Loving Every Stride Podcast

How To Know You Are Sabotaging Your Running?

December 08, 2021 Paul Laslett and Marie Droniou -Bordry Season 1 Episode 8
Loving Every Stride Podcast
How To Know You Are Sabotaging Your Running?
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of the Loving Every Stride podcast, hosts Paul Laslett and Marie Droniou-Bordry highlight various ways in which you may be sabotaging your running.

Some of the reasons may include: paying too much attention to your running watch or Strava; adding on extra kilometre after a perfectly good run in order to meet an arbitrary target; and not giving your body enough time between runs to rest and recuperate.

So tune in and get inspired!

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paul Laslett can be found here:


LinkedIn
Website
Facebook Group

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marie Droniou-Bordry can be found here:

LinkedIn
Instagram

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Download your running pace calculator here:
https://www.brightsidept.com/running-faster-formula

Paul Laslett  0:02  
Welcome to loving every stride the podcast that will help make your running easier brought to you by ex national athlete and UK record holder all of laslett powered by the bright side pte community. For more information and access to your very own running faster formula which will make your running easier. Click on the link in the show notes, enjoy the show and see you on the bright side. Hello, and welcome to another episode of loving every stride. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us on this episode today. So the topic we want to cover today is all about are you sabotaging your running progress and what to do if you are because you might be self sabotaging your running and you don't even know it yet. So we're going to go over that today. And really at the end of this podcast, we want you to understand the importance of the structure, the plan you can have in place, the importance of kind of having that sounding board and thinking about what you're doing. And also really highlight the little things that you may be doing just maybe doing right now. That means that you hold your progress or it can really affect you either mentally or physically. So in today's podcast is all about what to do when you are self sabotaging your running progress, even though you may not even know you're doing it yet. So I'm going to bring Maria I have plenty of examples I could give you about times when I've realized too late that I'm missing my running up but Marie's offered to give some lovely examples about times she's done it and I hope this will kind of bring it to light and resonate with you guys. So Marie, hello to you.

Marie Droniou-Bordry  2:06  
Hello, Paul. Hello, everyone. Yes, I can give plenty of examples of when I have been self sabotaging my progress without knowing about it in previous podcasts, and you can go back to the one about running slower. Obviously running fast all the time is typically a way to self sabotage your your running, but we won't talk about this specifically today. I'm sure a lot of you are on Strava and compare themselves to what other people are doing. And that's the worst thing you can do. Comparison is the thief of joy. And it really is. And although obviously Strava is great, because it's you know, it's giving you a sense of your progress. You shouldn't compare yourself to other people, you don't know what their circumstances are, you don't know what their life is. Just focus on yourself and on what you're able to achieve. Just focus on trying to make progress, try to beat your own records, except you don't want to try and beat them up all the time. That's one way of sabotaging yourself your progress.

Paul Laslett  3:06  
Have you done that before Marie? Have you looked at like a run or look to you're quite good at doing what you should be doing on here,

Marie Droniou-Bordry  3:13  
I have done it to some extent, it took me a long time to get on to Strava. I haven't been on Strava. I was on Strava for a very long time. Then I went on to Strava. But I wasn't looking too much of what other people were doing. But when I was I couldn't have a compare myself to what other people were doing. And it was kind of doing my head interview. And so I'm not a stronger person, I share some stuff now. And then for the purpose of sharing an event and marketing an event I've enjoyed and I just want to tell people, it's out there that want to do it. But I'm not a big fan of Strava. So

Paul Laslett  3:47  
I can resonate with that very, like I know we're fine. If I'm running and I'll look and I'll load my run Strava and then I'll have a look and see what other people have done, then I'll look and see are John's run two miles further than me. Or someone's done this run or someone else has done that run. And then all of a sudden you start thinking I'm not doing enough, when really you could be doing enough for yourself. Right?

Marie Droniou-Bordry  4:10  
Exactly. And for me now if I look at Strava because I do still look at Strava the

Paul Laslett  4:15  
I feel like we're seeing the worst Strava a lot.

