Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
Creating lasting change is hard. It’s uncomfortable, it takes time, and it’s for these reasons that most people will not do it. Also, when most people set out to change, they just start with …
Continue Reading about 235. The Important First Step in Creating Change →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to Episode 235 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, the important first step in creating change.
So creating change, especially lasting change, is challenging. It’s difficult, it’s hard, it’s uncomfortable, it takes time, and it’s for all these reasons that most people just will not do it.
Also when most people set out to change, when they do decide they want to change something, they just start with tactics like, do this, not that, eat this, not that. But there is a critical first step that most people miss in this whole process.
So this episode’s going to be all about that important first step in creating change so you can get your results a little faster. But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, your running, if you’ve been thinking about changing your body composition, losing weight, and you want support, guidance and help to get you there, consider coaching.
It doesn’t have to be with me, but with somebody. The fact is, coaching works where other methods fail, because it’s not about one particular diet or one particular way of exercising. It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual and then learning how to do this stuff on your own, at least that is my approach to coaching.
I know a lot of other coaches out there that just prescribe some kind of pre-made diet, you know, oh, you’re just going to do this diet. And if that doesn’t work for you, then I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t do that. It’s not about that.
The way that I do things is very individualized. It’s it’s set up in a way that gives you the guidance and support that you need as an individual. We put together a plan that’s going to work for you as an individual, and it has to be something that you can do on your own long term.
We got to get you to that place that is very important, and that’s what a lot of other coaches really don’t do. They don’t set you up for success long-term, while you’re working with them. Yeah, everything is great, but then after that, you really don’t know what to do.
I’ve heard this from a lot of different people, so I want to make sure that you understand how to make this into lifestyle changes that are sustainable long-term for you. Okay, it has to be easy and effortless. It has to be something you can do on your own, and my job is to get you there.
Okay, so if you want to hit the easy button on all this stuff on, you know, changing your body composition and getting healthy and getting fit, improving your running, losing weight, then I can help you get there. Just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me, and I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself, yet cool.
Okay, let’s talk about the important first step in creating change. So the reason I’m talking about this today is because I’ve come to realize that change is hard, it is uncomfortable, it’s challenging, it takes time, and so most people are unwilling to change.
Most people want to stay where they are, because to change means getting outside your comfort zone. It means it’s going to take a while before you get there, and it’s much easier to just stay where you are.
And I’m going to be talking about, you know, kind of losing weight, maybe running faster. And both these things take time, especially if you want to lose the weight and keep it off, these things take time.
They take time to it takes time to lose weight. It takes time to improve your pace as a runner. This is not something that’s going to happen overnight or in a couple of weeks or even in a couple of months. It’s going to take some time. And these things require us to get uncomfortable.
They require us to get outside our comfort zone and do things we’re not used to doing, to change habits. And these things are considered by a lot of people, very hard to do. Losing weight and keeping it off is very hard to do getting faster as a runner, especially as you’re getting older, it’s hard to do.
So when you think of making a change like this, like losing weight or getting faster, you probably are like most people, where you just go straight to strategies, right? Okay. Okay, what should I eat? Just tell me what to eat. You know, how often should I be doing my speed work? If I want to get faster and listen, strategies are great. You need strategies.
You need to take certain steps in order to make progress. You’ve got to take actions if you want to get results. But most people start with the plan. They start with what to do, or, you know, with some sort of tactics or strategies. And the plan is great. It’s important. You need it. But really the plan is step two.
Step one needs to be and it is the most important step in creating any kind of lasting change, step number one needs to be creating self-awareness. This has to be your step number one. So what is self-awareness?
So if you look up the definition, it says something like a conscious knowledge of one’s own character, feelings, motives, desires, actions. So self-awareness is just being consciously aware of what you are thinking, what you’re feeling, and what you are doing.
This sounds very straightforward and easy enough, right? And you might even be listening to this and thinking, Patrick, I’m aware of everything I think and feel and do. I mean, it’s me. I’m doing it all, so I’m aware of it.
But are you really, and how can you be sure? How do you know that you have self-awareness? The only way that you can really be sure that you are self-aware is that you have to start practicing being self-aware. It’s not something that you’re just going to innately have or know. It takes a little bit of practice to start to see everything that you’re doing, the way you’re thinking, the way you’re feeling.
And one simple way of doing this, I’m going to cut right to what you need to do here today, which is just, I have my clients write down everything they’re doing. You know, if you want to change habits, let’s start looking at everything you’re doing in a day.
Write everything down from the time you get up till the time you go to bed at night, and write down every little thing that you do throughout the day. So you might want to lose weight, and you know, you know you need to change, but you’re not sure what you should change.
So the first step is going to be to create a lot of self-awareness. What habits are you currently engaging in? What are you doing throughout the day? And you may think, well, I know what I do, but we want to take an exhaustive and objective inventory of everything that you do in a day.
So you start with waking up in the morning, okay, and you write down everything that you do. So I know it sounds a little bit crazy, but this is how we create massive self-awareness, because it’s really easy to look back over your week and say, yeah, I did a great job sticking with my food plan last week. But that’s a skewed viewpoint. It’s really your opinion of yourself. It’s not the facts.
So instead of, you know, guessing what you’re doing, we want to write everything down on paper. So you take pen to paper, and this is an exercise you can do. It’s pretty easy. It takes a little bit of time to do throughout the day, but just write down everything that you do.
So you wake up, you hit snooze, you go back to sleep for nine minutes. You hit snooze again nine minutes later, you get out of bed, you go to the bathroom, you brush your teeth, you wash your face, you make your way to the kitchen, you pour a cup of coffee, you head over to the couch, you start doing your morning journaling and on and on and on and on and on. You just go through your whole day and write everything down.
All right, when you do this, you’re gonna start to notice things that maybe, maybe you never really noticed before, some things that you’re doing, like, oh, yeah, interesting. I got up from my desk four times to grab a snack out of the cupboard, and didn’t even realize that I was doing that.
So this is something that we call an unconscious behavior, and unconscious behaviors are things that we do without even thinking about them. So this is where we lack self-awareness. We don’t have that self-awareness around some of our unconscious behaviors.
So, unconscious behaviors are sometimes they’re pretty benign, things like tying your shoes. Do you have to really think about tying your shoes? You just do it. You just do it. Right? What about driving a car? You don’t really have to think about driving a car. You just get in your car and you start driving.
But think about those two things and how challenging they were when you first learned how to do them. How long did it take you to learn how to tie your shoes as a little kid? It took forever, right? How about driving a car? You had to go through all this training and classroom work and get in the car, and it was really, you were really nervous, and you’re freaking out, and then you had to parallel park, and you’re like, oh my god, I’m never gonna be able to do this.
And, you know, you’re looking at the mirror, and then I gotta look at this turn signal, and I gotta, like, and today, like, you don’t even have to think about any of that stuff. You get in your car and you go, and you’re like, I don’t even remember the last 20 minutes of driving, you know, because it’s unconscious. That’s an example of an unconscious behavior.
Another type of unconscious behavior might be, I eat when I’m bored, you know, or stressed out. I mean, I work from home, and I go into the kitchen and I’m there four times in the afternoon, and I’m just eating stuff, and I don’t even realize I’m doing it, and I find myself standing in the kitchen with an empty bag of potato chips in my hand, and I’m like, what just happened? What did I just do here?
So unconscious behaviors are really just behaviors that you’ve learned how to do over the years, and you’ve gotten really good at them. You are really good at them, just like driving a car. You do them so well, you don’t have to think about them anymore. You just do them and you do them unconsciously.
But if you want to change that behavior, let’s say you want to stop eating the chips, you want to stick to a healthy eating plan, then you need a lot of awareness of what’s going on. We have to start making the unconscious conscious. We have to take that unconscious stuff that we’re doing and bring that into our consciousness.
We want that to become part of our self-awareness. And one way to do this again is just to write down. Let’s say you want to change your eating plan. Just write down everything you’re eating in a day. Just keep a food journal. Write it all down every time you take a bite of something, or lick something, or take a taste or a drink or a sip, anything like that. I ate one nut like just write it down. Right.
When you do this, you create a massive amount of self-awareness of what you are actually doing. So it’s no longer about guessing or your opinions of yourself. Oh, I think I did a pretty good job today. No, it’s just like, look at the paper. What did you do? You’re extremely aware of everything you’re doing now. You’ve brought all that unconscious behavior into your consciousness, into your awareness.
And so the reason why this is so important is that when you have that self-awareness and you’re no longer doing these things unconsciously, this is where you can actually begin to change. You got to know what to change before you can change.
And here’s an interesting little factoid that a lot of people, I would say most people, who start journaling everything they’re doing so they just start keeping a food log. They start losing weight, pretty much automatically, because they start seeing all the mindless eating. They start seeing all the snacking, they start becoming aware of poor choices they’re making throughout the day, because it’s right there in front of them.
It’s just on the page. They’ve written it all down. And when you see it like that, you can’t ignore it anymore, and you can’t like have an opinion about it’s not about an opinion. You can’t justify your behavior and gloss over these things, right? It’s just the truth. It’s down there in black and white because you wrote it down.
And so most people who only do this one thing, who start food journaling, they start to make better choices, they start to make more conscious behaviors, and they begin to lose weight. They start approaching their day and food especially from a very mindful and intentional and conscious viewpoint, okay, instead of being reactionary and automatic and unconscious with this stuff, okay.
It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it, because all you got to do is just write down everything you’re doing in a day, and you can start to lose weight by doing that most people do okay, unless you don’t have to write stuff down forever.
You know, I’m talking a lot about, you know, the first step in creating change, which is to create this awareness. You need this self-awareness of what is you’re doing in order to know what to change and know, in order to know where you are today, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it, right?
So keeping a food journal is a great way to change your habits around food, but it can be tedious and it can be time-consuming, and it’s not something you want to do forever, but it’s a great way to get started like you got to start practicing being self-aware.
You’ve got to start noticing everything that you’re doing so that you can create all the self-awareness, and then you won’t need to keep a log of what you’re doing, because you started to really practice this day in and day out. But that writing, it’s a great way to begin the process of creating the self-awareness.
It’s kind of like putting the training wheels on the bike until you get used to writing and balancing yourself, and then you could take the training wheels off, and then you’re good to go. Same process there.
Okay, so the real remarkable thing that happens here is that when we create self-awareness, now we’re really aware of what we’re doing, we’ve brought these things that are automatic behaviors into our consciousness, and we can start to change from that process, but this has to be step number one. The self-awareness piece has to be step number one.
Okay, something I’m working on right now, I’m working on running a faster half marathon in the fall this year, so I want to create a lot of self-awareness of how my running is actually going. How am I progressing? What do I need to work on?
So I started being very aware of how I’m running. I’m writing down my runs. I’m writing down how I felt. I’m recording heart rate, and perceived effort. Garmin helps a lot with this stuff, because I can just look at my stats, look at my data, and I can see a few areas where I really need to put my focus.
I need to spend more time running faster, like, not just doing speed work, but like, the amount of time I’m running faster needs to improve and increase. Like, more tempo runs that kind of a thing, right, where I’m running faster than my goal pace for an extended period of time, and doing my long runs a little bit slower than goal pace, but not a lot slower.
Instead of, like, a minute or a minute and a half slower, I’m doing them only about 30 seconds slower than my goal pace. So I’m running a little bit faster in general, and I’m doing some intervals, and I’m doing tempo runs, and I’m running, I’m doing my long runs at a little bit faster than I have been, but still slower than my goal pace.
And so I’m very intentional about all this, and I’m very intentional about every workout I do. For example, you know, here’s a week you know, that I did, like last week, Tuesday, 10 by 200 meter sprint intervals. Thursday was a five-mile tempo run. Saturday was seven easy miles.
