404 Holly Worton ~ How Running Can Change Your Life

Transcript

Holly:  Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 404. This is your host Holly Worton, and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to talk about running. This episode is inspired by a listener who wrote in to let me know,

“I’d love to hear you talking about your running too and your ongoing journey with that and what you’re experiencing and how running helps you in other ways, fusing it altogether somehow!”

So, in this episode you will learn all about my running journey: what I am currently experiencing in terms of my running; what I have learned from my running; what I am curious about in relation to my running; what my plans are for running; how running helps me in other areas of my life and why you don’t have to run, you can have other adventures and you can get all of these things that I am getting from running by doing other things, because I know not everyone runs. Running is one of those marmite activities, you either love it or hate it. And I was just sending a message to someone who I hadn’t talked to in a long time and he said to send greetings to my husband or something and I said, “oh he is doing really well, he is getting into ultra marathons, he ran 80km the other week”, and the person responded, “running, I can’t even run a bath!”. And like I said, you either love it or you hate it and I have been on both sides of that. Right now obviously I am loving it, which is why I am talking about this.

So I hope you find this episode interesting and useful and I hope you get something out of it even if you are not a runner which is why I am going to talk how you can get all of these things from doing other things that are not running, because I know it is not for everyone.

So what is my running journey?

I started running around 2012/2013, I can’t remember exactly when it was but it was about then, I think it was 2013 and it was a really kind of dark and difficult period in my life and I had never been an athletic person. I would never play sports growing up in High School, and elementary school and university. I was not a sporty person at all; I thought it was one of those things you are genetically predisposed to being athletic and I was not. And then I gained a few pounds and that had never happened to me before and I thought, I don’t know what to do! And I had been really sedentary and living a very stressful lifestyle, so I emailed one of my friends from High School who was very sporty – and lots of my friends from High School were really sporty, a bunch of friends who played basketball and were on the swim team and did stuff like that and I never did. Anyway, emailed one of my friends from High School, and I said: Amy what do I do? And she said: you buy a pair of running shoes and you start running. And I was like: okay, I can do this, this is easy, I just have to buy the shoes… and so I did. I went running and six months after I started running I ran a marathon which I DnF’d for a variety of reasons, mostly mindset. And DnFing that marathon (I did not finish the marathon – that’s what DnF means), led to all kind of mindset problems with running and my ability and my body being good enough to run a marathon and I continued running for a while and then I kind of quit.

I gave up running for years. I remember at one point, years ago, ten years ago, asking my husband to never let me forget how much I love running. I would go to the gym, I would get back into running, I would love it and feel so good and I remember telling him, ‘don’t every let me forget I love running’. And then I would quit running and he would try, he would try to remind me, he would say, ‘remember how much you love running’, and I would just ignore him. In those dry periods of not running I couldn’t tap into my love for running, I couldn’t tap into how good it made me feel, it was like I would totally forget, so I had those spurts of running and loving it and then not running and hating it.

And then, finally, a couple of years ago, when I started doing the advanced kickboxing gradings, I started running again just to train for those because on the second day of the advanced grading we have to do a two-hour run (it is not straight up two hours, it is two hours of running plus fitness, so you will run for 20 minutes and then do a bunch of squats and then you will run for fifteen/twenty minutes and then have to do straddle stands) – so it is a combination of running and fitness, it is not a straight two hours of running but you do have to have a certain level of fitness, because that is sandwiched by another 11 hours of kickboxing, so you have five hours on Saturday and eight hours on Sunday. So you have got a lot of physical stuff and you have got to have a certain level of fitness to do this. So I started running but never ran more than 30 minutes, 40 minutes, and didn’t enjoy it, it was just something I did because I had to get to this certain fitness level so I could do my gradings.

Then last year, thanks to Covid, kickboxing went online and that just didn’t fit into my lifestyle because we have a really small house and the only place I can do kickboxing in the house is downstairs in my husband’s office and I could kick him out of his office but that would be crappy, so I didn’t. So I started running because I thought, I don’t know how long this thing is going to last, I have got to stay in shape so I guess running is the easiest thing to do. And for the longest time I never ran more than 30 minutes because I thought 30 minutes was my limit, running 30 minutes was hard and I didn’t enjoy it but I did it because I didn’t know what else to do to stay in shape. And then, August came and that was when I got Lyme disease and felt like crap and could barely walk a flight of stairs in my house without huffing and puffing like I had just hiked a mountain, so I was doing nothing. I was doing the bare minimum, I wasn’t even going out on walks, I wasn’t doing anything, I was just resting as I took my three weeks of doxycycline.

