Day 2: Running Reignited: 5 Day Challenge

Welcome to Day 2 of the Running Reignited Challenge—you made it!

Yesterday, we focused on the WHO:
Who you’ve been as a runner.
Who you are now.
And who you want to become.

Today, we shift into the WHAT.

❓ WHAT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING IN YOUR BODY?

What’s really behind the fatigue, slower paces, and stubborn weight that seem to show up after 40?

What if the problem isn’t your effort…

It’s that you’ve been training like you're still in the first phase of your running life—when your hormones, nervous system, and recovery needs were completely different.

In this second phase of life, your body responds differently to stress—and more effort doesn’t equal more results anymore.

In fact, too much intensity may be the very thing holding you back.

✅ TODAY’S ACTION: GO SLOW TO GET STRONG

Your main focus today: Go for a run at a truly easy effort—no more than a 2–3 out of 10.

Here’s what that should feel like:

• Relaxed, steady movement
• You could easily hold a conversation with a friend
• It should feel almost too easy—like you’re doing less than you’re used to
• And yes—walking breaks are absolutely OK if needed 

🎯 The goal is to tune into your body and notice how it feels when you're not pushing.

OPTIONAL ADD-ON: Try 3–4 strides after your easy run.

These are short bursts (15–20 seconds) at about an 8 out of 10 effort—not an all-out sprint.

Rest about a minute between each one, or until you feel recovered and ready to go again.

The goal is quick, light, and smooth—not exhausting.

📥 You’ll find space for reflection in your workbook:
Access Day 2 Materials ➝ DOWNLOAD HERE

In today’s call, we’ll break down the WHAT:

💥 What’s actually happening in your body after 40
💥 What kind of effort helps you get stronger (and what doesn’t)
💥 What’s really going on with your hormones, nervous system, and fatigue

When you're done,

✨ What did you notice when you slowed down today?
✨ How did it feel—physically and mentally?

Your insight might be exactly what another woman needs to hear today.

You don’t need to push harder to get stronger.
You just need to listen differently—and train with intention.

You’ve got this!

Thanks for Listening!!