You know, again, a little bit slower than my goal pace, and I’m seeing improvements. My pace is getting faster at the same perceived effort. So my effort level is staying the same, but I’m getting faster. My VO2 max has gone up four points over the last couple of months here. That’s awesome.
My average heart rate is coming down at the same pace. So all these are good signs. Everything’s working the way I wanted to. So come November, I’m going to be ready to run this fast half marathon, and the reason I’m going to be ready in the very first important step is that I created a lot of self-awareness.
I needed to know where to focus my energy and my efforts so that I could make the improvements that I needed to make. Okay, what kind of running do I need to do in order to reach these goals? Where am I today? And I was very objective about all of that stuff.
Okay, so whether you’re trying to lose weight, improve your running, get stronger, or any other big goal that you have for yourself, anything that you want to change in your life, I want you to start with this important first step, which is creating a ton of self-awareness about what it is you’re actually doing.
Spend a little bit of time taking a journal, a log, writing down everything that you’re doing around that area of you know, the change that you want to make and listen change is always going to be hard. It’s always going to take time, it’s always going to be uncomfortable, but you can start to see, I hope, how important self-awareness is, and how it should always be your first step in creating any kind of lasting change that you want in your life. Cool, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
If you are a runner and you want to improve your speed, endurance, or both, then you’ll want to work on building some lean muscle. The problem is that most runners don’t really know how to build …
Continue Reading about 234. What It Takes to Build Lean Muscle →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there and welcome to episode 234 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today what it takes to build lean muscle. So if you’re a runner and you want to improve your speed, your endurance, or both, then you’ll want to work on building some lean muscle.
The problem is that most runners don’t really know how to build muscle, or they’re using an outdated approach that really isn’t doing much for them. Building a stronger body will not only help improve your running performance, it will also help you to lose weight, have more energy, and generally feel better all the time.
So in this episode, what it takes to build lean muscle so that you can get leaner, get stronger, and become the most badass version of yourself yet, but first, as always, if you want some help with all of this stuff, with nutrition, with building endurance, with getting stronger, building strength, becoming that stronger, leaner, more badass version of yourself, I’m here for you if you think that you might benefit from coaching, and I think you might then look into it.
You don’t have to commit to anything. You can go on my website, go to running leancoaching.com, and click on work with me. You’ll fill out a little form. You and I’ll have a discussion over zoom. We’ll talk about coaching and see if this is a good fit for you. If it is, cool, if it isn’t, no big deal, at least now, you know, but I think that most people can benefit from having the expertise, the guidance, the support, the encouragement of somebody that has done all this before and helped hundreds and hundreds of people to become their most badass selves. So if you want a little bit of help, you want to hit the easy button on all this stuff, hit me up. Go to runningleanpodcast.com, leanforlife muscle.
So one of the things that I have found over the last five years or so working with runners on all this stuff, is that runners are not so good about resistance training, right? They don’t do it consistently, maybe only in the off-season. Oh yeah, you know, I run, so I really don’t need to strength train, or do any kind of resistance training while I’m running. Not necessarily true, or that maybe they’re not doing it right. They’re doing, you know, what they think is the right way to get toned, you know. So light weights, super ton of reps and sets, you know? And basically they’re doing a lot of cardio at this point. They’re not lifting heavy enough to actually build muscle to get stronger.
They’re not making strength training or resistance training a priority. So they think that running is enough. So most runners are not being very intentional about building lean muscle. They’re more intentional, very intentional about improving their running performance, about hitting certain goals for their running and they don’t make this connection that the strength side of things getting stronger will help you to reach those running goals.
It’s actually one of the things that’s kind of required for you to reach those goals and to get there without risking injury and burnout and stuff like that. So strength training is essential for your success in long-distance running because when you’re running, you’re putting your muscles under intense stress. And so we want to make sure that we are building muscle. We’re building back that muscle, more lean mass, and we want to get stronger. Building strength helps you to maintain good running form.
For example, it helps you to maintain a consistent power output while you’re running. You know, strong muscles don’t fatigue as quickly as weak muscles. So it improves your endurance as a runner. And athletes who are over 40, especially will benefit from strength training, since strength, for most people, tends to decline faster than your endurance as you get older. So if you’re doing some sort of strength training, it has this sort of anti-aging effect for older adults by preserving lean muscle. I am helping you to optimize all your systems, your cardiovascular system, but mainly your skeletal muscle, muscular systems.
So being a lean runner means you’re a strong runner. Means you’re a more powerful runner, means you’re going to live longer. There are tons of benefits to getting stronger and building lean muscle. For example, you build stronger muscles, yes, but you also build stronger connective tissues, ligaments, tendons, stronger bones. All these things will help you to stay injury free as a runner, getting stronger, building some muscle, helps you to lose weight, because you’re more effective at your body’s more effective at burning fat.
You increase your metabolism. It just costs a little more energy for you to carry around more muscle mass, and we’re not talking about getting huge like a bodybuilder. We’re just talking about putting on a few pounds of muscle here, but it will help to increase your metabolism, because your body requires more energy to carry around that skeletal muscle. It’s a higher energy requirement than fat is.
So it will help you to not only speed up your metabolism, but burn fat more effectively. You know, speed up the fat adaptation process, lose more weight all of that stuff.
Carrying more muscle means you’re going to increase your power to weight ratio, because what you have that you’re carrying around is now muscle that is stronger, you know, than just carry around fat, all right? Because fat does not make you a faster runner, and building more muscle definitely does, though. So you’ll be faster, you’ll be a more powerful runner. You’ll get faster, you’ll be able to increase your endurance, like I mentioned, you can run longer.
A couple of other benefits of getting stronger and building muscle. It helps to increase your lactic threshold, helps to fight depression, reduces risk of disease, protects your joints, boosts energy levels, improves your sleep. So many benefits to getting stronger, carrying around a little bit more muscle. We should all be actively working on improving our muscle mass. And again, we’re not talking about putting on 80 pounds of muscle here. We’re talking about, you know, five pounds, 10 pounds of muscle, something like that.
For most of us, it’s going to offset some of the fat we’re trying to lose. So we want to lose fat weight. We want to put on some muscle weight. That way, we’re improving our body composition. We’re getting rid of some of the tissue that we’re carrying around, the fat in our fat cells, you know, that we’re carrying around that isn’t doing us any good, and replacing that with muscle and which does do us good, it does us lots of good. It helps to improve so many different areas.
So let’s focus on building some muscle while we are losing some of the fat weight. Because listen, running and losing weight are both things that are considered catabolic. They break down muscle or can break down muscle tissue, especially for long-distance runners. So we got to offset the catabolic activity that’s happening with some anabolic activity.
So anabolic activity is building muscle, so running long distances, especially, will break down muscle in the long run. And so we want to replace that. We want to make sure that we are eating enough, getting enough protein, getting rest and recovery. We want to make sure that we are doing adequate muscle building and losing weight is the same thing. You know, a lot of people who restrict calories to lose weight, they lose muscle mass in the process. We do not want this. You want to maintain or you really want to build muscle, and you can build muscle while you’re losing weight, it’s absolutely possible, but you have to have the right approach. You have to do a few things, particularly the things that I’m going to talk about today.
I’ve got three requirements to building lean muscle that you really need to be doing consistently if you want to stay in that anabolic state where you’re building muscle and not in that catabolic state where you’re breaking down muscle.
Okay, so the three requirements to building lean muscle, you know, whether you’re running a lot or trying to lose weight, we got to be building muscle. Here’s three things that are very, very important for building muscle.
The first is going to be resistance training. I think we all know this, like you have to practice some sort of resistance training in order to build muscle. So there’s this principle called the progressive overload principle, and this says basically that in order for a muscle to grow or get stronger, you have to overload that muscle or that muscle group, so that your body has an adaptive positive response to that overload.
So let’s say you go to the gym and you lift 20 pounds, and you do that 10 times as a bicep curl, and you stress out those muscles. When you leave the gym, your body’s going to have a response to that, which is it’s going to make those muscles a little bit stronger and is going to produce a little bit of muscle growth. Okay, so then the next time you go to the gym, you may be able to do 22 pounds, you know, and you may be able to lift those 10 times. Okay, well, now you’ve had a positive adaptation to that overload, you overloaded the muscle. Your muscle now says to itself, doesn’t really say anything, but what it says to itself is, hey, we need to be stronger. We need to be bigger. Because, you know, we’re putting a lot of stress on this, on our muscles here, so your muscle will grow in response to that overload. Okay, so then the next time you go, it’s 25 pounds. The next time it’s 27 pounds.
So the point is that in order to get stronger, in order to build muscle, you have to be doing resistance training. I just went over a ton of benefits of resistance training, but really what we’re trying to do, one of the main things we’re trying to do is either get stronger or build larger muscles, so we can improve the muscle strength, so the strength of the muscle fibers, or we can improve the size of the muscle fibers.
And there’s different types of exercises you do that, you know, there’s a lot of overlap between strength and hypertrophy and power, but ideally you want to be doing things in sort of all areas. I did a whole podcast on this. It was episode 199 called Strength, Power, and Hypertrophy for Runners. So definitely listen to that one, because I break it all down and tell you exactly how to do different resistance training workouts in order to improve strength or power or hypertrophy.
Hypertrophy just means building bigger muscles, right? More muscle mass. Now, if you’re focusing on strength training specifically, you will be getting stronger, but you will also be building bigger muscles. And if you’re focused on hypertrophy, building bigger muscles, you will also be getting stronger. There is an overlap there, so it just kind of depends on where your focus is, what your priority is, but I think we can all benefit from doing some sort of strength or hypertrophy training, some sort of resistance training in order to get bigger muscles.
And you don’t have to do a ton of working out. You don’t have to become a gym rat. And this is where I think a lot of people think that, oh, I don’t have time to do this. Well, one of the things that I teach all my clients in my program is a full-body strength program that you can do twice a week. It only takes 20 minutes each time. You just have to do it twice a week. It’s a full body workout. It is a intense workout. It’s not easy, it’s pretty simple, but it’s not easy. It is hard, but it has great results. And if you were to do that once a week that would be enough to just maintain where you are.
So once a week. Resistance training, if you worked your whole body once a week, that’s fine. You’re going to kind of maintain where you are. Remember, with strength training, it’s a use it or lose it situation. If you don’t work your muscles, they are going to, you know, atrophy. They’re going to get smaller. You’re going to lose some of that muscle mass. So we don’t want to do that. So make sure at least once a week you’re doing some sort of resistance training. Just to maintain what you got, twice a week is enough to build muscle.
If you are doing it properly, you got to be practicing that progressive overload principle, three to five times a week is ideal. Really, if you can get three, four or five times a week in your training plan, that’s perfect. You know, that’s gonna give you the best results. But if you can only fit in twice a week, that’s good too.
Okay, that’s kind of the bare minimum. Once a week would just be enough to maintain okay? So if you can get into three or five resistance training workouts a week. That’s kind of the sweet spot where you want to be. So you have to be doing regular resistance training. Consistency is key here, right? You can’t just do it every now and then, right? It’s not one of those things where you can take time off and only do this in the off season. You don’t want to do it that way. You want to be resistance training the whole time. You’re the whole year around really, there’s really no time that you want to take off again.
If you don’t use it, you lose it. So if you practice some resistance training in the off season, and then you go 16 weeks of training for marathon without doing any resistance training, you’re going to be kind of starting from square one come, you know, the next time you go to start again. So don’t do that. Keep up with the consistent strength training resistance training regimen all year round. The only time I tell people, usually to take off from strength training would be the week of a big race. So if you’ve got your marathon coming up, then, you know, that’s your taper time. You want to make sure you’re not doing anything that’s going to, like, overload you or, you know, break you down the week of your race. You want to be as fresh as possible for that race.