Then that was the point where my husband and I started watching these documentaries about ultra runners and I don’t even know why we started doing this, but I got obsessed with it and this dream was planted in my mind and I thought: what if I could run ultras? And I remember at one point thinking, oh but I am too old, I am in my late 40s I am too old. And then, in one of the documentaries, one of the runners was commenting to another runner about this guy who was really young and he was a really good ultra runner and they said, that’s really weird because he is in his early 20s and most ultra runners are in their late 40s and 50s and that was when a lightbulb went on and I thought, oh maybe I’m not too old, maybe I can do this. But I never really thought about it but probably the reason that most ultra runners are in their 40s or 50s is because they have been running since High School and they now have the fitness to run ultra marathons. I don’t know, but I didn’t think about it that way at the time, I just thought, oh maybe I am not too old so maybe I can do this. I started increasing my runs beyond 30 minutes and I realised something huge, I realised that the first 30 minutes of my runs were the hard part and beyond that it gets easier, but I never knew this because I never got beyond 30 minutes for years. And now that I know that the first 30 minutes or 20 minutes is the hard part and then after that I get into flow and it goes beautifully and it is easier, that completely changed everything but I never would have learned that if I hadn’t stretched myself beyond those 30 minutes.

And then, I stared doing sessions with my friend Cara Wilde and with Jane Talbot, who was a guest on this podcast, working on my sports mindset. With Cara I really dug deep into that marathon DnF and we really explored why and the limiting beliefs that I had developed as a result of it and I cleared those and we did a lot of work with EFT and just cleared a bunch of crap and that really, really, helped me. I did, I don’t know how many sessions with Jane, NLP sessions with timelines to help me implant a new vision of what was possible and it really, really, really changed things for me. I remember one session with Jane, the last session I had with her, she said that it would take about three months for me to feel that change. And those three months happened in between a marathon length run that I ran this year and an ultra that I did, a 55k run.

And the marathon which I talked about in episode 395, How to Know When to Quit Your Adventures, when I was running the marathon I wanted to quit it. Halfway through I met my husband and was like, ‘I am going home with you in the car, I am done’. And he encouraged me to finish it and obviously I was thrilled that I had finished it and I felt that I busted that limit of mine and finally achieved my marathon, but it was rough. On the other hand I ran, a month later, 55km and it was easy. Physically it was hard, I had donated blood less than a week before, that wasn’t super smart because even though my plasma was up to normal levels it takes between two or three weeks to replace your platelets. So I didn’t have a lot of energy, physically it was challenging but mentally it was a breeze. At no point did I think about quitting. Afterward I went back and checked my journal and I was like, when was that I had the session with Jane? Didn’t she say it would take three months to kick in? And that was when I confirmed that those three months had happened in between the marathon and the ultra.

So mindset work, I know I have been talking about this for years, it makes a difference. If you are struggling with mindset in any area of your life, get help. Or, learn how to work with yourself using something like PsychK to shift your own mindset or shift your own limiting beliefs, it is absolutely life changing stuff. So that is my journey to where I am now.

What am I currently experiencing?

Like I say, I ran 55km a few weeks ago, it was a glorious day, the weather was beautiful, it was one of the first sunshiny days, the trails were dry, we had such a wet, muddy, winter and it was so beautiful to be out on dry trails, because it was still really muddy doing the marathon and that made it rough. It was just absolutely lovely.

Next on my calendar in the coming weeks and months is I am updating my books on the Wey South path and Downslink and what I am doing is I am walking both of those trails in one day. Now, these are trails that I used to walk over the course of three days. The Wey South path I once walked over the course of two days, and found it really, really, challenging. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I walked it in one day and it was challenging but it was totally do-able and it was pleasurable, it was beautiful. So I am going to be running the Wey South path this week, I think when this goes live. The next month I am going to be walking and then running the Downslink, and those are my immediate goals with running.

My plans for the rest of this year: I have got two 100k ultras that I am probably going to run. I am hoping to get to the point where I need to be with my training by my July ultra. It has got an 18 hour cut off time which I am hoping will be do-able. In September I have got another one which I am kind of worried about because it is a really flat course, which I think is going to be tough. The Wey South path is flat and it was tough – flat trails, you think they are easy, but they are really not, because you are using your muscles in the same way for hours on end. Whereas if you have got hills, you are using your muscles differently and somehow it is easier.