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

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:01

All right, y'all. Welcome to day two of the Running Reignited Challenge. I am so glad that all of you have decided to come back and join me today. Yesterday we explored who you are as a runner, who you have been, and who you are now, and who you are choosing. To be moving forward and also the stories that you're ready to release. And I think that was really a big part of yesterday. Oh, I know it was a really big part of yesterday, and I'm loving some of the comments that you all are dropping in the chat. So those of you that are just joining us live. Please let me know. any questions or reflections from day one? What is one of your takeaways from day one? And I'm gonna read some of the ones that are in the chat here. For anybody that's catching the replay or the recording of this, I'm not crazy. Yes, exactly. You are not crazy. The symptoms that you are. Experiencing are very real and you are not alone. Most women are experiencing some form of these things that negativity is normal, not just me and I can do it. Absolutely. Monique, what gift will I give my older self, Julie? And I'm so glad you put that in here, Anna.'cause I wanted to bring that up. At the beginning of today's talk, because yesterday we, that was at the end, right? but this was definitely something that multiple people put in the Facebook group as something that stood out to them. And that was the comment that I made yesterday at the end of the call, which is. Whatever you're doing right now in your life is going to affect your 80-year-old self. And so by you showing up this week, by you being here, by you choosing to get out and be active and run and lift weights and do the things that are gonna help improve your health. You are giving a gift to your 80-year-old self, so what gift do you want to give yourself? And that was such a big takeaway that so many people had from yesterday's call, which is makes me really happy. I can improve my results by improving my thoughts. Absolutely, Marsha. And I want you guys to see,'cause yesterday we talked a lot about thoughts and beliefs, which are super critical and super key as you now understand. And it's also about actions, right? And so sometimes, and that's what we're gonna be talking about, throughout the rest of the week. Are those actions that we need to take? Because sometimes the actions need to come first, right at, we remember that the circle, the thought wheel that I talked about yesterday was that thoughts lead to feelings. Feelings lead to actions. Actions lead to results, and then they go right back to thoughts, right? And the cool thing about that wheel. That is that it doesn't have to start with a thought, right? It can start with an action and sometimes that's what's necessary. Sometimes by taking action and getting a result, then we can start to start a new thought loop, right? So sometimes action is the way to. Get more motivated to, to feel, to actually get the ball rolling, right? It doesn't always have to start with your thoughts, but yes, improving your thoughts can definitely improve your results. I took away how much time I dedicate to my health and fitness. Awesome. And I would love, all of you to reflect on that as well, whatever your number was. We were seeing everything from one to, I think 25, 29, hours per week that people were spending on health and fitness. And so it's really all over the board. So look at that number, whatever number you had yesterday, and ask yourself, am I happy with that number? Yes or no? is this a good number for me? Do I think that I'm spending enough time on this? Do, am I spending too much time on this? Is it like, where do I fall with that? Because there's not one ideal number that everyone needs to be striving towards, because again, it depends on who you are. It depends on what your goals are. Someone that's training for a 5K is not going to spend as much time as someone training for a 100 mile race.'cause they're different goals. it wouldn't make sense for them to be training the same way. And that's really important, but know where you fall with that. With that, how satisfied are you right now with your running, your health, your fitness, the time, the energy, the effort that you're putting forth. And if it's not a nine or a 10. Then there's room for improvement, right? By journaling, I've noticed I've been papering over ignoring the impact my symptoms are having on me. I was trying to be positive, but it's time to handle the symptoms directly. That's so powerful, right? Because this is one of those things that we are taught, just be positive. Like just change your thoughts and hopefully that's not what you guys took away from yesterday. it's not just about being positive, it's oh. Allowing for the full range of human thoughts and emotions. That is where our power lies. And knowing that we still have the power to choose where our attention goes. Those negative thoughts are normal, right? We still get to choose whether or not we wanna give attention to them or not. What I tell myself I become, yes, it's prompting me to look at where else I'm spending my time. All such good things. So thank you all for sharing that. I'm so glad. That you all had some of these really powerful takeaways. So whatever came up for you yesterday when you were doing those journaling exercises, whether you felt clear and certain emotional empowered, or discouraged, or frustrated or uncertain, all of that is welcome here. You are exactly where you need to be. And so today, yesterday we talked about who, if you haven't done