Okay, so three requirements to building lean muscle. Number one, we just talked about, you have to be doing some regular, consistent, intentional resistance training. In order to build lean muscle, you have to build the muscle.
Number two is make sure you have adequate protein intake. If you don’t eat enough protein all those workouts at the gym, there’ll be some benefits, but they won’t amount to much. You need to eat enough protein every day to support the production of lean muscle via muscle protein synthesis, right? You have to eat protein. You have to eat protein, or you will die. Protein is what’s considered an essential nutrient, along with fat. Fat and protein are both called essential nutrients. That means we have to get them externally. We have to eat them, ingest them. Our body does not produce those things, so if we don’t eat fat and protein, we will eventually die. So make sure you’re eating fat and protein every single day.
What’s interesting is that carbohydrates are not considered an essential nutrient. If you don’t eat carbs, you won’t die. Your liver actually produces all the glucose that your brain needs to function properly. Your your brain does need a certain amount of glucose to function every day, and I know tons and tons and tons of people who never eat carbs, and they function absolutely fine. They’re they’re doing just fine. You don’t have to eat carbohydrates. I’m not saying don’t eat them. I’m just saying they’re not essential. Protein is essential. Fat is essential, but protein is one of those things that most runners do not get enough protein.
And there’s a lot of old notions around about how much protein we should be getting and the timing of our protein intake, and a lot of these old notions have been updated in the last couple of years. And I had a podcast where I talked about this back in 2021 I believe it was the ultimate guide to protein for runners, and at the time, it was what I knew to be the science. At the time, it was the, you know, kind of accepted principles and accepted guidelines for athletes. At the time, since then, I’ve changed my advice a little bit, so as the science gets updated, so will my advice to you, just keep that in mind.
So what I’m about to tell you here, I may change this in a couple years time. Who knows? But for now, it looks like what is recommended for most people is to try to get somewhere around point seven grams of protein for every pound of ideal body weight. So this could go up or down, depending on your goals, so maybe point six or up to point eight, even up to one gram. But for most of us, even athletes, we can probably safely say or safely use the point seven grams per pound of ideal body weight as a benchmark for how much protein would we should be getting.
Okay, so just understand that that’s a good place for you to be. You’re going to be fine if you stick around that point seven grams of protein for every pound of ideal body weight. Okay? And the other thing that is interesting that has been kind of debunked or changed or updated, is when you should be getting protein.
So some things that I’ve been learning in the last year or so is that, well, first of all, in the past, we used to be told that we have to get protein like within an hour of a workout, or you’re you’re going to miss the anabolic window. Like there’s this window of time when your body’s going to use the protein to build muscle, and if you miss the hour, it’s not going to do you any good. Not true.
Okay, new research shows that the anabolic window is basically 24 hours. Like your body is constantly using protein to build muscle. Your body is constantly doing this muscle protein synthesis. As long as you’re meeting your daily protein requirements, you’re pretty good to go. Don’t worry about having to get protein in within an hour after a workout.
Now, there are minuscule benefits from eating protein, you know, within an hour or two after a workout, but they’re minuscule. The difference between eating protein within an hour or two after a workout or six or eight hours later is negligible. It’s really not that big of a deal. And unless you’re some sort of elite athlete or bodybuilder, don’t worry about it. If you are an elite athlete or bodybuilder, then knock yourself out. But for most of us, getting, you know, point seven grams of protein every day and or per pound of body weight every day, and just making sure we’re getting that within a 24 hour period, you’re fine. You’re going to be fine. It’s more important that you’re getting adequate protein.
Just got to be consistent with all this stuff. Do it consistently. Use it or lose it. Just remember that we have to do these things consistently. So if you want to get lean, get strong, become a better runner, have more energy, you know, lower risk of injury, have more, you know, fat burning turned on, you want to have faster metabolism. You want to sleep better. You want to just feel better, be in a better mood. Resistance training is going to be the key. Building lean muscle is going to be the key.
You know what to do. Just get out there and do it. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on running lean. I will talk to you soon.
When most people set goals for themselves, they think small. They set goals that feel doable, safe, and comfortable, goals that won’t cause them too much suffering if they don't achieve …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there and welcome to episode 232 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners and today, Achieving Impossible Goals. When most people set goals for themselves, they think small. They set goals that feel doable, that feel safe, that feel comfortable, and goals that won’t cause them too much suffering if they maybe don’t achieve them, but is this really what you want for yourself? I don’t think so. Not me. Definitely not.
I want to set goals that feel kind of scary, uncomfortable, and downright impossible. So in this episode, I’m going to explain why you shouldn’t be setting small, easily achievable goals, but instead working on achieving those big, impossible goals.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, your running, if you’ve been thinking about losing weight, improving your diet, and you want a ton of guidance and support to help you get there, you might want to consider coaching.
The fact is, coaching works where other methods fail because it’s not about one particular diet or one particular exercise routine. It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual, and then learning how to do that on your own.
One thing I tell all my clients is that you need to not need me at some point. You got to get to this place where you can do this on your own. My job is to help you get to that point. What good is it to make these lifestyle changes if they’re not sustainable for you? They have to be sustainable for you, right?
This stuff has to become easy and effortless for you, so that you can do it on your own, so that you can stick with it. My job is to make sure you stick with it. So if you want to hit the easy button on your weight loss goals, on your running goals, on some big, impossible goal that you have for yourself. Let’s work together to get you there. Just go to my website, runningleancoaching.com click on work with me, and I will show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet Cool.
All right, let’s talk about achieving impossible goals. So right now we’re about halfway through the year. It is the beginning of June 2024, right now. So if you’re listening to this in the future, that is very cool, because it’s like time traveling. You’re like time traveling. But anyway, so if you are listening to this in real-time, then we’re about halfway through the year.
You may have set some goals for yourself, maybe some running goals. Maybe you ran a spring marathon or spring half marathon, or some spring races or ultra-marathons or whatever. And now it’s time to kind of reassess your goals. And you’ve taken some time off, or kind of in the off-season right now, and so you’re thinking about goals for the fall.
So you might be setting some intentions and some goals for some fall races, or maybe you have other health and fitness goals. Maybe you have a weight loss goal, and now would be a great time to get started on that. And so right now is a good time to be thinking about setting some big goals for yourself.
But here’s the thing, most people, when they set out to set a goal, when they decide on goals that they want for themselves, they they pick a goal that’s either too vague or too small. So they pick goals that are vague, like I want to lose weight, or I want to eat healthier, or I want to get stronger, I want to get stronger, I want to run faster, I want to run more.
These goals are very vague because there’s nothing specific to commit to, right? It’s much harder to commit to goals like I’m going to lose 20 pounds, I’m going to stop eating processed food, I’m going to I want to be able to lift 315 pounds in a deadlift. I want to be able to be able to do that three times. Or run a 23-minute 5k or run four times a week.
When we get specific with our goals, they become it’s a little bit harder, right? Because you now you’re kind of, you have to hold yourself accountable. You’re you’re on the hook for something. But a lot of people won’t do that. They’ll just pick vague goals, like, I need to eat healthier. What does that even mean? They don’t even know what it means.
Like, they’re just like, saying it because they they know that if they don’t achieve it, they don’t really have to fess up to anything. They don’t have to own up to anything. There’s no own ability. There’s no accountability there. So. Vague. We don’t want to set vague goals, and we don’t want to set goals that are too small.
A lot of people set goals that are very small. I want to lose five pounds, or instead of running a 5k I want to run maybe 6k okay, that’s fine if you’re just getting into running. But listen, set some goals that are bigger, because when you set these small goals, you know they’re easily achievable. They don’t require you to get out of your comfort zone at all. They are well within your comfort zone a lot of times.
You’ve probably already done these things. You’ve probably already lost five pounds. A bunch of times to say, like, oh, I want to lose five pounds. That’s something you know you can do. You already know you can do that? You’ve done it before, or you’ve got clothes, or it just seems easy for you.
The problem here is that setting these tiny little goals means that you’re probably going to achieve them, which is fine, but what did you gain in the process? What did you learn? How much did you grow? Who have you become in that process? Small goals. They feel safe, they feel comfortable, they feel doable. These are what people call realistic goals.
Oh, you need to be realistic. I say screw that. We need to set goals that are unrealistic. You need to set some goals that are way outside your comfort zone. And I call these impossible goals because they are impossible for who you are right now, who you are here today. You cannot achieve these big goals you know you, you should always have some, some goals that feel impossible for who you are today, that are not comfortable, safe or realistic.
Who wants to achieve realistic goals honestly? You need to be going after things in your life that feel impossible, because when you do, when you do achieve those goals. They can be life-changing.
Achieving impossible goals means you have you’ve done a lot of work to get yourself to the point where you could become the kind of person to achieve that goal. It means you’ve accomplished something you never thought you could, and then you did that. That’s an amazing feeling, right there. So instead of small, vague goals, we want to set big impossible goals, goals that feel unrealistic, that feel uncomfortable, that don’t feel like they’re in your comfort zone, that don’t feel safe, that don’t feel doable, they should feel impossible.
And really this is the biggest benefit of setting and going after these big, impossible goals is who you become in the process. You know, think about a small goal like losing five pounds. You can do this with pretty little effort. It’s not going to take much time. You’ll probably gain it back pretty quickly too, because you didn’t set a goal like, oh, I need to, I’m going to lose 30 pounds, and then I’m going to keep it off, right?
But, okay, let’s just say you want to lose the five pounds. That’s great. Okay, fine. Who did you become in the process? What’s changed for you? What did you learn? What’d you learn about yourself? What’d you learn about sustainability? How have you grown? My guess is not much of any of that stuff. You probably didn’t learn much. Probably didn’t grow much. You’re basically the same person.
Okay, well, let’s use the example of losing 30 pounds and keeping it off. Now that might feel more like an impossible goal for you right now. So let’s say it takes you a year to lose the weight. It takes you a year to lose 30 pounds, and then you’ve maintained that weight loss for another year. So so far, we’ve talked about where you’ve invested two years of time into this goal already. Okay, that’s a lot of time.
What did you learn about what did you learn along the way? Maybe you had to learn how to plan meals around family vacations and social events and holidays and work trips. You had to learn how you could have some cheat meals here and there without going completely off the rails. That takes some time to figure that out.
You learned how to change your mindset around food, so you no longer have those cravings for sugar all the time. And then when you do occasionally have the cravings, you know how to deal with them. You don’t let them derail you like you can just move on, right? You’ve learned which foods work for you and which ones don’t.
You learned how to maintain your weight loss over time, which is actually the hardest part of all this. So you’ve grown. You’ve learned all these things, and you’ve grown in the last two years.
You no longer have the mental and emotional hangups around food. You feel like you’re back in control of your eating for once in your life, you’re no longer operating on autopilot. You’re no longer eating mindlessly. Basically, you’ve become a different person, the person you were two years ago when you started on this journey could not have done any of this stuff.
This was impossible for who you were two years ago, but that’s not who you are here today. You’ve become a completely different person. So. This is one of the most important outcomes of achieving an impossible goal. It’s who you become in the process, who you are here today. You can’t achieve that goal, that goal is way outside your comfort zone.
Maybe your impossible goal is running your fastest marathon this fall, and it’s impossible because the person you are here today cannot run. Let’s say it’s a sub-four. You want to run sub-four marathon, and you’ve never been able to do that, so that’s not who you are today. You cannot run a sub-four, four-hour marathon today.