Marie Droniou-Bordry  4:20  
We do. But what strikes me the most and I'm just gonna say now and won't say it again is I see people upload their run and say Oh, easy run, and I look at their pace. And I'm thinking you know, I don't think that was an easy run. That's, you know, again, we were coming back to the running slower it's slower to run faster, but there you go. Another thing I wanted to mention is being your worst enemy when you run and you know you go out to run anything Oh, that was such a rubbish run. I felt really tired. I didn't run I wanted to run so say you do a tempo session and you don't meet your expected pace. And then it's okay, I'm gonna do it again. And the following day, you go out again and you try to reach that pace and you don't do it because you're tired, because you need to rest and I've done it, I've done it countless times, I don't do that anymore, where I used to do that a lot. And you just beat yourself up, because you haven't achieved what you set yourself to achieve. And you do it day after day. And you do just your own enemy, because you'll be too hard on yourself. So it's just accepting that some days, you can have a bad run. So what and it's okay, some days you're going to have a bad race. And it's okay. So because you have a bad race that you're about bad runner, just put it behind, we want to move forward, learn from it, learn from that tough run, learn from that tough race or that bad race, see how you can improve and learn from it. As opposed to letting that race or run just get you down and prevent you from from progressing. And that's one of the things a lot of people do, just just learn from it. Move on. Have you had one of these races or brand square?

Paul Laslett  6:01  
Yeah, load. So I was just thinking I remember when I was, I think I was about 16 or 17. So about about 1000 years ago, I was training really well. And I was really looking forward to doing this race, did the race and ran like that. And I was so upset with myself. And I remember my coach at the time, just said to me, Look, you you don't turn into a bad runner overnight. You just had a bad race, you train Eastern the bank, don't worry about it. I think if you can understand why you've had a bad run, why the run felt particularly hard, why you weren't able to meet those certain times, then you'll have a much better understanding of kind of being able to accept it, rather than kind of, oh, man, I'm, I'm rubbish at this, you know, it's well, I don't didn't go too well, because works been really stressful over the last two days, this hasn't gone too well, because I haven't drank enough water yesterday. I didn't sleep that well, last night, you know, it was really windy and cold, whatever, you know, wanted to have my socks on the right feet, whatever it is, as long as you can understand why hasn't gone so well. It's much easier to accept it. And that then comes in, I really talk about rest. And you know, that's such an important part of making sure that you're not sabotaging your running is by giving your body enough chance to rest doing things in the right way. And I think if you can kind of look at what you're doing and say what I say, I'll give you a rule that we have with our clients, we say make sure you have at least at least two days, least two days, hopefully three, between doing hard runs allow the body to recover. Otherwise, if they're too close together, you're going to get really tired, and it affects you mentally. So I think if you can go into sessions or harder runs when you're feeling fresh or fresher. If that's ever possible, then you'll have a much better experience with the harder sessions that you're doing or that the tougher runs. So I really think that's kind of a golden rule to kind of think about is I've I've given myself enough time between things. And like Marie said, when something does go badly, or does go wrong, review it and go, Why was that? Wow. You know what? barely slept last night. That'd be why I mean, even this list last week, I went out and did a session on a Friday, end of the week, we had a bad week asleep with the kids and went out and I felt really tired. And I did got nowhere near the places I want to run it and I came home and said to my wife don't go I feel like yeah, it was really hard to that we're really on features. You just try it, go for it crack on, you know, like you expect it. And then sure enough, rested over the weekend didn't run went out on Monday, I did a similar session and I was a lot quicker because I'd given my body that chance to rest and adapt. But you got to be able to review that you got to be able to look at it. If you're trying to push yourself too frequently, you will be self sabotaging yourself, not only physically, but mentally. That's one of the other sides of things. And like Murray saying in terms of the Strava stuff, you don't know what other people are up to. You don't know what they're not posting on Strava you don't know. So just try and take what you see with everyone else's with a pinch of salt and you know, do a little bit of Strava stalking. Yeah, it's always good fun to see what other people are up to. But don't compare it to what you're doing. And I'm sure another thing that I just come comes to mind. And I know I've been guilty of this in the past but like I saw actually at the weekend, a group of runners doing this in a car park. They were on like 9.7k and they wanted to get it up to 10k. So they're literally running up. They're doing the shuttle runs in the carpark to make up the extra point Three of a kilometer. Now I know we're all a bit like that, you know, like, oh, oh, yeah, everyone's putting their hands up and nodding, oh, I'm a 9.7 9.8k, I want to get up to 10 levels, it doesn't count, but it does count. And you know what you're doing right at the end of your run, when your legs are at their most fatigued, you're having to stop, turn, pushing, go again, stop, turn pushing go again, that extra little bit of stress might sound like not much. But if you do that frequently, and frequently, you're going to get some injuries, you're going to get some aches and pains. So you kind of got to think nobody cares, apart from you maybe that you've done 9.87k, instead of 10k, an extra 200 meters or an extra 150 meters in the grand scheme of your training, it will make zero difference to your fitness. But what it could make a difference to is picking up an injury, because you're stopping, you're twisting, you're turning, you're pushing, you're using your muscles in a different way again. So that is something else that you need to consider think about, I don't want to say, get over or just plan your routes better. So you actually hit 10k on the nose instead of 9.9 and have to keep going back and forth. And then mentally again, you think I haven't achieved what I set out to achieve because I was 200 meters short 200 meters doesn't make a difference. You know, it really won't make a difference to your overall target and go and that's kind of trying to get those beliefs out of the way a little bit. And accept the fact that it's fine to do 9.93 kilometers. And you know what, I would go out and run 9.9k just to annoy people looking at my Strava just