And then in 2022, I know I told you months ago that I had this secret dream of running the South Downs Way, I am starting to think that I might do that next year, in 2022. That would be absolutely wild, because the South Downs Way is something that I struggled to walk in eight days back in 2015 and then I had a beautiful experience walking it in seven days, just a couple of years ago. But still, this is a trail that I took a week to walk and the thought of running it in one go, that is going to be a huge shift for me, a huge shift in my perspective of what I am capable of. And of course I have yet to do it, so I don’t know if I am capable of doing it but I am going to definitely train for it, that is my plan. I remember when I mentioned that on this podcast that was truly a secret goal for me, I did not think I would ever do that and when I blurted it out on the podcast, and I don’t remember what episode that was but I thought: holy shit, how did I just say that to the podcast? Now they know, they know my secret goal, they know my secret fantasy! And now I am at the point where I can say, I think I can do that next year. Depending on how I do in these 100k races this year, that is what is going to help me decide what I can do next year. But I think it is reasonable based on how my training is going. That is a massive shift, I can’t believe that I am saying right now, ‘I think that is do-able’, but I think it is do-able.

What have I learned?

I have learned that running ultras and walking ultras are mutually beneficial, because running is a higher intensity activity which I can do in less time, so obviously it takes less time to run 50k than it takes to walk 50k, and walking is lower intensity but it takes longer, so it is more time on my feet, they help each other. So I find that when I run a long distance trail, that helps my walking and the walking helps the running. It has been really interesting to see how both of those activities help each other. So that’s one thing that I have learned and I am really glad that I am continuing to train in this way, stretching myself with my walking distances and my running distances.

I have also learned that I am a capable of more than I thought I ever was physically. I DnF’d that marathon in my late 20s, I was almost 30, or maybe I was 30 but thereabouts. Now I am going to be 48 this year, I am 18 years older and yet I am doing things that I couldn’t complete almost 20 years ago. So I am capable of doing more than I ever thought I was, my health was really crappy for years, I had really low energy because of my thyroid and who knows what else, fasting completely transformed my life and gave me the energy that I thought I had lost forever. And now I am capable of running these beautiful distances, I really, really, love being out on the trail all day long it is absolutely gorgeous and I am in the best shape that I have been for years, years! I can feel, now that we are getting back into outdoors kickboxing classes, I can feel that I am in better shape that I have been in before we went into lockdown last year and I was doing kickboxing on a regular basis. I am better when we are running in class (obviously) and I am better when we are doing the drills. I am in much better shape.

So that makes me curious, I am really curious about how my running is going to help me with sparring once we get back into that and I am always curious about how my running is going to help me with endurance for my black belt grading. One of the things, the advance grading are really challenging, it is intense fitness stuff spread over two years and at the end of each advanced grading I always felt like I was barely hanging on. And I know that my black belt grading is going to be so much harder than anything I have ever done in terms of kickboxing, as it should be. I know it is going to be a massive, massive, challenge and I am really curious to see how my running is going to help me with this. I think, I hope, it is going to help with my endurance, because I am going to need it.

I am also curious about how far can I go? For a long time I have thought 100 miles is my maximum, I have no interest in going beyond 100 miles. But then today I was just reading this story on Facebook – I am in this women’s trail running and ultra running Facebook group and it is a great resource for tips and information and people sharing stories, it is really beautiful. And this women was sharing a story about how she ran 100 miles last weekend and she was the second woman in the history of this race to finish it. She was the only woman who finished it this year. I was reading that and I was thinking 200 miles, that’s interesting! I always thought I would never be interested in these really long races, 100 miles was my limit and the most I could attempt, but now I am starting to think what if? Could I? I don’t know, maybe I will never do that, but my mind is open to those things, my mind is open to things that I never thought I could do. That I never even fantasised about and I never even entertained the possibility of and I think that is one of the ways that running has helped me in other areas of my life because I have opened my mind to new possibilities in running and that is opening my mind to new possibilities in other areas of my life and I think that is always a good thing, to see new potential, see new paths, see new ways of doing things and it is really exciting.

There are so many things that running has given me in terms of help in other areas of my life. It has given me resilience, getting beyond those challenges. When I ran that marathon and wanted to quit halfway through and I didn’t, it was tough, it wasn’t easy, but I enjoyed a lot of it. I enjoyed most of it and I achieved a massive goal for myself because I had so many hang ups about that marathon because of my DnF all those years ago. So resilience, perseverance, not quitting and keeping going. Stretching beyond my comfort zone, stretching beyond my comfort zone of 30 minutes. Thinking 30 minutes was all I could do and now I am running hours and hours.