So this is an impossible goal for you, but in order to achieve that goal, you have to get to work. You have to stick to a pretty rigid training schedule for months. You have to do all the speed work. You have to keep improving your tempo runs like improving the times, improving the distance, and improving the amount of time that you’re running fast.
You have to be able to sustain that, and it’s going to require that you stick to a strict eating plan to support your running goals, because you don’t want to gain a bunch of weight during this training season, right? If you’re trying to PR, you’re trying to run your fastest marathon ever.
So this is this all feels impossible for who you are today, but listen, you do the work. You show up for yourself, day after day, week after week, month after month. Come the fall, when you’re towing the line at the start of that marathon, you’re the kind of person who could run a sub-four marathon, because you’ve done the work, you’ve completely become a different person, but between today and who you are six months from now.
So this is one of those things where we think that a goal feels impossible to us, and it does feel impossible to us, but we think it’s impossible for us to achieve that goal. And in reality, there is a possibility that we can do we can pretty much do anything we want, right? But you got to set your mind to it. You have to commit to the process. You have to commit to becoming the kind of person that can do that.
And then listen, when you show up at the start line of that race, you’ve become a different person. You’ve learned, you’ve grown. You’ve become so much more than you ever thought you could become. It really doesn’t even matter if you hit the goal or not. So let’s say you run a 4:01. Is that a failure? Did you fail? I say no, because look who you are. Now, you’ve become this completely different person. You’ve learned, you’ve grown, you’ve become more it’s not about achieving the goal necessarily. It’s about who you become in the process.
Now, of course you want to achieve the goal, and of course you’re going to do the work to basically make sure that that outcome is inevitable, but the real underlying purpose of all of this is to learn about yourself, to grow and to become more and if you do that, I say that you have absolutely succeeded.
And then also keep in mind that every success requires a lot of failures to get there, right? Every success was built upon a big old pile of failures. I think Henry Ford said that, so don’t be afraid to try fail, try fail, try fail, until you succeed. The number one rule with all this stuff is you never, ever, ever give up.
You keep going until you achieve that goal, impossible or not, because if you never quit, you will eventually achieve that goal. If you’re committed to achieving that goal, you will get there eventually. So that impossible goal can become possible for you.
Now, I’ve done a few impossible things in my life. Some years ago, I completed a full Ironman. You know, I’ve run 50 miles, 100 miles. Last year I did a 12-hour solo run, unsupported, no headphones, no talking to anybody. Very much a solo in my own head event.
But for things like running 100 miles, you know, when I signed up for that, I could not run 100 miles. I was not the kind of person that could run 100 miles. I couldn’t imagine doing that. This was impossible. This felt impossible for me. And here I was paying the money on their website and signing up, and, you know, saying that I was gonna, like, sign up for this thing. And I’m like, “Who do you think you are, Patrick, signing up for 100 miler? This is ridiculous. You’re ridiculous. I don’t see how you’re gonna do this.” because I didn’t know at the time.
I was like, I know that somehow between now and, you know, a year from now, or however long it was, I think it was maybe 10 months, 11 months, something like that, that I signed up in advance. I knew that I was going to become the kind of person that could run 100 miles by the time I started that race.
And for me, showing up at the start line, knowing I did all the work, was the big accomplishment, and then doing it, obviously it was amazing, you know? But every time I set out to do something big like this, it feels impossible for me at the beginning of the process.
Yeah, and I know that in order to get there, I got to do the work and I have to level up. I got to learn and grow and become more and I know that by the time I show up at the event, I’m a different person, and I’ve already succeeded. In my mind, I’m it’s already a success.
And then when you do achieve something like that, when you do the hard work, and you set out to do something that is impossible, and you actually achieve it. You finish the race, you lose the weight, you’re able to keep it whatever that goal is for you, it becomes so much sweeter because it was so hard.
Listen, I am not a crier. I am not somebody who cries. Have a very hard time, like crying even. So, okay, I will say this about movies, I will cry. I do cry at movies, but every time I’ve completed something impossible, like, you know, finishing my Ironman, running my 100 miler, 50 miler, even half Iron Man like I’ve cried at the end of these things, because it’s such an emotional event.
It was, it was a life changing event. And so when you set out to do something that feels impossible and you actually do it, there’s no other feeling in life quite like that. So I want to encourage you to think about this. Think about something big, something that feels impossible for you today, something that you want to achieve, and pick one thing that really stands out, that gets you out of your comfort zone.
I want you go to go after that one thing. Don’t pick 10 different impossible goals, because it’s just too overwhelming. You need constraint. You have to practice constraint of focus. Focus on one goal at a time. Go all in on that one goal. When you finish that one goal, then you can move on to something else, right? And it kind of depends on the goal.
But for me, I like to have one impossible goal on my plate every year, or maybe one every other year. It depends on how big the goal is, how much time it takes. Blah, blah, blah, okay, but have something in mind. Pick something, and then I want you to go after that. I want you to go all in on yourself, see what you’re capable of. Don’t think small. Think big. Don’t think realistic. Think unrealistic. Don’t think doable, think impossible, and then get busy doing the work to become the kind of person who can achieve the impossible. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean, and I will talk to you soon.
For a lot of runners, the off-season can be a challenging time. You’ve finished your races, the next training cycle won't start for another 4-6 weeks, and you might feel like you’re in limbo until …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 230 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, what to do in the offseason. So for a lot of runners, the offseason can be sort of a challenging time.
So you finished your races and the next training cycle won’t start for another 4, 6, or 8 weeks, something like that. And you might feel like you’re kind of in limbo until then. Well, here’s the thing, the way you approach the offseason is just as important as the training season itself.
It’s so important that what you do in the offseason can often make or break your next race. So today, what to do in the offseason as a runner to ensure that you start your next training cycle on the right track.
And listen, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, getting stronger, improving your running, losing some weight, and you want some guidance and support to help you get there consider coaching.
The fact is coaching works where a lot of other methods fail, because it’s not about a particular diet, or some exercise routine. It’s about understanding what works for you, as an individual, you are an individual. And I’m here to treat you like an individual, I’m going to meet you where you are, and give you a plan that works for you, okay.
You have to learn how to do this stuff on your own. My job is to help you get there. I always tell my coaching clients that I want you to not need me at some point, you have to be able to do this on your own. So what good is making all these changes, like losing weight and changing your diet, if it isn’t sustainable for you, it has to be sustainable for you. It has to be easy, it has to be effortless. If it is then you will stick with it.
Okay, my job is to help you get there help you get to that place where you can stick with it. And you can do it on your own. So if you want to hit the easy button on your weight loss and your running goals, let’s work together we can get you there, just go to my website runningleancoaching.com and click on work with me. And I’ll show you exactly how to become the most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.
Okay, let’s talk about what to do in the offseason. So a lot of runners experience a little bit of a downturn in their fitness when it comes to the offseason, which is okay, it’s okay to have a little bit of a break. In fact, we want to take a break in the offseason, this is actually a good thing.
Racing season puts a lot of stress on your body, it also puts a lot of mental and emotional stress on you. So you need to take some time, a couple times a year to rest, to recharge, to repair, to recover, to refocus your energy. So the the main areas of focus that we’re going to be talking about today are going to be areas of running strength, nutrition, and then cross-training.
So I’m going to break each of these down so that you have some ideas on where you need to be in each of these different areas. And you can like kind of think about what your training season looks like, where you are in your training season. You might be listening to this. And it’s not, you know, you’re in the middle of your training season right now. But take some notes and then when your training season is over, then you can apply these for your offseason, whatever that happens to be for you right now.
It is May here in the US and like it is everywhere, right? But in the US here, we’re just done with our spring races. I know other parts of the world are just getting into their winter and maybe not doing a lot of racing right now.
But anyway, we are here done with our kind of spring racing calendar. And so we’re getting into the offseason because our marathon and half marathon training won’t start for another four to six weeks, something like that.
Okay, so for for us here we are in the midst of our offseason. And a lot of people are like what should I do? How much should I be running? You know, where do I need to put my focus? So let’s get into this. I’m just going to start with running. So once your races are over, your body is going to need a break.
You know training. Leading up to a race especially can be very stressful on your body. So you need that break, you need the time to recover and repair. And if you do multiple races each season, this is even more of a reason to take a break, because you’re putting a lot of stress on your body.
So you want to rest for sure, but you don’t want to lose too much fitness. And this is where I think a lot of people get hung up. Because they’re like, I don’t want to lose any fitness. Well, it’s okay to lose a little bit of your fitness, you want to always be peaking, right around race day, hopefully on race day.
And if you lose a little bit of fitness after that race, that’s fine, because you’re starting another training cycle here in a month or two. And you need a good maintenance plan that’s going to help you to maintain some of that fitness.
But you don’t need to maintain that peak fitness that you are experiencing on race day itself, it’s not actually good to do that you do want to take a break and give your body a chance to kind of repair and recover so that you can start your next training cycle feel refreshed and feeling amazing.
So you want to keep a steady schedule of running in the offseason, so that you can easily maintain some fitness. Okay, now for me, I’m taking about six to eight weeks off between training cycles. And it depends on what race is coming up next.
So for example, this year, I did the Flying Pig marathon and did all the races on that weekend. And that was the first weekend in May. And then my next race is going to be the Indianapolis monumental half. And it’s not until November.
So for me, I have a break of about eight weeks because my training isn’t going to start until you know halfway through June or so. So that gives me you know, almost eight weeks since the pig to kind of focus on some other things.
So what I’m doing right now is I’m maintaining my running, I run three days a week, this is what I do during my training cycles as well. So the number of days is not really changing for me at all, it’s not different at all.
The types of running I’m doing is a little bit different. So right after the race, and this is what I suggest you to do, too, if you’re running a half, right after a race, I would take about a week off. And I did that I took a week off after that weekend of racing.
And then I got back into some nice easy running. And if you’re just coming off a full marathon, you want to probably take two weeks off completely, you know, maybe do some walking, some run walking some cross-training. And we’ll get into cross-training here in just a minute. Some light recovery type of activities, but you don’t want to be running much you want to give your body a break.
So taking like two weeks off after a full is a great idea. But if you’re doing a half then taking a week off is typically fine for most people. And then I would ease back into running with some easy days and some low mileage.
You know, for me, I do anywhere from three to six miles for the first few weeks. And that’s kind of where I’m at right now. I’m up to maybe seven, eight miles on the weekends. But during the week I might do a three mile with I’m starting to build in a little bit of speed work here now, but three mile maybe a five miler, and then like a six to eight mile or on the weekend as like a long run.
But the intensity levels of these are pretty low. So I’m not killing it on these workouts. And that’s something that is important. You want to start increasing your mileage a little after the first couple of weeks of running. When I was doing two marathons a year, I always kept up at least a 10 miler on the weekends. And so I would build back up over the next few weeks into like a 10 mile or on the weekends.
And that way when training season started up, you know, when marathon training season started up again, I was ready, I was more than ready, because I’m used to running 10 miles on the weekend. So I always wanted to stay in those double digits as my long run on the weekends. Now, I’m not running a marathon this year, I’m doing a couple of halves. And my goal is to run a faster half in Indy in November. And so I’m going to keep my mileage a little bit on the lower side.
For now, you know, like eight miles is probably going to be as long as I’m going to go right now. And then as I get into the longer training runs and things like that, I’m going to, you know, have some longer runs in there, I might do some 13, 14, 15 mile runs, getting ready for this half, where I’m going to be trying to, you know, run a little bit of a faster half marathon and increasing my mileage and running longer than the race distance is a good way of ensuring that my fitness is where I want it to be.