that yet, I strongly encourage you to go catch up with yesterday's activity and yesterday's training session.'cause it was a very powerful session. That's going to set the tone for the rest of the week. But if you're here now and you haven't gone to that's totally okay. Also. So today we're talking about what's actually happening in your body and why training the old way might be keeping you stuck. Okay, so there's that common myth, and we started to talk a little bit about this yesterday of in order to get better as a runner, I just need to what? Run harder. Push more. No pain, no gain. Anybody ever. Believe or say these things to themselves before, gimme a yes in the chat. If you've ever thought to yourself, in order to get better, I just have to do more. I have to push harder. No pain, no gain. Gimme a yes in the chat. Oh yeah. Yep. And it's so interesting because these, that kind of attitude is very celebrated in our culture, right? That sense of accomplishment and doing more. Is very celebrated in our culture in lots of different ways. Not just in running, not just in fitness, but in all areas. How many of you, when you sit on the couch, you feel guilty? Anybody ever done that? Anybody ever have that feeling? I see people raising their hands over there. Yep, yep. Oh yeah, exactly right? Because we are taught that rest is lazy. Rest is worthless. You should be doing more. What? Why aren't you being productive? Y'all, I can speak on this because I have struggled with this also, and I'm not like on the other hump of it. I was so proud of myself over Mother's Day. I sat my butt on the couch, I sat my butt on my little chair out by my pool, and I was like, it's okay to rest. But this is a constant thing that I have to remind myself of. because it has been programmed in me for over four decades now, that being productive is the best way for me to gain acceptance, for me to gain approval, for me to gain a sense of belonging, right? This is tied to so much, so many deeper things, right? But that old model of us just pushing harder and doing more is leading women in midlife. And post menopause to feel more fatigued, to recover, slower to gain weight. And I know those of you that filled out that survey in the Facebook group, those are all the things y'all have been feeling. Slower paces, more aches and pains, unwanted weight gain, because the traditional training model was not built for women in midlife. It was not built for women in perimenopause and menopause because your body is now playing by different rules. The things that used to work when you were 20 do not work anymore because your body is different. Your hormone profile is different. The way that your body responds to exercise and recovery and nutrition is different, and that is not a bad thing. That is a normal. Evolution. Our bodies are just evolving. Think about some of the things that used to bother you when you were 20. Do those things still bother you today? No. Like some of the thing. What about when you are a teenager, y'all? I have two teenagers. I have a 15-year-old and a 12-year-old, and some of the things that they come home and tell me about, I'm like. Who cares? like why do you care about this? But I cared right when I was a teenager, there was like, so and so said this thing and it was like the biggest thing. It was, such a big deal. And it, you look at it now as a 44-year-old woman, and I'm like, why in the hell did I care about what so and so said about me or about that thing that we then internalized to mean something negative about us? we don't see things the same way. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. But our bodies are different too, and we have to start training in a way that supports our evolving and our changing bodies because your hormones are not sabotaging you. I know it feels like that sometimes. It feels like our bodies wants are sabotaging us, but your hormones are not sabotaging you. They're simply shifting. But most women have not been taught how to shift with them, right? Because people don't know. And like we talked about yesterday, this is unfortunately a very under-researched area. Women in midlife and beyond. There is not a lot of research money that goes to this population. More is coming. When you look at research dollars and the information that we now know about perimenopause and menopause, it is so small compared to the research dollars going to other areas. Especially when you compare women to men. Compare men to women, then we have a small right budget. I should have looked up these numbers because that would've been more effective. But when you look at how much research is devoted to women. Then there's even a smaller amount devoted for women in midlife, very much smaller and then even less devoted to active women in men in midlife, because most of the research done out there, a lot of it right now is done on a sedentary and obese population because the majority of our population, as sad as it is overweight or obese. Over 60% of Americans are overweight or obese, so that's where the research dollars are going. So they're not doing as much research on us, us runners, us active women that are out there doing things to try to improve our health. Okay? And this is why this area is very exciting right now, because finally people are starting to pay attention and more research is being done. So new things are coming out almost daily, which is fantastic. But what we un have to understand right now is that we have to shift. We have to start shifting with our hormones because training like you're 25 is going to backfire because your body is not broken. It's just