And, as I was researching this episode, because I wanted to see how does running help people in other areas of their life? And I will link to some articles in the show notes. So I have got one on ‘10 amazing and health supporting benefits of running’; ‘8 key ways running can transform your body and brain’’; and ‘benefits of running backed by science’. One of the things that these articles mention is sleep. For a long time I really struggled to get to sleep and it was just really challenging to get to sleep and this year I found a really good technique to get to sleep. I think it is called cognitive dissonance or something but you make lists of unrelated things, you relax your body and then you start making these lists of completely unrelated things, like ‘dog, food, table, walnut, flower, green’, that kind of thing. And what it does it prevents your mind from going off on any train of thought and you fall asleep really fast. But now I am wondering if running has also helped with that. I really wouldn’t be surprised if it did. I am also sleeping really deeply and really well and I suspect that running has helped me.

Now I haven’t been to the doctor in over a year, because Covid makes it hard to get to the doctor and I haven’t needed to. When I had Lyme disease last year it was all on telephone, I didn’t need to see a doctor, I was texting pictures of my tick bites and talking on the phone and then getting a description. But I would be very curious, whenever it is that we can get blood work done again, how my blood pressure has improved and how other aspects of my health have improved, I would be very curious about that, I am sure it has.

And finally, as I wanted to say, you don’t have to run, you can have other adventures, you can have these experiences by doing other things, by walking, by cycling, hiking, whatever it is that you enjoy. So if you want to have these experiences, try pushing yourself beyond what you think is possible. So what I did, I just increased by 10% each week and you could increase by 10% each fortnight or every month. Whatever you think is do-able, but I would encourage you to stretch beyond that comfort zone. Usually what coaches, running coaches, will recommend you do is to increase your overall mileage by 10% each week. I did not do that, I increased my long run by 10% each week, so I was running I think three times a week, which is probably isn’t enough, I probably should have been running more but it worked. So I would do two hour-long runs and then my third run would be a longer run and that longer run I increased by 10% each week, so you could do that with your hikes, your cycling, whatever. So just increase that long run/walk by 10% each week or fortnight. And then when you get stuck, when you hit a wall, get help when you need it. Work with a mindset person, work with a coach. My husband has been working with a running coach for months. He stared at the end of last year, after he ran his first ultra and then signed up for a ton of ultras this year, he started working with a running coach. He gave him a really clear plan. He gets calls with him every once in a while to fine tune details, but basically he has got a plan to get him to the races that he is doing this year and I think he has got 100 mile this year, so he is quite a bit ahead of me.

So I haven’t signed up with a running coach because I am just not very good at following a plan, especially if it is other people’s plans, I don’t know I am really resistant to it. I think that if I do finish my 100k races this year, and I decide to go for 100 miles this year then I am definitely going to get some help because I feel like that is when I am going to need it in order to enjoy the 100 mile race. I don’t want to suffer though 100 miles, I want to enjoy the process and I know in ultras you have ups and down and they say you go through the full range of emotions but I would like to enjoy it as much as possible. And I would like to do that by training the way I need to train. So you can download training plans online or you can work with someone but remember to get help when you need it. But I really encourage you, whatever sport it is, try and encourage yourself to move beyond what you think is possible for yourself to stretch outside of your comfort zone. See what happens, because there are so many beautiful possibilities and as I always say, when you stretch outside of your comfort zone in one area of your life, it will stretch you in other areas of life, so it will help you with business, with work, with creativity, with so many other things. It is really, really, beautiful.

So that is my suggestion to you. I hope you found this episode interesting and useful. It always feels very self indulgent to talk about myself so I have to make sure that it is useful to you because I don’t want you to listen to me and my babbling for half an hour about my life without serving a purpose in some way. But I would also like to remind you that this topic was recommended to me by a listener, so if you have any ideas for things that you would like me to talk about on this podcast, please drop me a line and let me know, you can email at [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there. Email is usually best, I am pretty bad about checking Facebook and Instagram messages and Twitter, but I do. So I will get to it probably not as fast as email but I will see it.

Thank you for listening and remember to visit: HollyWorton.com/404 for the show notes on this episode.

And next week, I hope to be back with Kerriann MacKenzie, the tree communicator who was on this show, just a few weeks ago, episode 392 and she is going to be interviewing me. Now I thought that episode was going to go live this week but we had to switch things around in the calendar so hopefully it will be next week. I am really looking forward to that, have a great week and let me know if you have any topics for the podcast. I would love to hear from you. Thank you.