I want race day to feel easy. And so our training has to reflect that you know, so for me it might be you know doing a couple of 15 miles and then race day is gonna feel like a breeze. At least that’s the plan. Okay?
Obviously, when you’re training for a marathon, you probably don’t want to do that you probably don’t want to run a 28 mile or something like that in your training just because it puts way too much stress on your body. But take a few weeks to ease back into running, don’t rush things.
Remember, our goal is to rest, recover, and rebuild. So your maintenance plan during the offseason should be pretty easy and comfortable. It should never be too stressful or too intense. But you do want to slowly build your mileage up so that when your training cycle starts again, you’re ready to go. And you’re feeling like 100%.
You know, we don’t want to be doing all this like super high intensity running in the offseason, because we that’s like the stuff we do in peak training. And we don’t want to be peaking in the offseason, we don’t want to be peaking three or four months, or even three or four weeks before a race we want to be peaking on race day.
And this is one of the reasons why we approach the year in cycles and training cycles of higher and lower intensities. And we want to peak on race day so that we are always you know, at our best on that race day. And that can be a couple of times a year, two, three times a year, four times a year, depending on how many races you’re, you’re doing okay, but ease back into running, take the next few weeks, and build slowly, make sure the intensity levels are low, but you want to maintain your running fitness.
So you don’t want to lose a whole lot of running fitness, you’re gonna lose a little bit and that’s okay. But we want to start the next training cycle feeling pretty fresh from a writing standpoint, the next area of focus is going to be strength. And this is where a lot of people don’t really do strength training year round, which I think is really not doing you a service.
So my philosophy on strength is that you should be doing it year round. Regardless of where you are in your training cycle. This is something you should be doing every week, two to three times a week, at a minimum, that you should be actively building strength all year long. All throughout your training cycle.
The only time I suggest really taking a break is the week of your race, you want to have that race itself, you want to be completely ready and fresh, you don’t want to be sore having done some tough strength workouts that week. You want to be as fresh as possible for that race.
But listen, I know a lot of runners don’t do this. If you’re somebody who’s not been doing strength training consistently. Okay, the offseason is a great time to get started, you can start a new strength program, you can get your body adapted to doing the exercises that maybe you’re not used to doing.
Because when you start a new strength program, there’s going to be a little bit of a period where you might be sore for a few weeks, especially at the beginning. This is normal, it goes away. So the offseason is a great time to get started and start building some good habits around strength training.
And if you’re somebody who’s been consistent with strength, the offseason is a good time to get a little more focus, get laser focused on some strength goals. So set some goals for yourself, like, you know by this date, I want to be able to lift X amount of weight for X number of reps, or whatever, maybe you want to do a one rep max or something like that.
But wouldn’t it be great to start the next training cycle physically stronger? Yes, it actually would make the next training cycle that much better. So use these six to eight weeks, whatever it is to build good habits around, intentionally building strength, you know, go a couple times a week to three times a week.
And you’re gonna see how much better you’re running is going to be right out of the gate when you start your next training cycle. It’s really a game changer for most people. If you’re not doing strength training regularly, then the offseason is a great time to get started with that. The other area that I wanted to talk about is nutrition.
So this is one that a lot of people struggle with. And I used to struggle with this. So during the offseason, I would just keep eating the same way I was eating during training. And I would always gain a lot of weight in the offseason because I was training for marathons, triathlons, ultra marathons, and I was doing a lot of training.
And I would not really change the way I was eating and I was eating garbage, all that I would just eat whatever I wanted tons of carbs, tons of sugar. And as soon as I would, you know run a race and that would be over it and I would really drop my mileage down.
My weekly training mileage and training intensity for sure. I would just keep eating like that and I would just gain a bunch of weight every year I did this and that’s not a good plan. Don’t do that. Okay, this is not what I’m suggesting that you do, this is like what not to do.
So first, you want to develop good eating patterns, and you just want to stick with them year-round like this is the most important thing I can tell you here today, which is that you should be eating the same pretty much year-round, the only things that really might change during training, and once you get into some higher mileage is going to be maybe you need more food, so you might need more energy coming in, so slightly more food, and then you might increase your carbohydrate intake, and time those carbs around long runs and high-intensity training sessions and races.
But that’s it, that’s the only thing that should really change slightly more foods, slightly more carbs. That’s it, you know, and other than that you should be eating like an athlete year-round, you know, because you are an athlete.
Now, if you’re a runner who wants to lose weight, the offseason is the perfect time to get started on a new nutrition plan, because you got like six to eight weeks to develop some good habits and make massive progress toward your weight loss goal. The offseason is really the best time to get started, you can really start any time, you probably don’t want to change your whole diet three weeks before your a race.
But the offseason is a great time to get started on a new nutrition regimen. For me, I’m not trying to lose weight right now. And I tend to eat the same thing all year long. I eat pretty low carb, I’m probably doing less than 50 grams a day most days. And I eat pretty high protein probably around 180 grams of protein most days.
I don’t really track this stuff. I was just looking up, you know, kind of some averages over the last couple of days. And that’s about where I am with those two numbers. And, and I feel really good doing that. The only times I really deviate is when my training really ramps up, I do tend to eat a little bit more food. But I just listen to my body.
And if I’m hungry or after long runs, I eat more. And I might add some fuel for particular workouts or races in the form of some slow burning carbs, I might eat some sweet potatoes or rice the night before a long training session or a race. And I might use some fuel during training. So it’s pretty minimal though it might be a couple 100 calories, and maybe 20 grams of carbs or something like that. So it’s pretty minimal.
I don’t use a lot of fuel for running for races because I just don’t need it. When you’re fat-adapted, you really don’t need much in the way of fuel. So it’s not a massive deviation from what I do day to day. And then the next day, I’m just back on my normal plan after I maybe do a little bit more carbs the night before a long run or a race and then some fuel during that event.
And then I just go back to eating normally.
The other thing to consider here is that if you’re somebody who’s eating a ton of carbs, like you’re on the traditional runner’s diet of just all the carbs all the time, then you’re naturally going to crave more and more carbs, because your body doesn’t really have the sensors to tell you that you’re full when you’re eating carbs.
So it’s very easy to overeat carbs. And when your training ramps up and you get hungry or you’re eating a ton more carbs, you tend to really overeat them. That’s what I was doing in the old days. And that’s why I used to gain a lot of weight.
If you try overeating protein and fat, you just can’t do it, your body sends signals to your brain that you’re full, you’re going to have to stop. And that just doesn’t happen when you’re eating massive amounts of carbohydrates. Okay, so what you eat does matter, all calories are not the same, you have to understand this.
Some calories in the form of sugar and carbohydrates affect your body profoundly differently than fats and proteins do. And when you’re eating a ton of carbohydrates, you tend to overeat them, you crave them all the time, you can’t get enough of them. And they tend to keep your body in that fat storing mode, you cannot burn fat, you cannot lose weight when you’re eating a ton of carbs like that. So just keep that in mind. Right.
So we keep the carbs low, we keep running, we increase our protein and that is a great plan for most people that works really well for most people. And it works really well for me and this has been working for me for many years now. And I feel great eating this way.
But I’ve gotten out of that habit of you know, eating tons of food during training because I’m not craving those kinds of foods I do eat a little bit more, but I’m eating more of the good stuff meaning more eggs, more steak, more broccoli, more chicken, whatever. And I tend not to over eat that stuff and I don’t tend to crave that stuff.
And I’m not just binging out on sugar, pizza and ice cream and all the stuff that I used to eat and I feel much much better. And so the biggest thing, one of the biggest suggestions I have for you here, is to try to keep your eating pretty normal all year long. Just kind of eat the same way. Yeah, it’s kind of boring. And it’s fine. Boring is good. All right.
And then the last area we want to focus on during offseason would be cross-training. So this is kind of the fun part of the offseason, at least it is for me anyway. Since running is such a huge focus during your training season. And when you get to the offseason running is not that big of focus.
So you can put your energy into other fun things, you know, biking, yoga, swimming, soccer, basketball, rowing, hiking, kayaking, climbing, trail running, I know it’s running, but you can just kind of do it very minimally and have some fun with it. Skating, golfing, dancing, whatever you want to do, do things that feel good and are fun for you.
Two of the things that I love doing are walking and hiking, so I walk every day, pretty much anyway. But during the offseason, I tend to walk more. And then I love hiking. So I’ll get out in nature and do some hikes. And it’s a great time of the year here for that because it’s the summer it’s warm outside, feels great, you can get on all these trails.
And it’s really fun if you can do these activities with a friend, because then you’ve got somebody else out there and you can have some social time. Cross-training is a great way to connect with nature connect with people to maintain fitness, and have fun doing it. And it just feels good.
And this really helps with the mental and emotional aspects of the offseason. Because a lot of times when we’re in the offseason, we can tend to get a little bit down and we feel like oh, I don’t have a purpose. I’m not training for something, you know, and we can kind of feel like we are rudderless ship, you know.
Instead, get out there and do some things with some other human beings connect with other people get out of your head a little bit and do some things that are fun and you’re exercising while you’re doing it.
Now, you don’t have to go out there and crush these workouts like if you want to go out there and do some hard workouts every now and then that’s fine, but that’s not the goal here. Remember, this is the offseason, we don’t want to be crushing every workout we want to rest repair, refocus. So have some fun with these kinds of activities. But you don’t necessarily need to be crushing them.
You know every now and then you can push it a little bit if you want to but just have fun with it and use it as a time to do some activities that feel good and it is a little bit of a workout. You know if you’re biking or something like that, but don’t don’t get too serious with it like have fun with it.
Okay, so that’s how I approach the offseason these are some good ideas for you and what to do in the offseason. If you have other suggestions, maybe I missed something maybe you can shoot me a message and and let me know what I missed. Okay, but that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
One of the big keys to achieving anything significant in your life - losing weight and keeping it off, running a marathon - is confidence. Being confident that you can accomplish something big will …
Continue Reading about 229. How to Have More Confidence Now →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 229 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners and today, How To Have More Confidence Now. So one of the biggest keys to achieving anything significant in your life, like losing weight and keeping it off, or running your first marathon is confidence.
Being confident that you can accomplish something will make that accomplishment practically inevitable. However, the opposite is also true, a severe lack of confidence will basically make it impossible for you to reach that big goal. So how do you get more confidence?
Well, you know, you are in luck, because that’s what’s on the agenda here today. In this episode, I’m going to explain what confidence is how it might just be the game changer that you’re looking for, and how to have more confidence now.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, losing some weight, improving your running, and you want some guidance and support to help you get there, I want you to consider coaching, coaching works where other methods don’t, because it’s not about a diet. It’s not about a premade exercise program.
It’s about understanding what works for you as an individual, and then learning how to do it on your own. That’s you learning how to do this on your own at one point, in our coaching relationship, I want you to say Patrick, I don’t need you anymore. That’s then my job is done.
You have to be able to do this stuff on your own. It has to be something that is sustainable for you long term because you know, there is no finish line. Being healthy, losing weight, improving your running, improving your fitness, your health. It’s not a destination you’re trying to get to it is how you live your life from here on out. And I want to teach you how to live your life that way.
Okay, we want this stuff to become easy and effortless for you long term. And I can help you get there. If you want to hit the easy button on all this stuff on your weight loss goals, your running goals, we can work together, just go to my website runningleancoaching.com, click on work with me. And we will work together and I’ll show you how to become the healthiest and most badass version of yourself yet. Cool.
Okay, let’s get into this topic today how to have more confidence now. So confidence is one of those things that can be a real game changer for you. And if you’ve ever set out to do something, maybe that you’ve never done before, you’ve probably lacked confidence at the beginning of that process.