different. All right, so yesterday we talked about how hormones affect your nervous system. We talked about how estrogen and progesterone are declining during perimenopause and how they're basically non-existence after menopause, right?'cause our body stops producing estrogen and progesterone after menopause. And so the way that those hormones are shifting affects your nervous system. And your nervous system dictates everything that goes on in your body, especially how well you adapt to training. So there's, I like to think about stress. We talked a little bit yesterday about stress. We're gonna be talking more about that today and the rest of this week because stress is not a bad thing. We have to stress the body if we want to change and improve. And so if we wanna get faster, if we wanna improve our endurance, if we wanna feel better, if we wanna lose weight, all of those things are a change that we want. So we have to apply a certain level of stress to the body so that the body will adapt. Okay, now. Here's the thing that a lot of people don't recognize or don't want to admit, because people like to think of running as in like its own bucket over here, and then the rest of life in, its in a different bucket over here, right? They're not two different silos. You have one body and everything that you do affects your body. So whether that's. Training stress, like running, lifting, weights, cross training, swimming, whatever you're doing over here for training or life stress, like that emotional conversation that you had with your mom or your daughter, the way that your boss is making you feel at work, finances, all those things, plus hormone shifts, all of it goes into the same stress bucket. That stress bucket is your body, right? And so we have one stress bucket, and you guys are gonna hear me talking about this throughout the rest of the week as well, okay? Because whether it's training stress, or life stress or ho hormone shifts, it's all going into that stress bucket. And when that stress bucket overflows and the amount of stress that we have outweighs how well our body is able to handle that stress. Recovery and progress stall and adaptation is not possible, and that is why our, we need the right amount of stress and the right amount of recovery so that we can actually make progress and move forward. Because what we want is adaptation and what so many of us are experiencing in this phase of life is accumulation. We are just accumulating stress. Going out and running is accumulating stress on the bodies. But if you're not recovering and adapting, your body's not adapting. If you're not recovering well, if you're not giving your body proper nutrition, if you're not resting, then your body's not actually adapting. So you're accumulating stress without the adaptation, and that stinks, right? You are not just someone sitting on the couch. You are someone that is active, that is out there that is trying to improve your health, and you should be rewarded for that. And that is my goal this week, is to teach you how to do things differently so that you'll actually start to see progress, that your body will actually start adapting versus just accumulating more stress in your stress bucket. Okay, because training is a stress on the body, but this is good because you need stress in order to improve and adapt. But on the other hand, if you have too much stress, it just breaks you down. How many of you have ever had a time that you are under a lot of stress in your life? Maybe you had a deadline or something coming up and you ended up growing from it, like it was a good situation. Like you can say yeah, that was pretty stressful, but like I'm glad that I did it because I grew, I learned a lesson. Yeah. How many of you have also had a very stressful time in your life that broke you down? We've all experienced this also. Yes, exactly. Yes. It's all stress, but it's a matter of how much stress. Yeah, helping my dad both broke me down and helped me grow. Yeah. And sometimes we grow from the breakdowns, right? If we can look at them the right way. That is true. And there's a lot of runners, unfortunately, that have had the breakdown, whether it's burnout or injury, and then they learn the lesson and they come back stronger if they learn the lesson, right? If not, that's where those nasty recurring injuries keep coming in. Okay. So we can allow stress to help us grow and to make us stronger, or we can allow stress to break us down and burn us out. Make sense? So stress itself is not bad. Stress is good. We just have to modulate and figure out, how much we need some good stress, but we also need to make sure that we're, we are recovering. Adapting from that stress. So when we have too much stress added to our stress bucket, the nervous system perceives a threat.'cause I remember yesterday, your nervous system is always trying to keep you safe and trying to keep you alive. So if you are doing too much intensity, if you are running every single day and you are pushing yourself really hard on all of your runs and you are not getting enough recovery, guess what? Your nervous system sees it as a threat. I am not safe, and it activates the kill switch. Your nervous system is like a circuit breaker. Your body flips it to protect you, not to punish you. A lot of us, like I'm not getting the results I want, my body must be punishing me. no. Your body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do and this is a beautiful thing. So your body is not underperforming. It's protecting you. And when we think of it that way, can we be a little bit grateful for it? I know that's a, I know that's a jump, right? and I get it. That's a jump, right? But when we realize that our body's really just trying to protect us, can we say, thank you body for doing your job, appreciate you and. I'm gonna start training a little bit differently now so that we can start to get the results that I want, right? But remember that your nervous system has to feel safe because when your nervous system feels like it's under a threat, you are going to hold on to weight because your body, again, is trying to protect you. You are not going to be building muscle. Your body's gonna actually break itself down because too much stress actually breaks the body down. It is during rest and recovery that your body builds stronger. You guys are gonna hear me say that every single day, okay? Because it's the opposite of what we think. It's not during your training sessions. That's not when you get stronger. You get stronger during rest and recovery. Yeah, maybe not always grateful, but respectful of it. That's a good way to look at it too, Sarah. I like that. So what is the solution? What do we have to do? Before I jump into that, I wanna tell you a little bit of a story about why the nervous system is so important to me, and we're gonna, I'll talk a little bit more about this on day four also, but my husband, Kevin, he's not here today. He's a full-time teacher. So he's at school. but he was a good example, and this is one of the first things that. Made me dive into the science of the nervous system and really understand. I'm a physical therapist. Yes, I have my doctorate. I know the nervous system, all of that. But like my mind was always in the orthopedic world, right? It's okay, the knee hurts. What exercises do we have to do to fix the knee? Important, don't get me wrong. And we're talking about strength training tomorrow. All right? So that is very important. But Kevin was a runner, very good runner. He is been a runner since he was 14, ran division one cross country in college. Went on and he was like winning marathons, all right? Everything was going great. His niece who would, his knee would hurt and I'd give him some exercises to do and we'd fix his name. Everything was fine until one day. It wasn't until one day. Kevin's stress bucket overflowed to the point that we never would've guessed, and I never will forget getting the phone call from his principal. I was at a gas station in between patients and his principal said to me, Angie, we think Kevin's just had a seizure. And I froze. I had, I could not believe what I was hearing. I. He had literally just won a marathon six weeks before that. He was in the best shape of his life, right? And so we went through all the tests, they couldn't find anything. All the tests came back normal. So I dove into the research'cause I'm not okay with that. I'm, I gotta have answers here, right? I gotta figure out what the heck is going on. And through extensive research, I came to the conclusion that. It was stress. It was chronic sleep deprivation, and his body was under so much stress because he was staying up till midnight grading papers, waking up at 5:00 AM had stress of school and family, and our little girls and all the things. He's a wonderful dad. He was trying to do all the things and burn the candle at all The ends, not just two ends, all the ends, right? His stress bucket overflowed, and unfortunately for him it ended up in seizures. For some runners, it ends up in an injury. For other runners, they just get burnt out. For some runners, they develop chronic pain or chronic fatigue or chronic illness, but all of that is because the load on the body is too much for the body to actually handle. And this is one of the reasons that we really dove into the science of performance and recovery especially, and. I already told you, the good news is that, Kevin's running a hundred mile races now. That's a lot of stress on the body, right? But we've figured out how to make it so that he can do that in a healthy way. I. He prioritizes rest and recovery and easy days. And that brings me to the what that we need to be doing as women in midlife, because we all know we've got a lot of stress going on, right? Lots of things happen in our lives. Some people have aging parents, some people have teenagers, some people have younger kids. Some people have kids that are having their own babies, and now you're a grandparent, like all sorts of stuff going on. And they're good and they're bad and they're in between. So what do we need to do? What does our training need to look like? There's something called polarized training. How many of you have heard of the term polarized training or the 80 20 rule? Give you a yes in the chat. Cool. All right. All right, cool. A lot of those yeses, those are all my team. Those are all of our real life renters, teammates. I love it. love it. Okay. Do you understand what it is? Do you understand what it is? Like it's a difference if you have heard about it versus actually understanding it. So how many of you, when you go out for your normal run, on a scale of one to 10, how hard is that run? One means super duper easy. I could go all day long. 10 is super duper hard. I can only sustain this for a very short amount of time. What would you say, what does like a normal run feel like for you guys? Gimme a number in the chat. I vary. My runs three to five, two to three, eight and a half. Seven. Three. Five to seven? Yep. Three. All right. Cool. Awesome. So what is polarized training? Polarized training. So if you think about a line and like the two poles like are the ends of the line. It means that most of our training needs to happen at the two extremes. Okay. We need to have our easy days actually be easy and our hard days actually be hard. And most runners before they understand this concept are somewhere in the middle. Most runners go out and they're somewhere in that five to seven eight range.'cause they're pushing themselves at least to that medium to moderate effort level, if not harder on every single run. And that middle gray zone is too hard for your body to actually recover, but not hard enough for you to actually get faster. So you end up expending a lot of energy without actually seeing the benefits. So polarized training instead is doing most of your runs at an easy pace, which is like a two to three outta 10, and then a little bit at a hard level. 7, 8, 9, outta 10. Okay. Because when you do it that way, on your easy days, your body's actually able to recover. And on your hard days, you're actually pushing the body hard enough for your body to adapt. Okay, so why does slowing down actually work? This is, if you've ever heard the term like slow down to go faster, run slower to get faster, that doesn't make sense, right? But it actually does work. Why does slowing down work? Because your nervous system feels safe. Your nervous system is oh, we're good here. Yeah, We as humans evolved as hunter gatherers. So there were people that would go out on the planes and just run around all day long looking for food, right? So we as humans are built for endurance, and we as women are even more built for endurance. Even more so than men, the way that our muscle fibers are, designed and the way that our body processes energy. Women are naturally more endurance based athletes versus men.'cause men have more strength and power than women do. We can develop it for sure, and that's, we're gonna talk about that tomorrow too. But going easy, slowing down allows our nervous system to feel safe. It gives our body a chance to actually improve endurance. It gives our body a chance to use the energy systems more effectively. AKA metabolize fat, burn fat more effectively. It allows your hormones to be more imbalanced. Remember what we talked about yesterday with the sympathetic versus the parasympathetic nervous system? Yes. Running is still running, You still have to do some mobilization, but hard running is going to push you a lot more into that sympathetic response versus the parasympathetic. It's not like you're in parasympathetic mode during the run, but your body can shift out of that into parasympathetic mode much quicker, much easier. Okay. And it's also more sustainable. How many of you, when you go out to run, and a lot of you that said that motivation was a problem, right? I just need more motivation or I'm feeling like less motivated. How easy is it for you to go out and do hard things every single day? What? Regardless of what it is, if you know there's like a hard conversation that you need to have at work or with a family member. You have to like, can you do that every day? You are gonna burn out pretty quickly. So if running feels hard every time you go out and run, of course you don't have motivation. Of course, it's not sustainable, right? Because you're using motivation and willpower to try to get yourself out the door, when in reality your body needs something different. It makes total sense. Again, there's nothing wrong with you. You've just been taught to push harder and go faster and do more when your body actually just needs to slow down. And this is the weird part, and I'm gonna have like my real life runners team members here attest to this, right? Because we talk about inside the team, we talk about allowing the magic to happen.'cause it seems like magic, right? You are telling me that I can run easy most of the time. Go hard some of the time, but basically make feel comfortable on the majority of my runs. And then on race day, I'm just going to hit a PR and I say, yes, that is what I'm asking you to believe. And then it happens. Gimme who's, in my team. Gimme a something in the chat if you've experienced this. The magic right. A hundred percent true. Yes, indeed. That is exactly what's happened. And did you have your doubts last Sunday? Absolutely. I love that you guys are here. Did you guys have your doubts right? When you first heard this concept? You're like, what's that girl smoking? she's on something over there, right? She had a little crazy, I was a skeptic. Of course, yes. Because it doesn't make logical sense, and I understand that. But you know what it does? It's backed by science. There's lots of research on this. It's backed by science I, we understand and phy physiology, human physiology. That's why everything that we do here is science-based. Okay? Running slower helps you run faster because it allows your body to adapt instead of just accumulate stress and fight. Running slower, I'm gonna say it again, helps you run faster because it allows your body to adapt instead of fight, you're actually allowing your body to reap the benefits of your harder days. And when you go easy, most of the time, you can go harder on your hard days. Because you're, you have more energy, right? Because you're not depleting your energy every single time you exercise. Yes, Monique, even if you're already quote unquote slow, which I will ask you to challenge that idea that you're slow, right? Because you might think you're slow, but I might not and might not. Marsha might not. Slow is a relative term. But yes, because, and one of the things that it's important for you to understand is that your body does not know pace or distance. All your body understands is time and effort. I. And that is why we go by effort around here. That's