Paul Laslett  11:51  
ran 10.1 shorts to get you know, just to get a reaction. But maybe that's just me being a bit of analysis. But yeah, I'm sure Murray, you might see people do that as well, all of the time. Oh, yes.

Marie Droniou-Bordry  12:04  
I used to be quite bad doing that. But since I've done training with Tom on my feet, I'm not so bothered about it. But we say coming back to the point where you said about, you know, looking at your watch, that's another way to sabotage your training, being obsessed with what your watch is telling you. And we're very fortunate these days where we've got very fancy watches. And that tells us so much about us, you know, Garmin or you know, whatever was you wearing is telling you everything about the pace, heart rate, recovery time, or your view to max and it can get quite stressful, quite overwhelming. Obviously, it gives you a baseline, and it probably tells you if you're going in the right direction. But don't get too hung up on your watch the number of times what my watch has been telling me I was at the moment anti training because I've taken a couple of days rest after an event on Sunday. And my body's telling me I'm the training, I am not, I'm just resting. And I'm not, I know I'm not losing fitness, because I've rested from doing a long run. So just be careful as to how you use your watch. And actually, something you can do after listening to this podcast is go for a run and hide your watch. So if you want to record your watch, press start behind your watch and just run by feel just run as you feel if you want to go a little bit faster, got to be faster and just press stop when you finish. And then have a look at your watch. Have a look at five you've been how fast you've been able that's a really good exercise to do. And actually there's something called a naked Park run. So don't get me wrong. Like it. But when you suppose suppose you were to run without any sort of recording gadget, no phone? No, no watch. That's actually very interesting exercise. So try that.

Paul Laslett  13:58  
And let the team know and psychologically as well with some of our members. And I can talk from experience if I'm doing a training session or a race or an event. And I think oh, I'm going to run a I think I can run this it either night, wherever six minute k pace and you run your first kilometer and you're feeling really fresh, you're feeling awesome. And you look at your watch, and it's like a 540 K. And automatically your brain says you're gonna be tired because you thought you're gonna run six minute k's and now it's a 540 Then you go, I am going to be tired. I was a bit slow down, when in actual fact, if you hadn't have known what you were doing, you probably would have been absolutely fine. So there is a time and place and know what you're doing with your watch and making sure you don't go too crazy. Don't go too fast. But also there are times when actually knowing that what speed you're running at can have a psychological detrimental effects on you even on an easy run, if you're going out for an easy run, and you're feeling really heavy luggage, you're tired, or whatever. And then you're looking at your watch, and you're like, Oh, my word I'm running, you know, 12 minute Meiling. And it's usually feels easy. And it feels really hard, I must be really unfit. Well, now you're probably just tired. And like we said, I understand why you're feeling tired, and then you'll be able to accept it a lot better. So like, we're saying, don't be a slave to the watch. Sometimes the watch will lie. And you don't, don't listen to it and not say that psychological impact it can have on you have some belief in what you feel and understand if you can understand why you feel like that. That then is happy days, it's much much easier to set Murray muster pads, we will have bad runs and kind of finish a run or finish a race or finish a session and you kind of think, ah, that again, can have a really detrimental effect on your motivation. We want to keep people's motivation up. So if you're feeling demotivated after a run, what would you kind of say to someone to help them because that, again, that can be self sabotage, there can be a reason behind it. So how have you dealt with that, right?