And as you have accomplished things in your life, as you have gotten out of your comfort zone, and you’ve done things you might think well, that’s how you build more confidence. And that’s part of it. You have to understand something though that confidence comes from within. It is something that is created by you. It doesn’t come from anybody else. It doesn’t come from out there nobody bestows confidence upon you, you have to create it.
So confidence, if you look up the definition, it says it’s a feeling of self assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities, a feeling of self assurance. Confidence is a feeling. And what do we know about feelings? Well, feelings are created by your thoughts. feelings don’t come from out there. Feelings are created by the thoughts that you think.
So if you want to create more of a certain feeling, then you need to think certain thoughts. You need to change your thinking perhaps here’s a little experiment that you can do. You want to start feeling a little bit more confident right now. Just think about a time where you were extremely confident to think about that time a specific point in time in your life, where you are so freaking confident about something.
Go back there right now in your mind. What was the situation you’re at? What were you thinking? What were you doing? What were you seeing what were you hearing? What are you saying, you know, what were you feeling internally, and feel that feeling of confidence.
And you can feel confident right now, when you do this, it’s kind of interesting, right? By the way, you can do the same thing with all kinds of emotions, you want to feel angry, just think about something that pisses you off, you’re gonna feel really angry right now, don’t do that. But this is what we do.
A lot of times, we feel hurt by someone. And we keep replaying that over and over in our minds. And we just continue to feel hurt and hurt and hurt, even though that thing happened years ago, decades ago. So anyway, feelings are created by your thoughts. So you have to start looking at the way you’re thinking about things.
So one thing that I like to say is that if you, if you think that you can do something, then you probably have the confidence that you can do it. If you feel like, or I’m sorry, if you think that you cannot do something, then you’re going to feel like you can’t do it.
So our thoughts will have a big role to play in how we accomplish things. And thoughts create those feelings. So we got to look at the thoughts that are creating the feelings of confidence. So for example, if you have confidence that you can stick to your diet, plan and lose weight, and you think to yourself, here’s the thoughts you thinking, I can do this, I can stick to my plan, I’ve got this, I’ve done hard things before, then you are far more likely to stick to that plan and lose the weight.
On the other hand, if you firmly believe that this is never gonna work for you, because you know what, nothing ever works for me, I’ve tried everything, nothing works. It’s never worked before I always fail, I always fail, I always give up, I always quit. How is your confidence? Zero, it’s, it’s 0.0, you are very likely to give up and quit. And those thoughts that you’re thinking are going to become true for you. Those thoughts that you’re thinking, when you feel really confident and you think this might work for me, I’m going to I think I can do this, those will become true for you as well.
Another good example is if you are somebody who has run some half marathons, right, and you’re thinking about running a full marathon, but you lack so much confidence that you can run a full marathon that you will probably never even sign up for that race, because you just don’t have the confidence that you can do it. You don’t believe in yourself, you don’t believe that you can do it. Zero confidence.
So running a full marathon is probably never going to happen for you. Even though in your mind, you might think that is something I really want for myself at some point. So we need to we need to change our thinking, okay.
Henry Ford, I love this quote one of my favorite quotes ever. He said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.
So what that says to me is that it’s all in your mind. It’s all in your mind, whatever you want to accomplish, we got to look at those thoughts that are creating the feelings. And confidence is one of the keys to helping you achieve anything of importance in your life, anything big especially.
But when it comes to achieving bigger goals, running a full marathon losing weight, losing like 40 pounds, if you want to lose 40 pounds, that’s going to require some work and some time, and you have to keep your head in the game. And you have to have the confidence to get you there.
Running a full marathon is going to require some confidence for you to get there. lacking confidence is going to keep you stuck. It’s going to keep you thinking small. When you don’t have any confidence, you’re not going to venture out of your comfort zone, you’re not going to try to push yourself to do something that’s hard. Because you don’t have the confidence that you can do it.
But when you build the confidence over time, you will see that your comfort zone will begin to grow. You can keep pushing past your comfort zone, you keep taking action even when things get hard. You still take the action that you need to take you show up for yourself in a much different way.
You’re no longer stuck, you’re free. You’re not thinking small, you’re thinking big. So these are all the reasons why we want to work on our confidence. We want to build our confidence.
So some of the ways we do this. Number one, we want to focus on how far we have come. So everything that you’ve already accomplished in your life needs to be on a list somewhere everything hard you have ever done that you maybe didn’t think you could do, but you did. Or you surprised yourself, or something that you’re proud of anything that you’ve accomplished in your life, just put it on a list somewhere.
And every now and then you need to take that list out and read it. Because we want to be focusing on where we have come, we want to focus on how far we have come not on where we are not.
We spend too much time focusing on the gap, the gap between where we are today and where we want to be in the future. And there’s a gap there, I want to lose 40 pounds. So the gap is the 40 pounds, the gap is running a full marathon, I’ve never done that before. And we focus on the gap. And it’s a negative place to focus on because it’s where you are not, you’re not there yet.
And if all your focus is on where you are not, it can feel incredibly frustrating. And it will kind of strip away your confidence. Instead, you want to focus on the gains, not the gap, focus on the gains, what have you done? What have you already accomplished? Write that stuff down, you want to make sure that this is something that you are constantly focusing on.
And then as you accomplish new things celebrate those wins, we celebrate wins in our coaching group all the time, we always want to talk about wins. Because it’s important to give equal airtime to the things that are going well in our lives and the problems.
A lot of times, we just want to focus on the promise, well, here’s what’s not working. Okay, that stuff is fine. But what is working, let’s talk about that as well. It shifts the conversation, I’m telling you, and I see it in people, it shifts their whole posture, their personality shifts a little bit when they start talking about everything that’s going well. So focus on how far you have come this right here.
If you just did this one thing, this would be enough to help you to start building all the confidence that you need. Okay, but we’re going to do more number two is to take aligned action, even when you don’t feel like it. So confidence comes from taking action and getting results. Because when you take aligned action, and you get results, you start to see that ha this might actually work for me.
Oh, I was able to stick to my food plan over the last two weeks. Great. And I lost a pound. That’s interesting. So you’ve taken aligned action, you’re seeing some results. And you’re like, hmm, actually maybe this will work for me. And so you start to feel more confident, because you’re taking action.
Even sometimes when you don’t feel like it, sometimes you don’t feel like sticking your food plan, I get it. Sometimes you don’t feel like going for a run, I get it. But if you stick to the plan, you’re going to get the results when you get the results, you feel more confident that you can keep going and you want to stay in that cycle.
You want to stay in the cycle of small actions, giving you small results, tiny little actions that you’re taking every single day that are gonna give you tiny little results. And those Tyler results deliver a little bit of confidence. Okay, so confidence is something that builds slowly over time. It does not happen all at once.
People think that it’s like flipping a light switch, like all of a sudden, you’re gonna get confident, and you’re going to be able to do everything and it doesn’t work that way. You have to create it. And it takes time you build confidence slowly, over time, like a habit, you know, habits take a long time, some people will say 30 days, some people say 90 days.
You know what? I just was doing a little bit of research on this. And then the experts out there really say that habits take as much time as they take. And it’s different for each person. And it depends on the habit and all these other factors. So there’s no number, but it takes time.
Let’s just all agree to that. Like it takes time to build a good habit. Just like that it takes time to build confidence, right? It’s not a light switch, you’re not just flipping on confidence and like then then you’re good to go.
So it looks like this, it looks like you keep showing up for yourself. You keep taking the action and you start getting little results. And this builds a little bit of confidence with each little win. And we acknowledge those wins. Sometimes they’re pretty small. That’s okay.
Feeling more confident, though, will actually make it easier for you then to take more aligned action. This is how we start to build a ton of confidence. We do it slowly over time, little by little when over when day after day, week after week, month after month. And then eventually you’re gonna get to this place where you just have all the confidence that If you need to achieve anything that you want.
Think about it like this. This is exactly what we do when we’re training for a marathon. So if you’ve only run a half marathon, the farthest you’ve ever run is 13.1 miles, and you start getting into marathon training, you’re probably going to feel pretty confident until you get to mile 14. You know, when you see that number 14 on the calendar, you’re like, oh, my long run is 14 off, I’ve never run that far before, that might feel a little daunting.
But you know, it’s pretty close to 13. So it may not be that bad. And then you do it. And then the next time it’s going to be 15. And then 16, 18, 20 miles, 22 miles. Like that’s where things start to get real for you. You know, how confident are you in week one of your marathon training? My guess is not very confident.
How confident are you by week number 16? After doing all the work, though, so you show up, week after week, you do the work, you do those long runs, you show up even though it’s hard. But you show up for yourself, you keep taking the aligned action, and you start getting the results. You’re hitting all these runs, you’re doing fine.
So how confident are you in week 16? I’m gonna say probably very much confident in week number 16. Right? It’s a game-changer. And listen, you guys with the running, you got this part down, you do. But when it comes to the food, people are like, well, it’s different. It’s not different.
Listen, think about losing 40 pounds as your marathon, okay? You’re not ready. In week number one, like you’re not going to have the confidence you need in week number one of your new food plan, right? You have to show up for yourself daily, stick to the plan, every day, even on the weekends, even on vacation.
Okay, maybe you indulge a little bit on vacation, I’ll give you that. That’s cool. But then you get back on track again. And you start to see the weight dropping, you lose a pound every week or so maybe more, maybe less, whatever. But you’re seeing results, because you’re showing up for yourself and you’re doing the work day after day, week after week, just like you do with your marathon training, it’s no different.
And then by week number 16, or 18, whatever of your new nutrition regimen, you know, you’re like, this is actually totally working for me, I’ve lost 20 pounds already, I’m feeling amazing. Running is better than ever, you’ll eventually get there, you’ll get to that 40 pound weight loss goal, if you don’t quit.
If you keep showing up for yourself, if you keep celebrating the wins. That’s that just take that same approach that we take to marathon training, copy, paste that over here to your food plan, and boom, you’re good to go. That’s how you do it. That’s how you build confidence. Okay.
The last part of this is that we will experience failures in our journey. Whether you’re training for a marathon or trying to lose 40 pounds, I’m telling you right now you’re going to experience some failures along the way.
We have to rethink failure. Because past failures can strip away your confidence that can erode your confidence if you continue to think about them as failures, or if you continue to think about yourself as a failure. Right? So for example, you know, you don’t stick to your food plan. Maybe this goes on for a few days, right? Big shocker.
Listen, everybody does this at some point. Maybe you just had a stressful week of work, whatever you there’s all kinds of excuses you can use. I always tell people that we don’t use those as excuses. But I’m just telling you, this is what people tell me.
Oh, I had a really stressful week of work. And so I couldn’t stick to my food plan. Yeah, you could have stuck to your food plan, but you chose not to because you were stressed out. And that’s how you deal with stress. You use food to deal with stress. Okay, that’s what’s really going on there.
But anyway, end of sidebar. So everybody does this. At some point, you gain a few pounds. This is just normal. It’s part of the process, right? But here’s what happens. A lot of you, you beat yourselves up. You feel like a failure. You say things like, this is never going to work for me.
I always do this. It’s too hard. I can’t do this. You’re thinking these things. You’re believing that this is never going to work for you. That is just a confidence killer right there. Okay, you didn’t fail. You learned what not to do. You learned that doing it this way doesn’t work for me. Stress eating does not work for me. How do I get through that?
You look at your little failures as learning opportunities. If you don’t, you’re never going to improve. You’re never going to get there. You’re never going to lose the weight and be able to keep it off, we have to look at our failures as learning opportunities. What’s the lesson to learn from that situation you’re in?
You have to learn how to persevere. Because listen, you are not a failure. You failed at that one thing that one time. Okay, big deal. Let’s learn our lesson, we get over it and we move on. Eyes forward, we don’t look back, we look forward. Every single success that has ever happened in the history of the world has been built upon a huge pile of failures.
What that says to me is that you cannot succeed without failure, you have to fail, failure is part of the process. And failures are never the end. So many people think, oh, I failed. So that’s the end, I’m going to quit no failures, just one more step on the path of success. It’s like one more rung on the ladder, that eventually leads to the top.
You have to climb all the rungs, you can’t skip any. So there’s going to be more failures ahead, by the way, so buckle up. Okay, so just to recap here, today, confidence, it’s a feeling that’s created by your thoughts, you got to work on your thoughts. We’ve got to stop thinking things like I can’t do this is never gonna work for me, this is too hard. I always stop all that.
Change your thinking, right? Start taking aligned action. Start doing things that are going to move you towards your goals. Aligned action means action that is in alignment with your long term goals. Start taking that action every single day, focus on everything you’ve achieved so far. Make a list of everything you’ve ever accomplished in your life that was hard, and go over that list regularly.
Remember that confidence builds over time. And we have to allow time for this process to take place. It’s not like flipping a light switch. Okay, and then anytime we do experience failure, and you will, you got to reframe that you got to look at it as a learning experience and not the end.
I have failed at so many things. So many times in my life. It’s ridiculous. And I keep showing up and I still fail at stuff. And I keep showing up for myself and I keep learning from those experiences and I keep moving on. Okay, and that is how you build confidence. And that is how you can create more confidence starting right now is just do the things I outlined in this podcast today. Cool. That’s your work this week. You got this. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean and I will talk to you soon.
This past weekend was the biggest running event of the year here in Cincinnati - Flying Pig Weekend! I did a lot of racing this weekend and let’s just say that things did not all go as …
Continue Reading about 228. Lessons Learned Flying Pig Weekend →
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Sports Nutritionist, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you properly fuel your body and your mind. So you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster, and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 228 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, The Weight Loss Coach for Runners today, Lessons Learned Flying Pig Weekend. So this past weekend was the biggest running event of the year here in Cincinnati, the Flying Pig Marathon weekend.
And I did a lot of racing this weekend. And we’ll just say that things did not all go as planned. But despite dealing with some very challenging situations, the whole weekend was actually a huge success both for the city for moving thousands and thousands of runners and for me personally.
So today here on the podcast, I’m going to share my experiences in dealing with these challenges. And then the lessons that I learned along the way, all during the Flying Pig weekend.
But first, if you’ve been thinking about improving your health, your fitness, your running, losing weight, and you want a ton of guidance and support to help get you there, consider coaching. The fact is coaching works where other methods fail, because it’s not about one particular diet or one particular exercise routine.
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My job is to make sure you get there. What good is making these lifestyle changes if they aren’t sustainable for you? This stuff has to be easy, and effortless for you. And it will be if you stick with it. And my job is to make sure you stick with it.
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Okay, so this past weekend was Flying Pig marathon weekend here in Cincinnati. The most exciting and most fun weekend of the year if you’re a runner. I don’t know about what other people think of this weekend, they might think it’s annoying, because there’s so many people here, but I personally think it’s like better than Christmas. So, so fun.
And listen, if you’re ever interested in coming to Cincinnati to do this race, you should. The Flying Pig was recently voted the number one marathon in the United States. According to USA Today’s 10 Best Reader’s Choice Awards. Very, very huge award to be awarded the number one marathon in the US according to readers, not according to some judges or something like that. These are actual people. So come and do the Flying Pig it’s super, super fun.
You don’t have to do the full marathon. There’s a whole weekend of events. I’m gonna talk about all the stuff that I did this weekend. But Cincinnati is just a great, great city for this kind of thing.
Cincinnati has had a very long history of a very active running community. We used to have this running store here, Bob Roncker’s Running Spot. And he started it back in the 80s and how to run in a group associated with that running store. And the running group became very big.
It was over 1500 people in the running group at one point. And we had to meet at different locations. And we had different pace groups. So we kind of broke it up into four different groups. And I’ve been a part of that group since like 2004, I think. And it’s just been an amazing community here in Cincinnati and Bob Roncker really helped to build that running community here in Cincinnati.
They sold the store, Bob sold the store, and the running group sort of splintered off into several other groups. And now Cincinnati has maybe five pretty big running groups that are in different parts of the community here in different parts of town. And they’re all pretty big.
You know, some of them might have four or 500 people some might have more, some might have a few hundred, but a great, great place for running and the Flying Pig marathon has been going on for a long time and just a super fun event.
They do a really, really good job and it’s a lot of fun. And everything started out Friday with the expo and the expo here is a great Expo super fun. They do it at the convention center. tons of vendors, great deals on gear and shoes.
It was really fun to see all my running friends, you know, people that are all excited about running over the weekend, everybody’s picking up their packets and their T-shirts and complaining about the T-shirts, because that’s what we do. Because we’re runners. Nobody’s ever happy. I kid, I kid. But seriously, it’s good to get these T-shirts, right? But it was so exciting.
It kicks off the whole weekend. And I spent a few hours at the expo just soaking it all up and talking with friends and just had such a fun time. And by the way, I did meet a few of the podcast listeners over the weekend.
And if you are somebody that came up to me and said hi, I just want to say thank you for being a listener. And thanks for coming up and saying hi to me, because it makes me feel good that there’s actual people out there that are listening to this stuff.
I’m sitting here in my office, talking into a microphone looking at some notes. And I’m just like, Is anybody out there listening? And it’s really cool when I see an actual person go, Hey, Patrick, I listen to your podcast and I’m like, Oh my gosh, that’s so great.
One person in particular, I’ll just call them Bailey, who I met in the corrals for the 10k. And we spent a little bit of time just hanging out waiting for the start of the race. And you know, he’s from Memphis, he came up here to do the Flying Pig. They’ve been up here before, him and his wife.
And they love Cincinnati and really had a great time. So Bailey, you’re one of those people who came up and said hi to me. And so I really appreciate that. And it was great to meet you. But the expo was super fun.
After the expo, I went down to run the one mile. So the one mile they do just kind of a fun run. I mean, some people do take it seriously. Because I was doing a whole series of events. So my weekend event was the three-way challenge, which is the one mile on Friday night. And then I did the 10k and the 5k on Saturday. And then Sunday was a half marathon.
So I was doing all the events. I was trying to save myself for Sunday, because I wanted to have a really good half marathon on Sunday. And I took it easy on Friday night. So I did the one mile and didn’t race it, I kind of ran comfortably hard because it’s hard not to it’s like I’m just running a mile. And everybody around you is running kind of fast.
So I held like a steady 8:30 pace or something like that for a mile. Felt good and finished, you know, fine, whatever hung out afterwards with some friends and so many people downtown. And they have a big celebration after each race and a big area with booths and food and drinks and all kinds of stuff.
And also the Reds were playing Friday night and Saturday, I think the Cincinnati FC Game, our soccer team, was playing. So there was a ton going on this weekend, it was just so much fun. So after the one mile I hung out with some friends ended up going home and then you know, took a shower and what not.
And I tried to kind of wind down but I was sort of wound up you know because you just run and then it’s you know, nine o’clock at night or whatever. And you’re just wired, you know, still so I stayed up for a little bit.
And the goal, my goal, my intention for Friday night was to get a really good night’s sleep. So I always make this point of getting a really good night’s sleep two days before the race because the night before the race, typically, you don’t get a very good night’s sleep. Right?
So I’ve done this a few times. And I know that so I’m like, okay, Friday, and I’m just gonna go to bed early, get a good night’s sleep. I did not get to bed really early. It was about 10:30. And I finally you know, went to bed and I’m like, It’s fine. I mean, I gotta get up at like, 4:30 tomorrow, but it’s fine. I like to get eight hours of sleep. I did not get eight hours of sleep. I’m gonna tell you that.
So I go to sleep. And I am awakened from a deep, deep sleep by the fire alarms going off in my building here. And basically the fire alarm saying there’s been a fire detected in your area, you need to evacuate the building immediately. And I was like, Oh my god.
So I jump out of bed throw on my shoes. I’m delirious and I’m going down the stairs and when everybody’s falling down the stairs in the building, there’s probably 200 or so units in this building. So a lot of people were all falling out onto the street. I’m completely delirious because I just fallen asleep and I gotta get up in a few hours here you know?
And this is like at 11:30, I’ve only been asleep for like an hour. I was out hard and so we had to stand outside and wait for the fire department to come to clear the building to make sure there wasn’t an actual fire or something, you know, horrible going on. There was no fire. I don’t know why the fire alarms went off. False alarm I guess.
So I finally went back upstairs now I’m wide awake. It’s midnight, and I ended up you know, not getting to sleep till about 12:30 or so knowing that I had to get up in like four hours. So Friday night’s sleep plan, thwarted, completely thwarted, like I’m just telling you that I felt so terrible Saturday morning when I got up.
So I get up, and I’m going to run the 10k and the 5k, I wanted to get a good parking spot, and there’s a parking garage right near the start and finish. And you gotta get there early to make sure you get a good spot, whatever. So I get down there early, got a great spot.
And I’m waiting around to start this 10k. And I am just delirious, I can’t think straight. I was supposed to meet some friends down there, can’t find them. And I’m just like, whatever, I am just going to do my best here today.
And that 10k was rough, kind of a warm weekend, you know, so Sunday was pretty warm. But it was kind of warm in the morning. And so I just decided, you know, this is just to get it done situation, I gotta run a 5k later, I gotta run a half tomorrow. So let’s just enjoy this 10k and not run too hard, which I didn’t, and struggled a little bit about halfway till about halfway through. And then I was fine. And I just was like, that’s fine.
I didn’t run fast. It was like an hour, a little over an hour, 1:04 something like that. So I just finished the 10k got done with that, you know, went to my car, changed my clothes. And I had to change clothes because I was smart, you know, I thought about that. I got dry clothes on because I was soaking wet, dry socks, it was amazing.
So I get ready standing in the crowds for the 5k getting ready to run that thing that the 10k started at 7am. The 5k was supposed to start at 9:00. So 8:30 or so I’m like in the corral, standing around waiting for the 5k to start. Within a few minutes before the start time people just start walking away. And we’re looking around like what’s going on?
Well, apparently, there’s a big storm coming. And so they told everybody to go take shelter, and that they’re going to delay the start of the race by an hour. And we were like, okay, they didn’t announce that. They just had a couple of people walking around. Well, I don’t know how many people are standing in line for that 5k,10,000 or something like that, it’s a huge, huge amount of people.
So they just went around and like kind of told everybody there’s a big PA system. I don’t know why they didn’t use that to tell everybody. Maybe they had to turn it off because there was lightning around. I don’t know, it was very confusing.
So anyway, we went to the parking garage, I went to my car, hung out with some friends. And I’m thinking I’m looking at the radar. And I’m thinking there’s no way this thing is going to start in an hour because the storm is going to be on top of us in an hour, which it was.
And at 10am The Flying Pig sent a text everybody’s saying that the race is going to be delayed until noon. Okay, so from 9am start time till noon is three hours later. I was like, oh my god, what is happening here?
So I went to my car, I watched some TV, I have a Tesla. So it’s got the Hulu in there, you know, Netflix and stuff like that. So I watched a little Hulu, that was nice. But I gotta tell you, I was so tired. So exhausted. So I just kind of leaned my seat back and I took like a 20 minute nap. That was amazing, by the way.
But still, it’s like, you know, now it’s only 11. Like, we still got another hour wait. And I was just like starting to get all stiff, you know, because you run a 10k. And then you sit around for three hours, you’re gonna get all stiff, right? Oh boy.
