well, that I'm here pretty much means
I'm flat. It means I know I'm not gonna have
(20:55):
a good race. I'm already shown up to the start
line pretty defeated. What have we said about that? You
can't show to the start line defeated. If you do,
you're gonna have a bad race, or you're gonna have
a flat race. And we don't want the flat. We
don't want the bad. We don't want any of those things.
But that's what you're gonna get when the stress is
rewiring your body, so you just show up flat. So
it's a performance setback. Can you recover from these things?
(21:16):
Yes you can, but that is definitely set back in
your daily life at work, you can't perform at your best.
Your presentations lack energy, or you struggle to find words
you normally know. Have you noticed lately how much I
stutter and stammer through these episodes? Yeah? See, I knew
when I got to that one and be like, oh crap,
I gotta call myself out on that. Yeah, yeah, I
know I have. I know there are times I'm fumbling
(21:38):
over words that I normally wouldn't. I tend to think
of myself as a mildly decent speaker. But there are times,
even in this episode, where I've fumbled a word, combined
two words together, whatever the case might be. That's because life, man,
life and stress has really sunk its claws into me lately,
and it is affecting my running, and it is affecting
(21:59):
the personal aspects of my life and the running aspects
of my life. And that's kind of how this works.
So you know, we've done the nervous system, so reaction, recovery,
injury risk, and then the cardiovascular system, heart rate, endurance
and long term health. All right, those are the things
that stress can really jack with on these two systems.
And so if your run is feeling harder, your resting
(22:21):
heart rate is climbing, it is not just the training,
all right, It is life. It is stress, and it
is hijacking your performance. So don't add more stress wondering
what the hell is wrong with you? Why am I
training and things aren't getting better? Why am I training
and bonking? Why am I training and nothing's going the
(22:42):
way I want? Take a look at the stress level
in your life. If you can sit there and say
I have no stress and I don't know what's going on.
Then I have no answer for you. I don't know
what's going on any there. I don't see a doctor,
but I am willing to bet ninety nine times out
of one hundred, we can point to, well, I am
in that feud with the neighbor. Or I know my
(23:02):
company is going to sell and I don't know if
they're going to keep me. Or I have all this
school stuff because I went back to school as an adult,
and man, homework is just kicking my butt. My teenage
kid is really off the rails right now. My young
kid is struggling in school. I can't pay the bills
(23:24):
right now, so I can't get to all the races
that I want to do. Whatever it looks like in
the adulting world, we all have to deal with it,
and that can directly affect our performance when we're running.
And again, this is a running podcast, so I can
speak to the running part. I can't tell you everything
else about your job and your kids in your school
(23:44):
and your whatever. We're all on our own on that one.
Believe you me, been there, done that, As I now
have an eighteen sixteen year old daughter and a wonderful
hat collection, because trust me, there ain't much going on
underneath here. So that's where we are. On that I
wish I had like better news. All I can say is,
look at the stress in your life, really look at it.
(24:05):
Look at where you can improve it, look at where
you can deal with it better. Look at where you
can hopefully eliminate it so that you don't have to
worry about it. But don't let your youth, your fall
marathon training, don't let that be the source of your stress.
If you've got issues, if you've got problems, and if
any of the spoke to you, okay, now you can
kind of put a finger on it. Now maybe you
(24:26):
can do something about it. And it's not you, it's
not your physical ability, it's not I'm just a shit
runner and I should never have signed up for this
race and I'm not going to do it now. No, no, no, no.
Look at the other things extimuating circumstances, my friends, take
a look at that, and see what you can change
or rearrange or just do a little bit differently, and
(24:46):
see if you're running doesn't get back on track after
you do, after you make those positive changes, to eliminate
the stress that is rewiring your system right right right,
that's it. Next week we're going to go into week
two on this one, so we are going to talk
about lungs and stomach. Okay, so we're gonna be talking
real mid section. That's what we're gonna talk about next week.
(25:08):
Lungs and stomach and how that relates to our running
and daily stress. So I hope you enjoyed the series.
Please feedback is always welcome. We'd love to know what
you think. Do you enjoy the series? Do you not?
Is this a stupid topic? Is it not? Let me know.
I'm als up for the feedback. We will be seeing
everyone Sunday at the Placid ten k only race that
the podcast has this weekend. Thankfully, I could use a
(25:29):
little bit of rest and got to catch up on
some stuff around the house, hopefully stress free, here's hoping,
and so we'll see you Sunday. Right all right, that's
gonna do it for another episode of the Back of
the Back podcast, second one. I'm your Kyle Walker. Thank
you so much for tuning in. Everyone, have a safe
week of training. We'll see you Sunday at the Pleasant
ten k and If not, we'll see you next week.
(26:01):
Be
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