why I told, I asked you how hard does it feel on a scale of one to 10. I'm not saying you need a fancy GPS watch and you need to be in this pace range and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm asking you to reconnect to your body and actually start to understand the signs that your body's trying to give you. And it's not easy, I will tell you that, but it's 100% worth it. Yeah. Thank you, Marsha. I hated seeing those slower paces when I first tried it. You know why? Our ego, it's all in the, it's all in our head. Yeah. Because we have this idea of I wanna be a faster runner. In order to be a faster runner. I gotta run fast all the time. I just gotta push the pace. I just gotta practice that pace. If I just keep doing it, my body will get used to it. So it is a mind thing, again, going back to day one, right? The brain, the stories.'cause you are telling yourself the story that this is not right. That this means you are a slow runner, that this isn't gonna make you get worse. Oh my gosh. I love the chat that's happening right now. Me too. Me too. Yeah. I had to cover my face, so I didn't actually see the paces, but it worked. So are you willing to deal with the mental discomfort? This is a question that only you can answer. Are you willing to deal with the mental discomfort of going slower and what that might mean about you in order to get the physical benefit of actually improving your endurance, getting faster, losing weight? All of those things that you all say that you want requires a little bit of mental discomfort. You have to see some paces that are slow on your watch. You might even have to walk, and I know there's a lot of runners that have a hard time wrapping their heads around that if I walk, that means I'm not a runner, anybody. I'm not really a runner. If I take walking breaks, real runners don't take walking breaks. Anybody have any of those thoughts? In the past, maybe. Maybe you're over those now, but have you ever had that thought at some point in time, right? Mental discomfort. Are you willing to go through the mental discomfort in order to get the physical benefits? Or do you wanna hold onto your ego and keep pushing those paces and keep feeling getting slower and slower with every year that passes having more aches and pains? Slower times. More fatigue. More fatigue. Not just during your runs, but throughout your whole day. Is it worth it? So that's why today's activity was to have you just go out for 10 to 15 minutes and if you have an, if you had a different run on your plan, that's fine. You can go out however long you want. But the goal was a 10 to 15 minute run. And just tap in and ask yourself how. Hard does this feel? And if it's more than a two, I'm asking you to slow down. How many of you have already run today? Gimme a me in the chat. Gimme a me in the chat if you've already run today. All right, cool. Now gimme a one in the chat. The number one, if you tried to hold a level two effort, if you didn't see, today's activity, that's okay too. All right. Cool. Those of you that tried to do it, do you think you actually succeeded in maintaining a level two effort or did you speed up a little bit and push a little bit harder than a level two? Got some yeses. Those are our team. I ran with someone slower than me. That's a good way. Yep. Know how to walk. All right. That's fine. Walking's. Okay. And this is the thing that like, I want you all to hear from me too, like walking. There's nothing wrong with walking during a run. I know there's like a big mental hurdle that comes with it, but there's nothing wrong with walking during a run if you think that you're not a real runner if you walk during a run. I dare you to say that to my husband who just finished a hundred mile race.'cause he did a lot of walking. He did not run a hundred mile straight. He did a lot of walking. And I don't think anybody would tell him, you're not a runner. You're not a real runner.'cause you walked what? No, of course I would never say that. So why are you saying it to yourself? Why are you saying, I don't care that it's one mile or two miles or three miles and Kevin's a hundred miles? It doesn't matter. When you try to push yourself out of your comfort zone and do something that you've never done before, that's a challenge for Kevin, it's a hundred. Okay. For you right now, it might be five, it might be 10, it might be 15, it might be two. It might be one. Wherever you are, meet yourself where you are, because that is the only way that you will get better, not by trying to do things that you know people ahead of you are doing and trying to mimic that. You have to meet yourself where you are and say, this is good, and. I'm going to get better by meeting myself where I am, by keeping my easy, runs easy, and then also doing some hard stuff too. Okay? Because it is important to do some of the hard stuff, for sure. How many of you, when you were running, were able to breathe through your nose or hold a conversation? If you checked in with yourself, awesome. Yes. Good. Excellent. Always the L two goal. Fantastic. Good. So then how did you feel afterwards? How did you feel during the run? I have to talk to myself in public, like it's okay. And people already think we're crazy because we're running, So if you're just a runner that talks to herself, they're just like, okay. Relax. Good refresh. Love it. Good. All right. Who did strides? Who did strides? You got some yeses. I did a short walk today. Okay. Not today. That's okay. All right, cool. How did the strides feel? Those of you that have never really done this before, how did those strides feel? Felt amazing. Yeah. Had energy. Exactly.'cause you slowed down, Julie, you kept your slower, run slow. So now you had more energy to do the faster runs. Absolutely. I can explain strides. So strides are 15 to 20 seconds of harder running usually like around a level eight. So it's not a full out sprint. It's not a 10 outta 10, but you're running hard. All right? And it's for about 15 to 20 seconds, and then you take a break in between about 40 seconds to a minute until you feel recovered and ready to go again. Okay? So that's a stride. So strides are harder effort, but not an all out sprint. Okay? Like you could go a little bit faster if you absolutely had to. All right, so when you do strides, you're actually tapping into a different energy system. You're tapping into different muscles because in order to go faster, your body has to recruit more muscle fibers. Your body has to be able to produce more power, which again, is going to help improve your strength. And when you recruit more muscle fibers, guess what? Now you have more muscles doing the same job. It's like lifting a couch. If you go try to lift a couch by yourself, it's gonna be pretty hard, but if you recruit three friends to help lift that couch with you, it's gonna be easier, right? That's what muscle recruitment is. This is why we want to recruit more muscles, because when more muscle fibers are recruited. It makes the job easier. So then going out on your run, if you have more muscles, being recruited, going out on your normal run is going to feel easier. And one of the things that you will likely notice, not everybody does, but you will likely notice that you are at level two. Pace will also start to get a little bit faster as you do it, but you're still maintaining level two because you're tapping in and you're listening to your body. But that pace is getting a little bit faster because you're recruiting more muscle fibers from your hard days and from your strength training and from the other things as well. Okay, so all of these pieces are going together, right? And this is why the second ingredient, I forgot to tell you guys the first ingredient yesterday because I talked, this week we're talking about the four ingredients that every runner needs in order to run faster and feel better. The first ingredient yesterday was unlocking your inner athlete. Okay? That was all the mindset stuff that we talked about, because as a runner, you're an athlete, but there's a lot of runners that don't think of themselves that way, right? The second ingredient today is strengthening your stride. That means that you have to do polarized training, which we're talking about today, strength training, which we're talking about tomorrow. Okay, to help make you a stronger runner. And when you go keep your easy runs easy, you can make your harder runs harder, you can have more energy for your strength days, and overall you're going to continue to improve. Okay? So I want you all to understand you are not getting slower because you're aging. You're getting slower because your body hasn't had a chance to adapt to your training because you are just overloading the body with stress and not actually giving your body enough recovery and easy times to adapt. Okay? So once your training starts to support your body, instead of fighting it, everything begins to shift. Monique, did I answer your question well enough on strides? Do, does that make sense? Okay. Once you start training in a way that supports your body instead of fighting your body, that's when you actually start to see the shifts in the changes. Okay. Does anyone have any questions on polarized training? Please put them in the chat. Tomorrow we're gonna be talking about where,'cause so far we've done who and what. Tomorrow we're gonna talk about where your strength and energy come from and how to build a body that supports your goals and not drains you. Okay? So tomorrow we're jumping into the, where we're talking about strength. We're gonna talk about nutrition. We're talking about energy.'cause I know that fatigue is the number one symptom that I hear from most women in this phase of life. All right? Does anybody have any questions before we wrap up for today? Thank you all for being here. Gimme a one in the chat if you will continue to practice. Easy running. Yay. Excellent. But keep in mind, it's not just about easy running.'cause if all you do is run easy, you'll will also not improve. Okay? Let me just say that your running will feel better. You'll start to feel better if all of your runs are easy, okay? But you will not get faster if all of your runs are easy. There's other things that we need to do. Like number one, run fast, right? That 20% of going harder and running faster, doing speed work, speed play, and also strength training. We'll talk about again tomorrow. Okay? But I'm happy to see that all of you are committing to. Continuing to try to slow down and go easier. All right. Because that is a really important step that a lot of runners don't understand. All right. I don't see any questions, so I think we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up for today, which is cool. another interesting session. Excellent. Julie, thank you for being here tomorrow. We've got a lot of fun things on the docket. if you haven't yet, please post a photo, because remember there is a giveaway, there's a prize giveaway at the end of the week, so post a photo in the Facebook group and let us know how your easy runs and your strides went today. Excellent, Lindsay. I'm happy to hear that. Cool. I think that's all I have for today. All right, you guys. Take care. I'll see you tomorrow. Same time. Bye.