And the skies did open up. And it was crazy though the amount of rain that was on top of us and the lightning, which you would hear it and see it at the same time. So you know, it’s really, really close. It’s like right on top of you. Very good for the Flying Pig to delay the start of that race because it would have been very, very dangerous out there.
I’m just, I’m really glad they did that. I didn’t like sitting around, but it makes makes a lot of sense. All right. So that storm was moving very slowly. And so their timing of starting it at noon was a good idea. So we ended up starting the 5k at noon. And I was stiff by that point, you know, and that 5k was rough at the beginning.
The first mile was really challenging because there are so many people and I love people that run 5K’s but there’s a lot of people that walk and a lot of people that have strollers and stuff and they don’t line up quite properly.
So a lot of people were lined up with strollers and walking up at the front, which made it very difficult. My first mile was very, very slow. It’s like a 10:30 and I was like oh my god, this is ridiculous. My second two are like 9:45 and 9:00’s what I was shooting for, you know, just hard to get there with that many people, but I wasn’t too worried about I was like you know what? Who cares? Like I’m so exhausted right now and stiff.
So I just tried to have fun with it and it was fun. It really was. It’s a fun little course you go through this huge transit tunnel like under the city. And so it was fine. But after the 5k, or towards the end of the 5k, I started developing this blister on the side of my big toe. And it was really hurting bad like it was killing me by the end of the race. So I finished that.
Finally, I’m done with that. I get home, take a shower, and had to deal with this blister. So I get these calluses on the side of my big toe. If you’re somebody that’s grossed out by this kind of stuff. Don’t listen to this part. But I’m just going to tell you that if you’re a runner, you probably already get this.
So no big deal, I get these calluses on the side of my big toes. And when they get kind of big, I file them down so they don’t do what they did, which is they’ll rub against your shoe. And then it’ll kind of develop a blister underneath the callus. So you get this big callus and then a blister underneath, it is not a good situation. It’s very, very painful.
I’ve dealt with these during Ultras before, never during like a 10k or a 5k or something like that. And I don’t know why it happened. Pretty weird. But anyway, I was just like, well, I got to deal with this. So get home. I tried to file that thing down, which I did and helped it out a little bit.
But it was super painful, like walking was painful. And I was like, I don’t even know how I’m gonna run tomorrow. I wasn’t, you know, I was tired. I knew I was going to be exhausted and all that. But now I’m concerned about this blister. Oh my gosh, whatever.
The rest of the day on Saturday was kind of busy, I had stuff to do. And I had lost three hours of my day because of this rain delay, you know. And I finally didn’t get to bed till like 11 o’clock on Saturday night, right, I gotta get up at four o’clock to run this thing on Sunday.
And I knew I wasn’t gonna get a good night’s sleep on Saturday night, which I didn’t get a really good night’s sleep. So, I wake up at 4am on Sunday, make some coffee. And then you get my butt down there again, I got that same parking spot, which I felt really good about because I got there nice and early.
And so my original goal for the half was somewhere between like a 2:00 a 2:10. That’s kind of what I was shooting for. Maybe though, I did have a back pocket goal. That’s a goal that I don’t tell anyone about. And so my back pocket goal was a sub-two. And I’ve done a lot of sub-two halves. It’s just been a minute.
And I was thinking I might be able to do this. But it all depends on how the weekend went. And it’s pretty safe to say that the weekend did not go according to plan. Things kind of went awry, which is fine. So that 2:10, I was like I don’t know if this is going to be even doable.
So the lack of sleep, the blister or the running I did I made a decision Saturday night. Before going to bed. I was like you know what, tomorrow, I am just going to run the half with my girlfriend Jill.
Jill was an official pacer for the Flying Pig this year. And she’s done this before. She’s like a pro at it. So she was pacing the 2:20 half group. And I was like that’s cool I can do 2:20. When you’re a pacer though you have to hold a sign on the stick that says the pace that you’re going to be running and there are some balloons on there. It’s a little bit heavy, you know. So it’s nice to have a couple of people.
So her and her good friend were there to pace the 2:20 group. And so I was like, you know what, I’m just going to run with you guys today. I’m tired. You know this, my foot is an issue right now I just need to get this thing done. And we’ll just have fun.
2:20 seemed very doable. And Jill and I, we can both run faster than that. So as an official pacer, you have to or you’re supposed to pace a group that’s around 20 minutes slower than your actual pace. So this is perfect for both of us because we can both run about a 2 hour half at this point.
And let me tell you something about Jill. Jill is the Assistant Director of the Air Force marathon so she worked the Flying Pig Expo all day Friday. Then she drove to Indianapolis, which is two hours away.
She drove there Friday night because she was running that Indi mini half marathon in Indianapolis Saturday morning. And that’s the one where you get to run on the Indy 500 track. Super cool event.
So she runs a 2:02 half marathon on Saturday. Finishes that, drives back to Cincinnati another two hours in the car. And then she got up on Sunday morning to pace the pig half group and she had a huge smile on her face the whole time. So she’s kind of a badass.
So 6:30am is the start time for the Flying Pig and at 6:30am it was like 65 degrees and 93% humidity. It was brutal and it was supposed to get up to 88, and I’m telling you at at 93% humidity is is very challenging conditions to be running a marathon or half marathon.
So we start running, 6:30 gun goes off, great. We’re out there, we’re having fun. We’re running. And Jill’s pacing partner was dealing with some cramps or something early on, and we lost her around mile three, like she just kind of started to fall back and she couldn’t keep up. So Jill was really glad that I decided to run with her. So she didn’t have to do this alone, because it’s a lot of pressure to do that by herself.
You know, I helped her carry the little stick and stuff like that a little bit. And you know what, we had so much fun. We were laughing, we were talking to everyone around us, we’re lifting people up.
We are, you know, screaming at people in a good way where there’s lots of first timers out there. And some people were freaking out a little bit because it was hot, and it was humid. And people were, you know, getting a little bit concerned, which you know, you should be.
There was a couple of water stations that ran out of water early on. So people were standing in line waiting for a cup of water, because they were they were filling them as fast as they could, but they just couldn’t keep up with the demands.
There’s so many people that needed water early. But I have to say that, despite all that we were out there encouraging people. And you know, Jill and I have both done this race many times. So we were both just having so much fun. And really, this is the most fun I’ve ever had during a race.
I cannot tell you the last time I had this much fun running a race, especially the Flying Pig. It’s a tough race. It’s not easy. The first eight miles are kind of hilly and but once you get up there, that’s a lot of downhill finish, which is nice. And Jill’s pacing was spot on. She is a pro by the way. We finished it at 19:54, within six seconds. Are you kidding me? It was amazing.
And she was very appreciative that I hung with her for the duration since her partner wasn’t able to keep up. So everything worked out beautifully there. And once we finished, we crossed the finish line. And we’re in the post race celebration area, the sun came out. It was kind of cloudy in the morning, which was good, it helped keep the heat down, but the sun came out. And it got really hot really fast, like around 80 degrees.
So for the people that were running the full marathon, they were only about halfway done. You know, and most of our friends who did the full really struggled with the last half of that race. We waited around for a lot of people at the end.
And people were kind of miserable, but everybody was in good spirits. They were like, you know what? We ran. We did our best the conditions out there. So it was really hard. But we did our best and that’s all you can do in these situations. Right?
Okay, so that was the half marathon day and then post race we met up with some friends we talked about our races we went out and got some pizza and ice cream. Yes, I made a very intentional decision a couple of weeks before the event to eat some pizza and ice cream after this weekend’s running because I was like I do this like twice a year why not celebrate this event and we’ll go to my favorite pizza place here in Cincinnati, Dewey’s love it, so good.
And then we’re gonna get some Jenni’s ice cream. Jenni’s is a local ice cream vendor around here. Amazing, crazy flavors. So race day, I got some pizza. Normally, I eat a lot of pizza, I couldn’t really eat much. And just was like, I had a few pieces and I was done.
And then the same thing with the ice cream. Normally I get a pint of ice cream. I eat the pint of ice cream, the whole thing. And I was like, I had like half of it and I was fine. I didn’t really need any more. You know, my, my food binging has really just, I don’t really do that anymore.
Because I eat some pizza or eat some ice cream and it’s okay, you know, it feels pretty good. And it’s tasty. But I’m like, you know, I’m done. I don’t need a whole lot of that. So that was good. I felt good about that. I felt in integrity with myself by not going completely nuts on pizza and ice cream. Because that used to be my jam.
Okay, so a few lessons learned. Number one, you’ve got to plan ahead, but you’ve got to go with the flow. You plan ahead and then you got to go with the flow. I trained hard to season I was ready for a pretty decent race on Sunday. But I really had to listen to my body and go with the flow.
I could have really pushed it on Saturday and really pushed it on Sunday, but I think I’ve made the right decisions you know, considering blister and by the way, the blister did not hurt me during the half marathon at all. Like it didn’t bother me at all. 100% fine.
It did hurt for a couple days afterwards. But now it’s almost completely healed, which is good. But it didn’t bother me. I was like wow, that’s amazing. But I listened to my body, I was super exhausted, I had the blister, whatever. But I did my best.
The important thing is that I feel good about my decisions, I feel good about the way I raced these different races, considering what was going on the exhaustion, and the lack of sleep, and the delirium and all these other things, right. So I feel good about my decisions, I’m in integrity with myself with my decisions, especially on Sunday.
The next lesson I learned is that, you know, you shouldn’t put timelines on your goals. And this may sound a little counterintuitive, because if people say, Oh, you need a goal, it has to be you have to have a time to complete this goal.
But when you put a timeline on your goal, especially like running goal, and you don’t hit it on that date, it can be incredibly frustrating, disappointing, you know, instead, set a goal, do the work you need to do each day to move toward that goal. And then eventually, you will get there.
I talk to my weight loss coaching clients about this all the time. Like don’t put a timeline on your weight loss goal. Instead, focus on doing the work each day to get there, and you will eventually get there. Is it going to take three months or six months or a year, who cares? It doesn’t matter.
What’s important is like you’re changing in the process, you’re becoming a different person in the process. And eventually you will get there if you stay focused. So I’ve got a goal of doing this sub-two half again, like I said, I’ve done it before, but it’s been a minute, but I’m gonna try again this fall, and I’m not disappointed about my weekend.
I’m happy that I did what I did this weekend. I’m not disappointed. I didn’t hit that goal on this particular day. You know, this was not the weekend to go for that goal. Clearly, right? The Universe sent me lots of signs, telling me this is not the weekend for that.
And the biggest lesson I learned is that, you know, running is fun. And running can be so much fun. We had so much fun running this hometown marathon, half-marathon, 5k, 10k, one mile, whatever. And especially on Sunday, it just felt light and easy. You know, we didn’t take ourselves too seriously.
The next race that you do, I want to encourage you to focus on having fun. Do what you need to do to make it fun. Leave the headphones at home, talk to people, listen to people, get encouraged by the crowd, encourage other people, crack some jokes. Have fun out there, talk to people from out of town.
Ask people where they’re from. Just enjoy it. You know, the training is the hard part. We train from January till May. And we run in all kinds of terrible weather. It’s months of hard work. The race is the celebration, the race is the victory lap. So enjoy it. Have fun with it. But I really have this new love of running. And that half marathon on Sunday really got me there. It was amazing. Super, super fun. That’s my favorite lesson this weekend, is that running can be amazingly fun.
Okay, so that’s my recap of the weekend. Those are lessons I learned. Come to Cincinnati do the Flying Pig next year. It’s going to be amazing. It always is. It’s a super fun weekend. And if you do come out here, look for me and say hi. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all, keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