Marie Droniou-Bordry  16:21  
So for me, and I always say to my clients, again, we all have bad runs. But think about your last run, think about a good run you've had. And it's always a good way to pick yourself up. Because yes, you've had a bad round, but you've already had more good roads than bad roads. And if you have more bad roads and good roads, maybe that's when you need to look at what you're doing and how you can change your training a little or where because if you've got more bad runs than good runs, then there's probably something wrong with how you train. Or maybe you don't get enough rest. So there's always a reason if you've got more bad runs and good runs. But when you have a bad run, think about a good run you've had and I can think of someone I've been training for a while and we run together. Last time we did a 5k time trial. I said to my client, don't I don't want you to look at your watch, I will just tell you when we come to first get second k etc. and just trust me and she didn't look at her watch. We did the 5k time trial. And at the end, I said to her Okay, so how what time do you think you did, and at the end, she gave me your time. And I said you are I mean it quicker than what you've just said to me. And she just couldn't believe it. But for those five K's she didn't look at her watch. She's just, she just believes she could do what she was doing. And it worked. So really, he put the Badran put it past you enter, just move on. Just think about the all those good drones you've had and believe that you're doing the right thing. And you you're a good runner and believe you are a runner, because I hear so many people say, Oh, I run but I'm not a runner. Yes, you run you are a runner, there's no such thing. There's no, no criteria to be a runner, there's no pace to qualify as a runner. You know, if you go out and run your runner, full stop, don't stop self sabotaging your training by just believing you're not a runner. And that's one of the worst things you can do. If you run full stop, there's not a box for different runners, we are all runners. And that's the beauty of the running community. You know, we're all runners, we all fit into that big community. And that's wonderful.

Paul Laslett  18:35  
There is is beaut it's a beaut so absolute beauty is really good point, I think, you know, something the we get people to do with just anyone listening to this or do this is just write that down, you know, like I am a runner, I am a runner, you know, and believe in it. Or if there's something you want to achieve, you know, I am a 61 minute 10k Run, even if you're not there yet, you know, but start believing it and you'll start acting the part as well. So a lot of it is self belief. And that's something that when you've got a decent structure in place, when you're training, when you start to understand why you're doing things, then and then this is something that we do as coaches is we can look at someone's training and go you should be able to run this time now. Without fail without fail. Someone will always go now there's no way I can do that. You know, you can I believe you can do it. You often take someone else to believe in you before you believe in yourself. And I'm sure that we've all been in so yeah, that's one of the one of the powers of coaching. So we're going to wrap wrap wrap this episode up. So here are some key takeaways. Okay, from this, please be kind to yourself. It's okay to have a bad run. It's only a bad run. If you don't understand why it happens. There's always a reason behind it. Okay, set realistic targets as we talked about before in a previous podcast, authorize yourself to run slow understand that is, okay. Only run hard when you need to understand that life will get in the way. You know, we are recreational runners, and it's not life and death. If we miss a run or two here and there, making sure that running as time for yourself and not always about what's going on on the clock, always feel better for getting out and getting some fresh air. So make that a focal point, run, Nick it without a watch, go by feels sometimes, okay, don't let the watch dictate if you feel good. And you think, Oh, I'm rolling way too fast. Don't worry, you know, don't eat, especially in a race, don't let the watch dictate you all the time. And certainly they're telling your D training or your VO to max is three, when it should be 33. Don't worry about it, it's a machine, it's going to make some mistakes, have a realistic plan that fits around your lifestyle, you can improve your running just by running three times every 10 days. Okay, so I really, really hope the listening to this has helped you in some way mentally and also helped you understand what little things you could be doing. That would sabotage your bet, you don't even know it yet. But hopefully thinking about it, listening to this and bringing it to light will then mean that maybe there's a few little things that you've been doing that you will now be conscious of that you can stop so that you can enjoy and love your running. So thanks again for tuning in. Murray, thank you as ever for putting up with me on this podcast and organizing and her family. And

Marie Droniou-Bordry  21:54  
don't forget, don't forget that resting won't affect your fitness resting is good for you.

Paul Laslett  22:01  
Resting is good for you. In fact, if you have, I think it's something like seven to 14 days off. The only thing that gets affected you don't lose any fitness in the first 14 days. It's just your biomechanics, that kind of feel a bit funny when you get back into it after about 21 days, you start losing a bit of aerobic ability. So that says something else to think about. And this is all little stat there for you. So yeah, we really hope you found this helpful. And you've enjoyed it. And we will see you here you hear us. Whatever. We'll see you on the next one. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you for listening to loving every stripe. If like us you absolutely love running. We'd love to have you in our community and help make your running faster. You can join our Facebook group and get your very own running faster formula by visiting the link in the show notes and there will be happy days ahead. Please also remember to subscribe and review so we can spread our love for running. Thank you for listening and we will see you on the bright side.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai