Running Lean with Patrick McGilvray
One of the biggest problems I see with people who attempt to make big changes in their life is a total lack of belief in themselves. If you set out to accomplish a big goal like losing weight or …
Continue Reading about 99. Overcoming Your Limiting Beliefs →
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 99 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. I can’t believe we’re at 99 episodes already, how fun is that I got something special coming for episode 100. So be sure to check that one out.
Today I’m talking about overcoming your limiting beliefs. One of the biggest problems I see with people who go and attempt to make some big changes in their life is a total lack of belief in themselves, they just don’t think they can do it.
So if you’re one of these people, and you’re setting out to accomplish some big goal, like losing weight or running a faster marathon, whatever it is, it’s going to require you to believe that you can do it.
Instead, what most people do is they have all these beliefs about why they can’t do it. They say things like, Oh, it’s too hard for me, I always fail, I can never do something like that. And these are called limiting beliefs, their beliefs that absolutely limit your ability to reach your goals.
So in this episode, I’m going to take a deep dive into limiting beliefs, I’m going to explain what they are, how they’re keeping you stuck. And I’ll offer up some practical tips on overcoming your limiting beliefs.
But first, if you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean podcast community on Facebook. And just a heads up beginning on Thanksgiving Day, I believe that is the 25th of November, we are going to start the running through the holidays challenge we did this last couple of years. And it’s a lot of fun.
And basically what it is is a challenge for you to run every day between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day. So I believe this year, it’s going to be a total of like 38 straight days of running. And I’ll talk all about the sort of rules around this. There’s not really rules.
But you know, there are some guidelines that I want you to follow. And I’m going to do a Facebook Live in the Facebook group this Sunday at 4pm. Eastern Time, and I’m going to give you a rundown on what this challenge is all about and invite you to join in the fun. Okay, so just search for Running Lean community on facebook and join us and definitely join us for the running through the holidays challenge. It’s a lot of fun.
And then here’s a message I received a while back from Kathy, I just wanted to share this with you guys. She said, “I found your podcast and Facebook group a little over a month ago and absolutely love them decided to watch your training video. And I think it is such a great breakdown of what we all need to hear and do to become fit and healthy in our body and mind. That is what I love so much about your podcast and your training is that you address the state of mind as well as what we need to do. Physically. Thank you again, I feel like you’re talking directly to me, every time I listen to you. Cheers, Kathy.”
Thank you, Kathy, you’re very, very sweet for for sharing that. And I love getting messages like this because it helps me to see that the message is resonating with you guys. And I love doing this, I’m having a lot of fun.
And then people ask how they can get more how they can work with me. And there’s two ways to do that. There’s the Running Lean coaching group. And this is a group that meets once a week, we do a group Zoom call where you can ask questions, you can you know get support, get help get guidance.
And then of course you get access to all my online training materials. I have the weight loss training course for runners, I have a new course I just created called Getting It All Done. It’s all about planning everything in your life so that you accomplish all of your goals. Achieving the impossible is another course that I have in there. That is all about setting big, huge impossible goals for yourself and then how to accomplish them. So there’s tons of learning material in the group.
And the really the aspect that everybody loves most about it is the the group calls where we get to do a little coaching and teaching but we get to support each other here, what’s working, what’s not working, what did we do to overcome issues and things like that.
So the Running Lean coaching group is a great way to get through and accomplish these big goals that you want for yourself. So if you’re interested in learning more, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join.
And then if you’re looking for a little more help, a little more one on one coaching. That’s what I do. I can offer you the expert guidance, support, encouragement, accountability, tough love to help you reach whatever health and fitness goals that you want for yourself.
Whether it’s losing a bunch of weight, or running a faster marathon, or just becoming the most badass version of yourself, I can help you get there. So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply, you can apply for coaching you and I will jump on a Zoom call.
We’ll talk about the coaching program and just see if this is a good fit for you. Cool.
Alright, let’s get into this topic today overcoming your limiting beliefs. So first of all, what are beliefs, what are beliefs? In general beliefs are just thoughts that you keep thinking over and over again. So beliefs are just things that you have been thinking in your mind over and over again, for years or decades that this is just what a belief is, okay?
When we talk about the beliefs, I need you to understand something, because people fight me on this all the time. And I have to tell you, your beliefs are true for you. They’re not necessarily true for everyone.
So your beliefs come from your model of the world. Your model of the world is your past experiences, your upbringing, your family of origin, has an influence on your model of the world, the culture that you live in the geographic location that you live in, all of these things combine to create the way that you see the world. Your reality is created by the way you see the world.
I want you to understand this, I’m going to say this, again, because this is very, very important. Your reality is created by you. Your reality, the way you see things, is not necessarily the way other people see things, the way you see things is unique to you based on your past experiences, your upbringing, your geographical location, your model, your upbringing, your family of origin, all those things, your model of the world determines your reality, and your model of the world determines what you believe.
Alright, so now that we understand that, you have to understand that you are creating your own set of beliefs, okay, they’re not necessarily true for everyone. So I just want to make sure that we are both, we are both on the same page, you and me are both on the same page with this concept, okay.
So there are basically two types of beliefs. And the two that I’m going to talk about here today would be empowering beliefs. These are beliefs that help you, they’re what we would consider to be positive beliefs, they help you to become more they help you, you know, reach your goals.
They help to give you agency over your own life. And these could be things you believe about yourself about others about the world. These are beliefs that give you power.
And then we have limiting beliefs. limiting beliefs are things that you believe that hold you back, that prevent you from reaching your goals that prevent you from moving forward that prevents you from growing and learning. These are beliefs that keep you stuck and move you further away from your goals.
Okay, empowering beliefs. We want more of those limiting beliefs, we need to address these and this is what I’m talking about today, here. Okay. And then I found this quote that I super love from Henry Ford, you guys have probably heard this before. He says, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”
And I’m going to paraphrase this a little bit and say whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you’re right. Same thing. So you get to believe what you want. If you believe you can do something, you most likely can do that. If you absolutely believe you can’t, you’re going to be right in that instance as well. Okay.
Now, there are three kind of areas where we have limiting beliefs. So we have limiting beliefs about other people, what we believe about other people. We have limiting beliefs about the world in general. And then we have limiting beliefs about ourselves.
So let me let me talk about these a little bit here. So limiting beliefs about other people. What you believe about other people can affect you negatively. And this, this goes to the topic of like comparing ourselves to others when we’re comparing ourselves to others.
And we’re coming out on the losing end of that comparison, which happens very, very often, then we are choosing to believe something that is limiting us limiting our potential limiting our growth, you know, and limiting how we see ourselves.
So if you’re, if you’re looking at other people and thinking, Oh, they’re better than me, they run faster than me. They can do things that I can’t do, they’re thinner than me, or prettier than me or more fit than me, they make more money than me, they’re more successful than me, like, all of these things are just limiting your beliefs about yourself, that you’re putting yourself down with all of these comparisons, right?
So you have these limiting beliefs about others, that really affect you negatively, okay, we also do the same thing about the world in general, you know, you might think, like, you may change your diet and start eating, you know, you stop eating sugar. Let’s give that example.
Okay, so let’s say you stop eating sugar. And you’re getting this feedback that this is not normal, according to the world, right? This is not the way you’re supposed to do things. Right? Or, you know, maybe it’s, it’s in a relationship, and you’re just thinking, like, Oh, I’m supposed to find an amazing partner, fall madly in love, get married, have kids, blah, blah, blah, but I’m finding myself single. So I’m not doing things the way I’m supposed to, according to the world.
You know, you’re basing your life on what you believe, is true about the world in general about what the world wants for you. I want to have this perfect body according to what you’re, you know, you’re seeing on social media.
And I have to tell you, this one sort of breaks my heart because there’s this, like barrage of stereotypes that we’re being forced fed, you scroll through Instagram, and all you see is, you know, quote, unquote, like perfect bodies.
And we compare ourselves to that and think that we don’t live up to that ideal, and that you know, what other people in the world are doing, and the way they look is good. And what we’re doing and the way we look is bad.
And so we do this thing, where we look at the societal norms, and we compare ourselves and we come out on the losing end of that. These are beliefs that you’re choosing about the world, about what’s normal. And this can be very limiting and very damaging to our mental well being, and really holds you back from becoming the person that you want to become.
And then we have limiting beliefs about ourselves. I hear these all the time, when I’m working with people, you know, I hear people say, you know, I’m just not I’m not a real runner. I could never do that I could never run a marathon, I could never run an ultra marathon. I can never lose weight, every time I try to lose weight, I fail. This never works for me. I’ll never be that way again. You know, I’m too old. I love that one. I’m in the best shape of my life. And I consider myself to be kind of an old guy, you know, 55 years old now.
And then you know things about relationships, I’ll never find a partner, I’ll always be alone. You know, whatever it is that you’re saying about yourself. These limiting beliefs that you have about yourself are absolutely keeping you stuck. And they’re keeping you from achieving your goals. And they’re keeping you feeling terrible about yourself and about your abilities.
And I know there’s things that you want for yourself, there’s goals that you have for yourself, maybe you want to lose some weight, maybe you want to run a faster marathon, maybe you want to find the love of your life, whatever it is, whatever you want for yourself. These beliefs that you have are just keeping you stuck and holding you back. That’s why they call it limiting beliefs because they’re limiting your potential.
So why do we have these limiting beliefs? Why do we even do this? If it’s not good for us? If it moves us away from our goals and keeps us stuck and feeling terrible, why do we do this? Why do we have these limiting beliefs?
And really, this is just you just goes back to your brain wanting to protect you. You know, your human brain wants you to be safe and happy and wants you to experience pleasure and to avoid pain once to keep you comfortable and avoid any kind of discomfort.
And limiting beliefs can be a way that you sort of protect yourself from pain from hurt from disappointment from failure from feelings of unworthiness. Limiting beliefs can keep you from trying, so that you don’t have to worry about failing.
Because if you don’t try, if you just say, I could never run a marathon. And, and so that’s a limiting belief that you have. And so you don’t even have to try, then you don’t have to worry about failing.
So limiting beliefs that can give you an instant out, you can just say like, you know what, I’ve tried to lose weight before it never works for me. So boom, I don’t even have to try. It’s more comfortable. Because trying something, experiencing that discomfort of trying something. And then what if you fail? Hmm.
So when you limit yourself, you don’t even have to try. Or you know we’re talking about relationships a little bit to here. So let’s say you’re like, I’ll never find a partner who loves me unconditionally. Nobody ever accepts me the way I am. Why even bother?
In reality, what you’re doing here is you’re just, you’re you want to avoid the pain of being hurt. If you never make yourself vulnerable in a relationship, you’ll never have to experience rejection, you’ll never have to experience hurt feelings. You know saying that you could never run a marathon, you know, is just a way of avoiding all the pain of like training, and the possibility of failing.
Because when you train for a marathon, there’s a lot of pain and discomfort involved, right? Got to get up early, you got to do these long runs, you know, maybe your knees hurt, maybe you got to run in the cold, and wind in the rain. And if you just say, you know what, I could never do that, then you don’t have to experience any of that discomfort, you can just avoid all of that by just telling yourself, you know, it’s too hard. I could never do that.
But is that what you want for yourself? Is that really what you want for yourself? Because the beliefs that you have about what you can and can’t do, might be holding you back from doing the things that you really, really want for yourself.
I want you to ask yourself this question like, what is it that you really want for yourself? And how are your limiting beliefs keeping you from achieving that or even starting?
Now, I want to say this, because I’ve kind of get some pushback on this sometimes from people they’re like, well, I don’t really have a desire to run a marathon, okay, fine, then, you know, if you don’t have any desire to do that, then, you know, telling yourself you could never do that isn’t really a limiting belief. This has to be around things that you actually want for yourself, okay.
For example, I have no desire to go bungee jumping. I have no desire to sing opera on stage. So for me, to avoid these things, it’s really not a limiting belief. You know, I can say to myself, like, I don’t believe I’ll ever be an opera singer. And that’s not a limiting belief, because I don’t want to be an opera singer. And trust me, you don’t want me to be an opera singer, either, okay? You really don’t. Nobody wants that.
But for this thing to be a limiting belief, I would have to want that for myself. So let’s say I really wanted to, and I was, you know, this is my dream is to sing opera on stage, or to jump off a bridge, you know, bungee jump, or whatever. I have no desire to bungee jump, you guys.
So I just want you to know that no desire, you know, the fear that’s involved with that is just a little too overwhelming for me. I just don’t want to do it. And so I might say, like, you know, what, I just don’t want to do that I’m afraid or, you know, scary and fine, no big deal. It’s not a limiting belief.
So just understand that, you know, these are things that you want for yourself that you’re choosing to believe, that are holding you back, and you’re choosing these beliefs that are keeping you stuck there choosing beliefs that are keeping you from starting, those are the kinds of things I’m talking about here, okay.
And listen, I’ve had my share of limiting beliefs. I believed at one point that running 100 miles was impossible for me, I couldn’t do it. There’s no way I could do it. I even was doing some ultra marathons. I was doing a bunch of 50K’s and I even ran a 50 miler, and after that 50 miler, I was like there’s no freaking way that I will ever be able to run 100 miles, it’s just too far. It’s too hard.
50 was almost impossible and I’m just too old, this training would be too much. I don’t have the time, blah, blah, blah. And, and then one day for whatever reason, I don’t even know why.
But I just asked myself a different question. I was like, what if I could run 100 miles? What if I wasn’t too old? What if I made the time for the training? And just making this little mental shift of like, what if I created a shift within myself, and I started to believe, some different things.
I started to believe that maybe I could do this, maybe I could make the time for the training, maybe I could, you know, show up and do the work. And I could actually accomplish something huge like this, something that seems absolutely impossible.
For me, something that has seemed impossible for me for years. And now I’m starting to think maybe, just maybe I could, that little shift in my belief about my potential changed everything for me. And I did.
I set out to do the training. And I put in the work, and I had to believe in myself in order to accomplish that. And I want this for you, too. When it comes to overcoming your limiting beliefs, that takes a bit of work.
The beliefs that you have about yourself, especially when you’re like, you know, I’ve tried, it just doesn’t work for me. These kinds of beliefs are hardwired into your brain. These are things that are deeply rooted, they’re things that you absolutely believe to be true about yourself.
Because you’ve been thinking these thoughts over and over and over and over for years and decades. And you’ve probably never questioned them before, you’ve just always said, I can’t do it. I’m not good enough. I’m not capable. It never works for me.
But here’s the thing, I want you to start questioning all of these beliefs, your beliefs about the world, your beliefs about other people, and especially the things that you’re choosing to believe about yourself, because you get to choose what you believe about everything.
You choose your beliefs, they’re not thrust upon you. THis is probably something you’ve never thought about before. But I want you to know that this is absolutely available to you to choose what you believe. You’re doing it anyway, you’re choosing all these beliefs about yourself.
Anyway, everything you believe, is a choice. And you’ve probably never, like really thought about this before. And that’s fine. But listen, your beliefs, our decisions, everything you believe, is something that you are choosing to believe.
So with each belief that you have, there’s probably some moment in time where you made a decision to believe it, you know, could have been when you were a kid, maybe you got bullied, and you decided you would never speak up again, you want to stay small, and it’s safer that way. And so there’s no risk involved. And, you know, that’s just one example. Right?
So even today, you know, you’ve been believing this your whole life, it’s just better to stay small and don’t speak up. Because it’s safer. One of my coaches used to say, whenever I’d say something like, oh, here’s what I believe this is the truth. This person would say, when did you decide that?
And I always was like, I hate it when you say that. But it’s the truth. When did you decide that? When did you decide to start believing that you get to decide what you want for yourself?
And so I want you I want to encourage you to start making better decisions about everything about what you’re choosing to believe. So these limiting beliefs that we have, have been decisions that we’ve been making over and over and over again, okay.
And here’s, here’s another way of saying this, I love this little quote that I read in a book once and it was like, “You have to believe it to see it, not the other way around.”
So you have to believe in yourself, you have to believe you can accomplish your goal in order to accomplish your goal. But we think it’s the other way around. We think oh, as soon as I accomplish this goal, then I’ll know that I can do it, then you know, I need to see the evidence. I need to see the result in order to believe that I can do something like that.
And we got that backwards. Right? You don’t see it to believe that you believe it and then you’ll see it. You’ve got to believe in yourself, and then you can accomplish your goals. You have to change the belief first.
You can’t expect to accomplish some big goal like this, you want to lose a bunch of weight or run an ultra marathon or PR or you know, run Boston qualifying time, you’re not going to accomplish something like that.
If you have all these limiting beliefs, like it’s too hard, I can’t do this. This has never worked for me, those kinds of beliefs will not get you there, I promise you, they will not get you there. You have to believe in yourself first.
So I want you to think about this. What beliefs are holding you back? How are the things that you believe about yourself, limiting your potential? Or how are the things that you’re believing about others or the world, like, start looking at all of the things that you believe, and I want you to challenge all of them. Every single one.
You get to believe whatever you want, you can choose to believe that you’ll never lose weight, that this will never work for you that this is too hard that you can’t do it, you’re not good enough. But what good is that doing you? It’s terrible.
It’s a terrible thing to believe about yourself. It doesn’t do you any good at all. It’s keeping you stuck. It’s keeping you small. It’s keeping you from reaching your goals keeping you from achieving big things that you want for yourself.
So, since you get to choose your beliefs, why not choose the beliefs that help you, but choose beliefs that will get you to your goals, choose whatever you want for yourself, choose a belief like I will absolutely get to my goal weight, no matter how long it takes. Damn, that’s an empowering belief right there that will get you to your goal, that kind of belief in yourself will get you to that goal.
I am going to PR my next marathon, I’m going to put in the work and get there no matter what. When you believe that you’ll get there. I want you to practice this. And you know like everything else, it takes practice, right?
You can’t just like say at one time, like I’m going to run this marathon and then you’re going to do it. No, you’ve got to practice these things daily. So what is it that you want for yourself?
You want to get leaner, you want to get stronger? You want to run a faster marathon, you want to run 100 miles? What is it that you want for yourself? Do you want to change your relationship with food? Do you want to change your relationship with alcohol? Do you want to have an amazing relationship with a human being?
Do you want to experience deep meaningful love and passion and connection with somebody? Whatever it is you want for yourself? Choose to believe that you can do it. And question all the beliefs you have around this thing.
Ask yourself why you think you can’t do it? This is a good question. Why do I think I can’t do this? What’s holding you back? Why won’t this work for me? What’s stacked against me, these are these are going to start to identify your limiting beliefs, and then start choosing better thoughts. Your beliefs are just thoughts that you think over and over again.
So start choosing better ones. Start with the opposite of these, you know, you have a belief that you know, what’s holding me back, oh, this never works for me, what’s the opposite of that? This will absolutely work for me. You know, like, just start looking at reframing your negative beliefs into positive beliefs.
And practice this, you’ver got to practice this on a daily basis. This is not a one and done, this is ongoing work that we have to do. And these beliefs will come up that it’s you know, in surprising ways. And you’ll you’ll find yourself saying things to yourself like, oh, you know, I don’t know, this just never works for me. So why bother?
Like, oh, wait, wait a minute, what does that look at that question that confront those limiting beliefs and start changing them, okay. The only limits you have in your life are the ones you choose to believe.
I want you to choose to become limitless instead. Okay. That’s all I got for you today. Love you all keep on Running Lean. I will talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
On Sunday afternoons, I do live training and coaching sessions over in the Running Lean Community of Facebook. This past week I brought on a special guest - Kelly French - for a fun and informative …
Continue Reading about 89. Fat-Adapted Ultrarunning Success with Kelly French →
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.
Patrick McGilvray
Hey there, and welcome to episode 89 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m talking fat-adapted ultra running success with Kelly French. Actually, she’s talking about her fat-adapted ultra running success.
So on Sunday afternoons, over in the Running Lean community on Facebook, I do these live training and coaching sessions. And this past week, I brought on a special guest, Kelly French, and we had a fun and informative conversation all about her experience of becoming a fat-adapted runner.
So Kelly’s an ultra runner, who came to me for help transitioning to the low carb way of life, she wanted to lose a little bit of weight, and she wanted to improve her running performance. So she made it through that tough transition period, I helped her kind of get through the transition period from you know, being primarily a sugar burner to be becoming a super-efficient fat-burning machine.
And since adopting this approach, she’s run two ultra marathons with great success. And she’s going to tell you all about that. She’s also become quite a bit leaner in the process and says she feels the best that she’s felt in years. Kelly and I had a ton of fun working together, she’s done an amazing job of sticking with the program, as you will see. And I just have no doubt you’re gonna enjoy this conversation with Kelly, and you’re gonna get something out of this episode.
But first, if you like this podcast, definitely come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook and the two kind of go hand in hand, the community on Facebook gives you a chance to ask questions and join in the conversation. And you can participate in those Sunday lives that I do. And you can ask questions, and we can have some fun.
And sometimes I interview some of my clients and some other professionals and other people, experts in the field of health and fitness running in nutrition. And we just have a lot of fun over there. So just search for Running Lean community on Facebook and join us.
And here’s another five-star review of the Running Lean podcast. And this one’s from BW45. And BW45 says, “Great information. I started listening as a way to get motivated to train for a half. But I’ve continued to listen because of all the great information Patrick shares each week, I’ve learned so much about health and nutrition, that I’ve started making changes to my diet. And I can’t wait to see how these changes improve my running. This podcast is great for anyone looking to not just improve their running but their whole life.”
Patrick McGilvray
Yes, I love it. And a lot of the principles I talked about here, yes, they apply to more than just running more than just you know, trying to lose weight. mindset. Mindset is huge. It’s the foundation of everything we do. If you want to get success in any area of your life it requires the right mindset.
And if you enjoy this podcast, it would mean a lot to me if you would just take a moment. To leave a quick review, you can do that on Apple podcasts, just go to the podcast, scroll down where it says, rate and review, tap the stars and leave a few words, I would love that.
And then we’re still doing the four weeks to fat-adapted running over in the Running Lean coaching group. So this is my monthly membership program. And each month we have sort of a different topic that we cover in great detail. We have a lot of work around a specific topic this month, September 2021. It’s all about fat-adapted running, becoming a fat-adapted runner.
So we’re talking about how to do it, how to get started, what foods to eat, which you should definitely avoid, the kinds of carbs that are good, the kinds you should stay away from, and how to get through this tough transition period. All that stuff. And we just got started this past week. So you haven’t really missed much.
If you want to still join us you can absolutely do that. And we have replays of all the coaching and training sessions that we do in there. So you won’t miss anything. I promise you just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us it would be super fun to see you in there.
And if you ever want a little bit of help, a little more personalized help. I’m a coach. I do one on one coaching, this is what I specialize in. This is my forte. This is my specialty. If you just want help becoming a fat-adapted runner and you just want to work with me like imagine what you can accomplish working one on one with a coach for like three months at a time, you can just become the most badass version of yourself, I promise you, it’s awesome.
And with one on one coaching, you also get access to the Running Lean coaching group. So it’s kind of like a win-win. If you want to apply for one on one coaching, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/apply. And hopefully, we’ll have a little conversation and see if coaching is a good fit for you. It’s not a great fit for everybody. Some people are like, no, that doesn’t sound like me.
But for a lot of people, it’s exactly what they need. And Kelly was one of those people. So like I said, in the intro, Kelly French is an ultra runner, she decided she wanted to try this like low carb thing, you know, she wanted to lose some weight. But really, she wanted to improve her running performance.
Weight loss wasn’t her like her main goal, she wanted to become a better runner. And she’s done an amazing job of making this work for her. And she’s somebody that has kind of special, special dietary considerations. And so you know, I want you guys to see that you know, you can make this work no matter what your dietary sort of preferences are. Okay.
So she’s had some pretty great success with a couple of recent ultra marathons. So since becoming fat-adapted, she’s run two ultra marathons. And this is only in the last few months. This all happens sort of in the last three months-ish. But I’m going to let her tell you all about it.
So without further ado, here’s my recent conversation with Kelly French, Kelly is an ultra runner, and just an awesome human being, by the way. And she came for me, came to me for some help in getting leaner and getting stronger as an ultra runner.
And so together, we, you know, kind of coached her through the fat-adaptation process through a low carb approach to running and helped her get through that challenging fat-adaptation phase, which I think she’s going to talk to us a little bit about hair today too.
And since then, she’s had some really great results, including two pretty successful ultra marathons that she’s done recently. And so we’re gonna just get into this, I think you guys are gonna have a lot of fun with this. I know, Kelly and I were just talking before we started here that we’re gonna have fun today. Right?
So Kelly, introduce yourself, just tell us who you are. And let’s talk a little bit about what drove you to seek out coaching? Like, what was it that was going on with you where you wanted to get some help?
Kelly French
Yes, um, well, hello, everybody. I guess it was maybe a few months before I decided to do the coaching that I just was almost in a place of just some bad habits and just some lifestyle habits that just was not working, I was going to be completely honest. Like, I’m not gonna hold anything back I was drinking on a regular basis. No matter if I was happy, celebrating, sad, whatever it was, I was using that to cope.
I was doing the same thing I’m doing now – running all the time, I’m still doing trail races, still exercising, but I was also, you know, kind of having the mentality of, I can eat whatever I want. I just ran all these miles, I didn’t have the mindset of what I was putting into my body, you know, maybe wasn’t healthy. I wasn’t getting a lot of the results.
As in, you know, my speed, I wanted to hit certain things. And I and I wasn’t, and it was probably, you know, a couple of weeks before that I was at work, you know, listening on some headphones and was like, you know, I wonder what is out there that I could listen to that maybe there’s some podcasts or self-help, or somebody who’s in the running community.
Because I was just at a little bit of a low point at that time. And it was very interesting because I started listening to a couple of your podcasts. And there were a few things that you said, you know, hey, this is what I went through. This is what my life was like. And now here I am today, doing a to z and I just have all these results and a better person mentally.
So I saw that you were looking for people you could sign up and kind of give your story on if it was a good fit to get some coaching and to get some help. And I said you know what? I listening to you. I felt like I knew you I felt for a reason you could help me so I reached out and I said this is what I’m doing, going through, this is what I’m looking to do and, and then the next day you got back to me and we had a one on one. And it was just the best thing that could have ever happened to me in my life. So yeah, that’s kind of how it started.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. So what were a couple of those goals that you are hoping to accomplish? Like, what did you want to get out of coaching? Besides just like getting a little bit faster? Like, talk a little bit about that?
Kelly French
Very interesting. So in the very beginning, I think my goal was to just feel better, feel healthy. And definitely, I wanted to at that time, the goal was to lose 15 pounds to take some of the weight off to kind of have some mental clarity. I just needed, I needed direction.
And before this, I mean, I tried things like cleanses, right? I tried, at one point, Weight Watchers, I tried just things that were very much so quick fixes things that were not going to be long term. And, you know, that’s just kind of how it was in the beginning. So at that point met you, I was like, my goal is just it really was just to lose weight and feel better. I did it like when I first started, there wasn’t anything concrete yet. Yeah. And the fear of getting weight loss surgery. That was it.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s fair. And so tell me a little bit about what running was like for you like before we started working together? How was your running performance? How did you feel running? How do you feel about running? Where were you?
Kelly French
Sure. So I would have to say, I’m still, I can relate at this time. The best part about running for me, in general, is the group of women that I run with, that’s always going to be special to me, I have really close friends that run such an amazing group of athlete women. At that point, I didn’t have concrete goals with running, my goal was to always be able to finish quote, unquote, I guess I was more like, am I back of the pack, I’m okay with that. I’m just here to finish and I was slower.
And even when I ran, you know, I would just carb load before I was like, Oh, my gosh, I have a half marathon, I need to eat a bagel or peanut butter, I got to get up an hour early and just, and I almost I would run and I would feel kind of slow and being kind of like, just I wasn’t feeling good about myself. I love to do it for the fun of it.
But I was more settling with being slow, mediocre, um, just kind of being there and then not feeling good when I was running. Like I just kind of, I would swear I’d have these conversations with girlfriends every day, I would load up on goos. Oh, you’re gonna have these goos you’re gonna feel so great. You know you take the goos, take goos with you, you’re going to feel fantastic. Take salt tablets. I mean, the list goes on. You’re going to be high performance if you eat this before. And you just, I felt like trash really. Um, so I was not feeling good. Like, during the runs. I loved the people I was with. And I love the group. I still love the group of people I run with, um, but I didn’t feel strong at that time. No, I was just there. I was just there.
Patrick McGilvray
So we started working together and you want to kind of get into this fat-adaptation thing you wanted to become a fat-adapted runner. What sort of changes did you make? Like, how was that process for you? What was the hardest thing about that process for you?
Kelly French
Cool. I would say that’s a good question. Um, I would say in the beginning, I would say I’m taking away things that helped me cope better. With alcohol, I stopped drinking the alcohol. So I felt like my advice was kind of gone. I was after long runs. I was used to getting whatever I wanted like pizza was my life at that time.
And I was like, okay, so I wasn’t able to. I made the choice. I’m not gonna say I was unable to I made the choice to not have those foods that I was used to, I was used to alcohol is used to kind of eating whatever I wanted. Although I snapped pretty healthy, I was used to eating throughout the day like snacks, even if they were peanuts, or just fruit or random stuff here and there I would like, because where I worked, I usually ate at my desk.
So I would bring like a ton of snacks. So I had to kind of sit there with no snack, and just kind of in watch, you know, drink water or coffee or something. So I wasn’t used to just having minimal, minimal things. So I had to kind of wait and I wasn’t eating for 16 hours, you know, I was doing the fasting. So that was different for me as well. And then I guess I would say, after you know, three or four weeks, your body just did it adjust to it. Um, but in the beginning, it was not fun not being able to have what I was used to having.
Patrick McGilvray
Especially, so you’re talking about using alcohol and using, you know, food, basically, as you said, like a coping mechanism, or I call that like, how we deal with our emotions, you know, it’s like emotionally eating or drinking. So, right? Was that hard at first for you? Like, did you find that that was pretty challenging to like, you because you made a decision to stop drinking for a little while?
Kelly French
So that was difficult in the sense of. Um, so this is, in grade two exercise was still every day for me to at that time, so I never missed work. But I had a schedule of working out, or going for a run cross-train, whatever it may be, you know, having a glass of wine or two at night, making, you know, pasta, maybe getting a pizza, maybe making too much of, you know, whatever the food may have been. So just I had that routine of unhealthy habits.
So when that was kind of taken away, that was difficult, especially if I had a stressful day at work or you know, people piss me off. And you know, you want something. I mean, we can all relate, right? So, it was hard to deal with certain things like that, or go to an event or a party and other people that your social drinking, you know, and however you want to put it to having you know, water or a diet soda or something when everybody else is having this or that. And they’re like, oh, what are you doing? Like you’re not drinking? You know, things like that. It’s like, well, no, actually, I’m not because I’m, you know, making that choice. But it was difficult to adjust to that in the beginning.
Patrick McGilvray
So did it get easier?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, super easier. It’s for somebody who drank alcohol, whether it was one glass of alcohol, whether it’s going out after a group run, and going to a brewery, you know, and just being after a race and drinking to drinking almost every day or on the weekends with friends after 10 miles or brunch or mimosas to now the last time I had I had half a beer was when I finished the ultramarathon in July. And I couldn’t even taste it because my taste buds are so different now.
So I don’t miss it at all. Wow. And for me, that is huge. Because I was so used to that for so long, where it’s now it’s like it’s just not in my life anymore. It’s not a part of it anymore. And I never would have thought in a million years, I would say that I have gone to barbecues and brought my own stuff and everyone’s drinking, having fun. And I still have a great time. I just choose to, to not I mean, I could if I wanted, I just I don’t have the urge like I used to, which is in a good way.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s beautiful. Because with the urge being there, like when you have this desire for alcohol or for food, whatever it is, and you’re trying not to do it but the desire still there that’s really hard to do. That’s where most people find themselves kind of white-knuckling it and trying to get through it.
But when you get to the point where the urge is gone or the desire is gone, then it’s no big deal. You can just like go to the party and hang out and you’re not craving you’re not thinking you’re you know, missing out on something. You know you’re not craving that thing. So that’s super awesome.
And I want you guys to know that are watching. If you guys have questions for Kelly, go ahead and drop them in the comments. And we’ll get to all the questions at the end. So you got through this place where you were eating a lot, you are drinking you, you change these habits, you know, started to anyway. And then things started to get a little bit easier for you.
So let’s talk about that. Like, when did you know, cause I know that like getting fat-adapted is tough. There’s a transition period, right when you’re running. And there’s a period where running is pretty terrible, right? Like, how hard was it to get through that, and then what’s running like for you now?
Kelly French
So I would say, maybe week five to six is where I started to feel kind of crappy, during the fat adaptive with the longer mileage and with the heat coming. I had done there was a three-hour run and it was kind of the same mile loop every time it was in PA was a trail. And each loop there was this terrible incline uphill. And I was just super mad I couldn’t get up there as fast as I wanted to, I was literally taking two to three breaks, even trying to like, hike up there.
Granted, it was pretty wild the incline, I just felt like trash, but you just keep going anyway, um, I still made it through the three hours, I’m not gonna give up. But I knew going into it, just by the research and just by listening to and getting the knowledge that that that’s what it’s gonna be like because your body is used to all of the things you’re doing to it before and then you know, you’re taking some of that out, it’s almost like your body’s trying to cleanse itself and, and reset.
So I feel like that’s part of like the reset progress or process. So that was difficult. And there was another time where I had like a longer run, and I was just getting aggravated. And I started walking and probably swore a little bit. And I was like, you know what, just do what you gotta do, you know, and then I might have told you about it. And I was like, oh my gosh, like this is I just, I feel like I’m not doing what I need to be doing. You know, it’s I’m slower.
But then it must have been maybe three weeks later. And I felt like a brand new person. So it was probably week six when I felt not great. And maybe a few weeks after that I started to feel different, better. And my body, adjusted the schedule to the food to get rid of things that were not fueling my body, I guess to say.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, so you, you know, adapt, embrace this whole low-carb approach to running. You got through the fat-adaptation period, it was a little bit challenging, a little terrible. Trade. Kelly’s always very honest with me about how she’s feeling. So I remember that. And then I remember you telling me about your 50k because you had this 50k planned, and you had a pretty good experience at that. 50k, tell us about that.
Kelly French
Well, I feel like a lot of the races that I do are never the weather is always down for so that was the first thing 24 hours before the run. It was nothing but down for the whole night. So we’re in the hotel room and I’m like, great, great. And you just hear it it’s just heavy. And so we got to the start I think was seven and it started at A and it was just a total down downpour. Granted this was a trail 50k and I knew it was going to be sloppy, I knew it was going to be a mess, but I was with two girls that I always run with just a fantastic group of women and we were going to embrace it anyway. It’s never gonna be perfect running conditions. You just figure it out and you do it.
So we did it. They did have a lot of it all to my do. I brought only the noon tablets that’s what I use. Um, and I did have some coffee before so I was feeling pretty good. And I would say maybe mile 10 or 11. They had some like rest areas and stuff where they had people there so they had electrolytes water, and usually if anyone who does trail they know a lot of this stuff is kind of garbage that they’re going to give you. There’s lot of candy needed, goldfish, cookies, you know. So I ended up doing a couple of pickles shots that they had their mile, I want to say 18-19 is when I started to feel a little bit cranky that I knew I was like, okay, I need something here.
So I ended up having half of a banana, some pickles, and I felt fantastic. And I just had my noon tablets. And I didn’t need anything else. So and then after, which was cool, they, you don’t have food for you. They have stuff for vegetarians, meat-eaters, whatever. So they had bean burgers, which I like and mix it with whatever you want. So and I felt fine. I wasn’t sick. I had no major GI issues during that run.
And the conditions were absolutely out of control. So the same loop twice that we did. There were a lot of people who dropped out who didn’t do it. There were even people who went as far as did the 50 miler, and it just down-poured the whole time. The second loop we did, was barely runnable you had water up to your knees. People were falling. And we just did it.
So it was and I did it with barely anything to eat. So and I felt great. I felt great. So yeah, that was awesome. I felt really good. Which a couple of years ago, if I did something like that, I would have probably felt like I had to eat two meals doing something like that. So but I felt great. And that was the first time where I got done with a run. And just felt fantastic. So, so awesome. Good. It was a really good feeling.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, and to be able to do a 50k, which you know, that’s good, that’s a long time you’re out there running, it’s like between, you know, five and eight hours, depending on how long it takes you and especially in those conditions, you’re probably on the higher end of that.
Kelly French
I was gonna have flowers.
Patrick McGilvray
What was it six and a half? Something like that. Yeah. So that’s a long time to be out there running and to just be like, oh, yeah, I have like a half a banana, and some electrolytes. That’s so awesome. Another thing I didn’t mention is that you’re doing this and you’ve been doing this as a vegetarian. And a lot of people say, oh, you know, it’s really hard to do the low carb thing as a vegetarian or if you’re a vegan or something like that. So was that extra hard for you? Because I don’t, I don’t remember that being really that much of a challenge for you.
Kelly French
I have to say I would 100% disagree with somebody who would say that that’s difficult, um, even so, I would say, maybe two years ago, I did incorporate fish into my diet. So I was a vegetarian for many years. I was an overweight vegetarian is what I was. Um, but the last couple of years I did include fish. So even if I didn’t eat fish, I could tell you what I did. There are so many options.
There’s bean burgers, if you don’t want to buy them, you can make your own you could do the beyond sausage. I think they taste incredible. I eat them almost every single day to be quite honest with you. You could do mushrooms you could do all the greens you want. You could do fish. I love salmon. I do salmon at least two to three times a week. If you don’t like fish, all you have to do like I mean tofu – marinated tofu. I put tofu and buffalo sauce. You could do whatever you want to eat. You could grill it you could saute it. There are just so many options.
You know I have that a lot of the time with broccoli. You can put that with the shredded cheese you could do marinated Brussel sprouts with buffalo sauce. I put buffalo sauce on everything so there’s just there are way more options than you think. I was like that in the beginning. I was like huh, so then I had looked before I worked with you and I can tell you I’ve never eaten so many eggs in my life until I started this process.
I love a soup can scramble omelet pickled however you want. I’ve fallen in love with eggs. Eggs are awesome. Avocados do the trick. There are just so many options and you could fill your plate with all these different things and it’s awesome. There’s so much food, so many different things you can have. You just have to, you know, look it up. I did a lot of research on different foods I could have, you have a pamphlet that says foods that you know you recommend. To me, it was not even, it wasn’t even difficult now you were the first second with not eating meat.
Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, one of the things you mentioned was like the beyond product like the Beyond Meat products, which are, are gluten-free. They’re sort of they’re like plant-based burgers and sausages. But they don’t have a lot of carbs in them either. And they don’t use, you know, wheat or anything like that. And so they’re kind of made for people like you who are doing more of a low carb type of thing. And then what a good source of protein. So they’re loaded with good quality protein, like pea protein.
Kelly French
Yogurt, to a lot of the yogurts that I that have very low sugar have like 16 grams of protein. There are just a lot of options at the store that you want to think but I think super easy to do it without being a vegetarian, you could do it being a vegan, all you’re doing is cutting out all the carbs. It’s easier than you think.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, for sure. I just said that because I think I think that’s true. I believe that that is true. It is easier than you think. But I think it’s just people have this concept of like, if you’re going to do low carb, then you’ve got to be eating a bunch of meat. And that’s just really not the case. You just take out all the garbage trash. We mistake eating real food, right?
And so okay, so you set out at the beginning, I remember when you and I started out you were talking about losing a little bit of weight, you’re like, I just want to lose maybe 10 or 15 pounds. And then I remember on the very last day that we had our last coaching call, you’re like here’s my weight, and you’d lost how much exactly?
Kelly French
Now it’s 22 pounds. Oh, yeah, so my goal weight. This is, let me see. Eight pounds less than my RIT original goal weight with you. I had a number between this number between that number. And then I even and I didn’t even do it on, I don’t even do it on purpose. That’s the thing. Like this is just I don’t even the best part for me. This is, it’s so easy. You don’t have to track everything.
You don’t have to keep pressing numbers into a phone. I did use that carb adapted those carb app carbs. Yeah. And I tried that. I did that for a month, just so I knew what was in certain foods that I didn’t really know before. I don’t even use that at all. Now, I don’t have to track anything. It’s just my will. It’s just my life. It’s just what I eat, and I don’t pay attention to it anymore. So awesome.
Patrick McGilvray
And that’s sustainable. Because like, I don’t think it’s sustainable to be tracking your food every single day. I really don’t think that’s a good idea. Because then we start to get a little too obsessed with this stuff. You know, I encourage people to understand what their kind of macros look like and what a day looks like, of what they’re eating.
Like, how does this all break down? Like what are the calories look like where the carbs look like what is the protein look like? But at the end of the day, we want to just be like, you know, let’s put all that stuff away. And just make this like a lifestyle like you’ve done Kelly, which is so cool. So you recently did another ultra event. And you did a Ragnar Relay, but you did it in a little bit of a different way. Tell us what you guys did there.
Kelly French
Oh, yeah. So before COVID I was signed up for Ragnar to do in West Virginia. And then COVID happened so it got canceled. So then we just had it with a month ago. Yeah, mid-August. So we did West Virginia. So as I was on, there must have been 35 people total like just from our group, but people came from all over the place. But in our group alone, there were some people that had a team of eight, or a team of seven.
We were the women’s Ultra team. We had four and then there was another women’s team that came with us there was a team of four. Then there are people from all over. They had Ultras or they just had, you know, regular teams. And it was awesome, it was a really, really cool experience. And I would say, so it’s interesting.
So I would say two years ago, I would think that I was going to be not the weakest link on the team, but just maybe, you know, the person who may be the slowest one on the team, which at that time, I’m like, It’s all right, you know, no worries, you don’t really have a lot of goals, you’re just there to, quote-unquote, have fun. So throughout this time, I have just seen so much progress in just my speed, my endurance, my overall health.
So I was like, eff that I’m coming, I’m gonna like, I’m going to see what I can do during this thing. And I’m going to, I’m going to go out and it’s going to be awesome. So when you have an ultra team, you do two loops at a time. And so you’ll have two loops, and then two loops at night. And then two loops in the morning. So this was like 26 hours. And then I had a night run, which was a 10 miler.
And, you know, you have your headlamp, there are bears, there are roots everywhere, there’s bold, it’s technical, you have to climb. It was wild, you know, but it was beautiful. It was cool. The adventure was awesome. And by then, you know, you’re just dead after the night runs, you’re not really paying attention to your times, you’re not paying attention to a lot of stuff. You’re just there, you know, you’re able to see like strong people running, you know, friendships and people having fun laughing such a fun, supportive environment.
So, as we got into the morning, and we’re on, you know, our last loops, someone was like, you know, you guys are on track to get first place and the women’s Ultra, and I’m like, no, really? And I was probably delirious. I mean, I didn’t sleep in I don’t know 30 hours. Yeah. And I was like, that’s pretty sweet.
So I had a friend that she was on our team, she ended up having some GI issues. So I ran her loop at the end. And then another girl ran one of mine, and then I ran the last one. So then we’re finished. And they said, This is the first place women’s Ragnar, so we came in first. So cool, and it was like, and I was telling you that. I mean, that was a cool experience.
But I’m gonna just tell everybody this because I think it’s so important. I have a girl on my team, she has lost over 100 pounds I had to be I just met her within the last month. And I didn’t know her backstory, I haven’t known anything except for I see her at the gym, she does a lot of obstacle course stuff. She loves to do the running. And she finished and she started crying.
And she was like, I never would have thought in my life, I would do anything like this. And she’s like, I’m so happy, I can’t even tell you. And that is what was important to me. It wasn’t about the first place it was about seeing somebody else who reached a goal and who was in a place where they needed help and support. So it wasn’t until a couple of weeks later that she had a before and after picture. And I was floored. I just couldn’t even believe it. It was her and she was on my team. And I just was like, you’re just so amazing. I’m so happy for you, you made this experience even that much better for me.
And then I kind of you know, I got home when it sunk in and like, Oh, we got first place, you know, then it’s like getting all like, this is awesome. I’ve never been in this situation before, you know. So I was looking at the results when it came to my legs. And I was like, I want to just compare them to like the other girls on my team and I want to compare them to maybe some of the other ladies who ran just to see where I was at.
And I’ll tell you, I was like at the same kind of pace or better than a lot of women. I would have never thought that it would be like that and that’s when I knew I am getting so much stronger because I’m at such and not even on purpose. Like it’s just I’m just getting faster and stronger and you know mentally and physically So that experience was awesome. But this is just an icing on the cake to be like, Oh, we got first place, let’s go.
Patrick McGilvray
And I don’t want you to downplay this at all, because you are doing this on purpose. You know what I mean? You are doing this on purpose like this is something you’ve been really focused on, is getting stronger and faster. And then this is one of the reasons why you set out to do this in the first place.
And when you lose 22 pounds, running is going to be easier, you know, and you’re going to be faster, you’re going to be a little more powerful as a runner. And then I remember you telling me and I want you to share this like picture in your mind of like, what it was, like you mentioned, like seeing somebody at that race at that ultra, and all the like, food or goos or whatever that they had, versus, versus what you had.
Kelly French
It’s just really funny, like where I’m at now. So I brought that I brought bananas. Um, I bought in the stores, they have like a Keto granola, like very low sugar, like a trail mix, like a cleaner trail, mostly nuts. Yeah. Correct. And then I brought, um, waters, noon tablets. That was it. But yeah, it’s just all water. Nothing really.
And I knew they were gonna have food trucks there anyway. Because I researched before. So I knew that there was going to be stuff that I could eat, and there were no grills or anything, so I’m not going to bring it.
So we’re with a bunch of different people. And so there’s like just one big tent with a canopy with just food in there. I mean, you name it. There’s like, I couldn’t even believe it there. Doritos, Oreos, sodas, Ginger Ales. Sandwich bread. Granted, there are food trucks there. And I’m just like, Oh, God, if I eat any of that like it’s over. Like, there’s no way I’m going to feel good on the runs. Because, I mean, you’re in the wilderness. There are no restrooms out there, you know?
Patrick McGilvray
So it’s like, I mean, I know what you mean.
Kelly French
One of those things. No, so I didn’t need anything. You know, I had dinner. I knew I wasn’t getting anything until after my first two loops were done. So I had a 3.5 and then a 4.5. And then I was like, Okay, then I’m going to eat dinner. I don’t want to eat really before. So they had like a bean burger, which I knew that they would have. They had eggs there. They had coffee they had and then I had my own stuff.
So I had like the night runs that stuff saved me. Because you’re feeling kind of crappy already. You haven’t been sleeping, you have to do 10 miles in the dark. You don’t know what’s going to be behind some of these boulders. So it’s like, that’s when I was, you know, had my banana. They had coffee. You know, if I wanted the trail mix, it was there. And I was fine. I had no stomach issues. And I was up for many hours. And I felt pretty good. Even on no sleep.
Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, that’s awesome. That’s a good sign of that adaptation right there for sure. Yeah, I remember you describing like, you looked over and saw somebody some guy maybe that you were, you know, one of the runners out there. And he had this bag of like goos and gels and just like so much stuff. And you were thinking to yourself, like how many weeks do you plan on being out here with all that stuff that you brought with you, you know, bars and shoes and all kinds of stuff.
Kelly French
And there’s people drinking like a ton of beers there. Oh, oh, God, like I just can’t I can’t even imagine while you’re doing that. And then okay, go for your 10 Miles have a great time. It’s like no way. But yeah, it was nice to not act like that anymore. You know, you’re already nervous enough about I have to run the next day, and when you don’t and who wants to bring a load of food? I sure did it. So I feel like you’re gonna be just fine.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh, yeah, for sure. You can eat in bring your own if there’s not, not a big deal. So anything else you want to share with us? Kelly, this has been really fun talking with you. But any other thoughts on any of this stuff?
Kelly French
I know I’ve told you many times, but I have to say what I’ve learned the most. And what I’m most happy about. It’s not about weight loss. I think in the beginning people have that mindset of, I just want to lose weight and, you know, be this or be that it has really overall helped me in my life.
You know, I have a new job now I’m, I have mental clarity, I’m physically stronger, faster, I’ve become a better person, you know, I’m volunteering on Tuesdays for Special Olympics, and I do track and field, there are so many things, I’m doing better myself because of this process. And it’s not, you know, just about the food. It’s just about you as a person, and how do you want to spend your life and what do you want from it, and I would say anyone who’s on the fence about working with you or getting the coaching, it is the best investment you could ever do for yourself.
100% It’s worth it, it’s your life, it’s, you know, becoming better, you know, sister, it helps me become a better spouse, friend, employee, just all of those things. Once you get your health under control, everything else just falls into place. And that’s just honesty. So that’s the bigger picture is it’s investing in yourself, you owe it to yourself, and people who are listening, you know, they’re listening for a reason. And they might be thinking, maybe this is something I’d want to do. And but I’m just not sure. But if you’re not sure, do it, just do it, you have nothing to lose everything to gain, and it’s your life, you know, life back.
Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, there’s this well, thank you for saying that, I really appreciate that. But there’s this real ripple effect that happens. And I talk about this a lot. It’s like you, we worry sometimes that we’re being selfish, you know, we worry that sometimes we’re like, oh, I’m, you know, taking care of myself, you know, and getting this coaching and losing the weight and getting healthy. Now, that’s just me being selfish.
It’s like, No, it’s not being selfish at all, your health is the most important thing that you have. And when you become healthy, and when you feel good about yourself, and you feel good mentally, emotionally, and physically, that has a ripple effect. It you know, you’re more fun to be around, you know, and you get more work done, and you’re a better mom, and you’re a better parent, and you’re a better spouse and all those things that you just mentioned.
So I’m glad you said that. Because, you know, it’s one thing to hear me talking about this stuff, but to hear your experience and to hear you actually say that this is what you’ve experienced and how it’s worked for you. This is really cool. So I just want to say thank you, Kelly, for like being here and sharing all this stuff with us. It’s been awesome.
Kelly French
Well, thank you for everything. Like I say you’re one in a million and you are and you help advocate and you know, you give people the knowledge and the tools and you’re supportive, and it’s it can just help you’re there to help people. And when people make the changes for the better.
Like I said, you came into my life at such an interesting time when I really needed it. And if I didn’t start listening to a podcast, like I would have never met you. It’s just like, What are the chances? You know, and then here I am. I’m just, I’m just a better version of myself right now. So it’s, it’s great.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh, my gosh, Kelly is so awesome. Thank you so much, Kelly for the conversation that we had, it was so so fun. And remember September is four weeks to fat-adapted Running month over in the Running Lean coaching group, you will learn exactly how to become a lean fat-burning running machine and become the healthiest version of yourself yet, just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join and join us over there. Well, I hope you all got something out of this episode today. And if you did, please consider sharing it with a friend. I love you all keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’re a runner and you’ve been struggling to lose weight or you keep losing and gaining the same 10 pounds over and over again. Or you’re finally ready to get to your natural weight and stay there for good this time then I have something you will love. I’ve created a powerful new training just for you called running lean for life. You’ll learn exactly how to transform yourself into a lean fat-burning running machine. So you can run without bonking, lose weight without calorie counting and develop the habits required to make it last for life. To get this free training right now go to runningleanpodcast.com/leanforlife and start your transformation today.
Last weekend I ran the Sloppy Hog 50k. This wasn’t an organized event, and since most of the ultras have been canceled this year, I decided I would just do one on my own. So I picked a date, …
Continue Reading about 51. How I Ran a 50k on Zero Calories →
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode 51 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today I’m going to be talking about how I ran a 50k recently on zero calories. So last weekend, I ran the sloppy hog 50k. This wasn’t an organized event. You know, since most of the ultras have been canceled this year, almost all races have been canceled, right? I just decided I’m going to do this on my own.
So I picked a date, I mapped out a course on some local trails, and bam, the sloppy hog 50k was born. So what makes this particular event unique, though, is not just the amazing name that I chose for it. It is an amazing name, right? It’s that I did the whole thing without using any fuel at all. I took in zero calories before or during my roughly eight hours-ish of running.
So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to break it all down for you, I want to tell you exactly how I did it. But maybe even more importantly, why I did it. That is all coming up. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, come check us out on Facebook, we have this awesome group in Facebook called the Running Lean community, you can find us by just going to Facebook and searching for Running Lean community.
It’s a bunch of runners like you who are interested in nutrition, and weight loss and achieving big goals. And we all support each other and encourage each other and motivate each other. We’re in the middle of this running challenge. Right now it’s the running through the holidays challenge. The challenge is to run a mile every day, at least a mile every day between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day. And we are well into this and it is so much fun.
People are finding all kinds of motivation, and really enjoying it. So come check us out on Facebook. The other thing I wanted to mention is that beginning January 3, I’m going to open my monthly coaching group. This is my signature program, which here’s what I’m doing.
I’m combining the monthly coaching group, which I had started recently, and the online weight loss training course for runners that I created. So I’m taking those two things, because here’s the thing. If you want these amazing results, you want to learn exactly how to transform yourself into an efficient fat burning machine, you need the knowledge, right, you need that training course that’ll tell you exactly how to do all of that. Okay.
The other part, though, that is so important, I think is missing from a lot of programs like this is the accountability piece, the showing up. And you know, talking to people that are going through the same thing with you getting help from me. And that’s what the coaching group is. So I’ve got the online training course and the monthly coaching group, I’ve just kind of combined it into one thing.
So when you join the monthly coaching group, you get access to the online weight loss training course for runners. And this is the combination that will get you the results that you’re looking for. I promise you, it’s gonna be awesome. So just check it out, it’s going to launch January 3 of 2021.
In the meantime, if you want to get on the waitlist, you can go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. I want you to make 2021 your year, let’s put 2020 behind us, shall we? I want you to become the badass runner that you’ve always always wanted to be. And joining the monthly coaching group is gonna get you there. Cool.
So just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join. Okay, so how did I run a 50k on zero calories? And why did I do this crazy thing? So let’s talk about the why first, because I think it’s important to let you guys know why I decided to do this. Okay, it wasn’t just a whim. This is something I’ve been planning for some time.
I did it for a bunch of different reasons. But mainly, you know, I talk about this all the time. I want to be an example of what’s possible. And so I want to show you that when you become I’m a fat adapted runner, which means you can burn fat very efficiently. That you can do, you’re capable of running much longer than you ever thought you could.
I want to just show you that you can do something like a marathon or a 50k. And you don’t have to use fuel. If you don’t want to, you can still use fuel if you want to. But I’m just saying, when you’re an efficient fat burner, you don’t need it. You got plenty of fuel on board, which is super cool. I did it because I wanted to be an example. But also because I wanted to prove to myself that this stuff really works.
You know, I wanted to test the limits of my own fat adaptation, I wanted to see how far I could go and still feel good. How far can I go? How far can I run without any fuel and still feel good? Well, the answer is at least 32 miles at this point, probably further.
But you know, I really wanted to do something that was that was going to challenge me that was going to push me outside of my comfort zone, I talk a lot about getting out of your comfort zone, I talk a lot about embracing discomfort and how when you embrace discomfort, and you get out of your comfort zone, that’s where all the good stuff is. Right?
Everything you have already is what you have, it’s in your comfort zone, it’s comfortable, it’s the known. But when you push yourself outside of the known into the unknown, that’s where the growth happens. That’s where the cool stuff happens. That’s where you, you change, and you can transform yourself physically, mentally, emotionally.
And so I wanted to push myself, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, this was out of my comfort zone. I’ve never done a 50k I’ve done a bunch of them before, but I’ve never done one with zero calories, you know, not taking any fuel and during. So this is something that was like, I don’t know if I can do this or not, I don’t know if this is going to work.
But it did. And I’ll tell you all about that in just a second here. But the main reason why I did this is to show you what is possible, right? You don’t have to want to do this. But just knowing that that is possible, is is something I wanted to share with you.
And I want you to see that fat adaptation is is a pretty remarkable thing. And that you can do some pretty amazing things, you know, running off of your own body fat. Cool. So how did I do this? Like, what was the process I went through?
So first of all, you have to understand that I started my journey to fat adaptation this year, earlier this year, let’s just call it like, you know, January, February of 2020. And I’ve done this before, a few years back, I did the same thing. I didn’t quite do it, right. I didn’t know then what I knew now. And I had some good results in the past, but it wasn’t sustainable the way I was doing it. And let’s just leave it at that.
Like, you know, it doesn’t matter what I did wrong in the past, I just I didn’t know what I know now, especially the mental piece, right? It’s such a big part of this. So I started my fat adaptation journey again this year earlier this year. And I’ve trained for many months, you know, to become fat adapted, it was a challenge when you get off of sugar as your primary source of fuel.
So you’re a sugar burner. Most of us are sugar burners, our body’s like burning sugar for fuel, it’s very efficient, right? It’s a very easy fuel to get to and it’s very abundant. We eat a lot of sugar and carbs. And so that stuff is really available for our bodies to use as fuel. The problem with that is that, you know, you’re most of us, as runners tend to overdo it with the sugar and we tend to be storing a lot of that energy as fat instead of using it as fuel.
So we’re just constantly shoving sugar into us, and it’s being stuffed into our fat cells instead of being burned. Right. So, you know, when I got off to sugar, and started this process of becoming fat adapted, it was a challenge. It was, you know, six to eight weeks of me, you know, kind of struggling to run like running was a bit of a challenge for me.
I didn’t enjoy running very much it was it was hard because your body has to shift from having this one source of fuel that it’s used to using to switching over to fat, which is what it’s really not used to using typically as fuel because we just don’t ever allow that to happen. We don’t allow our bodies a chance to eliminate all the glycogen from our, from our cells from our muscles.
And we don’t just we just don’t get into the fat burning zone, the way we we do when you get off of sugar. So that process is a challenge and it’s uncomfortable and it doesn’t feel good. And I talk about this a lot. Like you just have to get through that part. Right.
So I got through that part. And then for the rest of this year, I made a commitment to really doing all my runs in a fasted state, meaning really not getting any fuel before I run, I drink coffee in the morning, that’s it. And then I do my workout, whether it’s a strength training, workout speed work, long runs, whatever it is, I just do it all without fuel. And I do that because when you do that, it makes you a more efficient fat burner.
Okay, so I kind of prepared for this for many months, and became a very efficient fat burner. So that’s kind of step one is you got to get good at burning your own fat and using your own fat for fuel. Once you get to that place, though, it feels so good. Because you really do feel like you can run forever.
And then I decided since I was feeling so good in the summer, I decided I was going to run a marathon in October. And so at the end of October I trained for and ran a marathon with some friends. And we had a lot of fun. It was a success, I did that unfueled as well. And that got me thinking that I was going to I wanted to do this 50k. And I wanted to do it unfueled.
And I had originally planned on doing this next spring like spring of 21. And I felt so good after that marathon, I was like, hmm, maybe I can just push this up and do it now like train for five more weeks, and then use that momentum to carry me into this 50k in December rather than waiting till, like April or whatever. And so I made that decision. And once I made that decision, I was like, I’m just going to do it, I feel good. I feel trained up to increase my mileage at that point wasn’t going to be that big of a deal.
Once I made that decision, I was like all in. I was like 100% committed, you know, I wrote out a five week training plan. And then I just worked the plan. I stuck to my plan. I did some, some long runs. On the weekends, I increased my long runs, you know after the marathon, usually I would take some time off after a marathon few weeks or something like that. But I got right back into the long runs the following weekend.
You know, I think I did something like 16 on Saturday, and then Sunday, I would do like 10. And then my peak week I ended up doing something like 45 miles or something like that. But the weekend, I did 18 on Saturday and 12 on Sunday. So over the two days, you know, we’re talking 30 miles, instead of doing a super long run one day, I decided to split it up into two.
And that was a good training plan for me like that worked really well that kept me from getting injured after a marathon, you know, you do have to kind of be careful of that kind of thing happening. But instead, I kind of broke up that that long run over two days. And you’re still running on tired legs the next day, like 18 miles on Saturday and 12 miles on Sunday is still a lot of running. Okay.
But that kept me from like doing like a 24-25 mile or something like that, and kept me from getting injured. So I felt good about my strategy. And I kind of use the same strategy for other Ultras I’ve done, like my 50 mile 100 mile, you know, you don’t really run 80 miles on one day or whatever.
But you know, over the course of a week, you might do 80 or 85 miles. On the weekends. I remember training for my 100 I would do like 30 miles on Saturday and 20 miles on Sunday. So you’re running 50 miles in a 24 hour period, you’re totally running on tired legs, it does really build your aerobic base without the risk of injury. So at least that reduces the risk of injury. So that’s a good good plan that I kind of have adopted in the past. It’s worked well for me in the past and I thought I’m just going to do this again.
So that worked really well and I just stuck to this plan for the last five weeks or so. And really here’s the thing, there’s three parts to a successful event like this. Really there’s three parts to successful running, right? There’s the training, there’s the nutrition, and then there’s the mindset.
The training, we understand, you know, do your long runs, do a few shorter runs during the week, do some strength training, all that stuff, we all kind of get that the nutrition part, you know, I trained very low carb, and, you know, I might do 50 grams of carbs a day or less, most days, I don’t really count carbs and stuff, I don’t count macros, I don’t enter food into an app or anything.
Like, I just, I’m at the point right now where I stay away from sugar and flour and other refined carbs. And I just eat real food. And I have put my food, entered it into apps just to see kind of where I was. And I’m usually somewhere around 30 or 40 grams of carbs. And that’s mostly in the form of vegetables, maybe some full fat, Greek yogurt, some strawberries and stuff like that. So I do train very low carb.
And then the mindset piece is so important. Like you, you have to be all in on something like this, you know, you have to have that mindset of like, I’m going to make this work, I’m going to figure it out and make it work. And you have to be committed, you have to be motivated, you have to be self motivated, you have to have a certain amount of confidence to do this.
Okay, so we got the training, the nutrition and the mindset, and they’re like three legs of the stool, they all have to work together. So after that marathon, I decided I was going to, you know, kick these things into high gear, I did a few weeks of some longer runs, and then tapered, you know, so I did a couple of weeks of tapering, and ended up doing one run on trails in that period. So I haven’t been running on trails a whole lot.
I kind of went out one weekend, I scouted the course, you know, I typically would do a lot more running on trails before an event like this. Because the 50k that I did was all trail. And normally I I really adhere to this principle, that specificity of training is very important. So if you’re going to do a trail 50k, you should be running a lot of trails, I did not do that.
So this is like a lesson learned for me is like do more trail running leading up to a big event like this. So I’ll tell you why in a minute. But just understand that you always want to do you keep your training specific to the event that you’re going to be doing.
And another thing to keep in mind here is that we’re doing this running challenge right now is running through the holidays. And I decided I was going to run not just a mile every day, but I was going to do at least a 5k every single day between Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day. And so I’ve been keeping up with that. The problem I was worried about was that this was adding to my weekly mileage and that I was worried I was going to burn myself out before this event, I was worried I was going to be like overdoing it overtraining, you know, especially in the day or two before an event like this.
Normally, I would take the day off, I wouldn’t do anything. But I was running a 5k every single day. I was also worried about the day after my 50k like, can I go out there and run a 5k? Is this even a good idea or not? How am I gonna feel. So we’ll talk about that in a minute. But I ended up you know, running and keeping up my 5k every single day.
But that was something that was like definitely different than I would normally do in training for something like this. So this is all like leading up to the week of the event, right? I was like, you know, I had become fat adapted. I had, you know, run a marathon at the end of October, which is perfect for something like this. You know, you want to have an event like that as part of your training plan. And then I increased my mileage and then dipped it back down again. And I felt ready.
So the week of the event I took it easy. I still did my 5k every day, but I was getting a little bit more rest. I was getting some good nights’ sleep. And especially in the couple of days before the event I was eating more food like I was just getting more calories. Right and a few more carbs. Right.
So I wasn’t as concerned about like keeping carbs super low in the day before especially. I probably got I probably doubled my carbs. Like for the day before like maybe around 100 grams. Again, I don’t really count this stuff. But I was just giving myself a little bit of extra in the tank, you know.
And so that’s something that you can definitely do leading up to something like this is increase your carbs, and that those carbohydrates when you eat them, if you’re not eating a lot of them, they become readily available to your muscles. So instead of like being processed by the liver and being stored as fat, you know, some of that energy being stored as fat, most of the energy from eating those carbohydrates, almost all of it, in fact, will go directly to your muscles to be used as energy.
So when you’re an efficient fat burner, and you do add some carbs, it actually will not throw you off, you know, it will give you the glycogen that you need to, you know, just have a little bit of extra energy for a big event like this. So I adopted that strategy. And again, I don’t eat a lot of carbs. So like doing this the day before, it gave me a little bit of extra gas in the tank, so you know, why not do it.
And then, the day of the event, I started it, just like I do, every other day, I got up early, I made some coffee. And that’s all I did. I drink coffee in the morning. And that’s it, I headed out to the trails, got out there, met a couple friends out there. They were setting up a camp, they were setting up a – we had a trailer and a fire pit and all this stuff. So they were like we’re gonna set up this camp, you can go to your first loop on your own, I was like, cool headed out into the woods, it was still dark.
And I got my first loop done, you know, in 40 minutes or so. So the course I had set up was a looped course, there was actually two parts to the loop, there was a three mile section and a five mile section. So add those two together, and that’s eight miles. And that would be one full loop. And so I did that full loop four times to give me 32 miles. So it was actually farther than a 50k little bit about a mile further.
And that first loop was fine. You know, I felt good. It was cool. It was supposed to rain all day. Supposed to rain, like super hard all day, it really didn’t rain off and on. But the the weather was really cooperating. It was awesome. wasn’t super cold, it wasn’t warm, it was like mid 60s, cloudy, everything was just perfect, right.
And so, as the day went on, I just settled into this all day pace like, my typical kind of trail pace, slow and easy. Listen, I am not trying to break any records, I really don’t care how fast I run, I don’t even look at my watch, other than just to see like, how far I’ve gone. It doesn’t matter to me, I took a lot of breaks, you know, we had this camp set up.
And so I would come back, maybe change my shirt, you know, have something to drink, get some coffee, you know, one of my friends was making coffee. For me, I was like this is amazing. So I was not in any hurry to get this thing done. All in all, it took me around eight hours to finish this thing.
And I could have done it faster, I could have taken fewer breaks or shorter breaks. But I was feeling so good. I was just having fun. The whole thing was just about having fun out there. So I don’t know about halfway through my watch died. So I use an Apple Watch for all my training. And I love it for a lot of reasons. It just doesn’t last very long.
And so here’s a good lesson that I learned. Next time, bring the Garmin just use my Garmin watch next time, it lasts forever. So that was a good lesson to learn right there. But I had these friends that came out to support me and run with me.
And I have to tell you, this made the day so much more fun. Leslie, Brandon, Jake, all amazing, good friends. We were cracking up out there running on the trails, laughing, smiling. I was just beaming all day. It was really just so much but it made the whole event so much more meaningful for me.
So I have to tell you, if you have friends that will run with you and help you and support you in something like this. They didn’t run the whole thing with me. But they they ran a loop. You know, each of them ran a loop with me. And I only ended up doing, I didn’t have to do that much on my own. And it just made it so much more fun. And Brandon kept telling me he’s like we got a surprise for you at the finish and he wouldn’t tell me what it was.
And I was like, huh, I’m very excited about this. So he just kept teasing me with this surprise. I was like I wonder what it is. I hope it has something to do with like bacon but we’ll see. And then. But anyway and just, it was so much fun. So much fun. It was actually the most fun I’ve ever had doing any any kind of race, I don’t really want to call it a race, it was an event, you know, because it was just me. I mean, I won, right?
But I just had so much fun. The way I look at it is like this, the training is the hard part. You know, you train for something like this, and you put in weeks and weeks, sometimes months of work, that’s the hard part. The actual event is like your victory lap, just go out there and have fun, smile, laugh, enjoy it.
And that’s what I tried to do. That’s my attitude around all kinds of all the events that I do like this. So I just felt really good. So here’s the thing, I was feeling so good, I had so much energy. And this is one of the benefits of being a very efficient fat burner, you have a lot of energy, your body uses the your own body fat and your produce ketones and stuff like that, too.
But your body can use your own body fat for fuel, and it is a very efficient source of fuel. This fuel will last you all day long. And I remember coming in after one of the loops, and it was like mile 27. I came in and these guys were sitting around and I was like bouncing off the walls. I was like, I had so much energy.
And they’re like what is wrong with you? What is the matter with you? Why are you so full of energy, you should be tired, and I was like, I am not tired? I feel so good. And that last loop that I did last five miles loop that I did, it was I felt just as good as the first loop, honestly, which was really weird for me, normally I’d be dying. At that time, I still had gas in the tank. When I was finished, I came in finished, I felt so good still I could have kept going.
I could easily see doing a longer than than 50k I could easily see doing like a 50 miler unfueled. And maybe I’ll try that I’m not going to commit to that at this point. But 50k, man, easy, easy to do if you’re an efficient fat burner. So I finished very strong, I felt really good. At the end, I had tons of energy still. And I would call this whole thing a huge success.
Now, again, I don’t really care about the time, this thing took me roughly eight hours, right? And it doesn’t matter. If I wanted to run it faster, I could, if I did that, or if this is like something that you’re interested in, if you’re interested in becoming a fat adapted runner, and you want to, you know, smash a PR and like you know, try to win something or whatever, then just add more carbs in during your event, you don’t have to do it unfueled.
But when you’re an efficient fat burner, and you add more carbs, you’re gonna get that extra gear, you know, you’re gonna get the, you’re going to be in your anaerobic zone for longer periods of time. And so you will want the carbohydrates to help you get there. So you can definitely do that. That can definitely be part of your plan. It’s a tool that you can use, if you want to, you know, even run faster or have even more energy.
For me, though, I feel like I really don’t even need to do that. Because I’m not running fast, first of all, but I also I feel so amazing running in this fasted state. I feel so amazing running on fueled, why would I change that? You know, I’ve done all my long runs this year, including a marathon and a 50k unfueled, you know, I drink water and I take electrolytes, that’s it, you gotta have the electrolytes, especially for long events like this.
So I wouldn’t change that for myself. But if I wanted to crush a PR, I would just add some carbs. You know, but some of the things that I experienced was, which were surprising to me was, number one, no GI issues. I did not have any stomach issues at all.
And normally, on a long endurance event like this, I would not feel like my stomach would be bugging me. No problems at all. I felt great the whole time. No bonking I never lost energy not even close. I was feeling amazing and energized. The whole time. I had tons of gas in the tank at the end, right? This is like the most fun I’ve ever had running an ultra tons of energy.
And I just felt so good. So after the after I finished I get back to the camp area. These guys have got a fire going and then they break out the surprise for me which was ribeyes so they were grilling some ribeyes. And so we sat around for a few hours and ate some food. And I felt so good.
And the funny thing is, is normally, if I were to just finish a race like this and sit around for a few hours, getting up would be miserable I could be so my legs be all tight and sore, and they really weren’t. One of the benefits of training in a fasted state is that your body produces more growth hormone, which helps your muscles to repair faster, you know, cells will regenerate faster. So your recovery time is a lot faster.
So, you know, I wasn’t as sore afterwards. And, you know, went to bed that night, feeling pretty good, still woke up the next day, when I woke up the next day, the only thing that was really a concern was my feet hurt.
And this is what I was kind of alluding to earlier, when I said I should do more specificity of training on the trails, because my feet hurt from all the undulation of the trails, you know, jumping over rocks, and roots and logs and stuff like that juking back and forth for eight hours out there on the trails, like my feet were sore, the bottoms of my feet, especially, were getting pretty sore.
And that was about the only thing that I really noticed the next day, I could still, you know, when I got up the next morning, normally, I would just be the wreck, but I wasn’t, you know, my feet hurt. But I could still like do an air squat, you know, I could still squat standing up.
In fact, I was like, well, I gotta run a 5k today. And so I laced up my running shoes, and I headed outside, and I started running, and I was slow. But I felt fine. I mean, I was tired. But I felt fine.
And, you know, by the end of that day, by the end of the next day, I really felt a lot, lot better, my feet had stopped hurting and stuff like that.
And then so that was Sunday, and then Monday morning, I got up to do another 5k. And then I felt amazing. And I almost felt like I was back to 100%. Like my recovery time is just so much faster. And I have you know, I know that that’s has a lot to do with the fasting and the in the low carb way that I eat.
Also, my fitness level has increased, you know, I’m definitely more fit now than I was at the beginning of 2020. You know, because I’ve, you know, consistently trained for events. I’ve trained smart, and I’ve kept up with my strength training. I think that’s a big part of this, too. So the bottom line is that I wanted to do something hard. I wanted to be an example of what’s possible, I wanted to prove to myself that I’m capable of doing something like this, I wanted to push myself beyond the limits of my comfort zone.
You know, I wanted to show you that this is possible that if I can do it, so can you, you know, I wanted to show you and show myself and prove to us all, without any shadow of a doubt that being fat adapted is a real thing. And it is pretty dang incredible. It feels so good. It makes running so amazing. Honestly, you feel like you could run literally all day. Prove that, without a shadow of a doubt.
This is a very powerful way to live your life. Also, there’s this very cool side benefit of being an efficient fat burner, you lose weight. Becoming an efficient fat burner is what got me to where I am today. I’m basically at my goal weight, and I have no problem staying here. You know, I’m very lean, but I still have enough body fat on me to power me through a full day of running, you know, at least a 50k a lot more I’m sure.
So just know that when you change your, your nutrition plan when you change what you’re eating, you can become such an efficient fat burner is so amazing. It really makes running a dream. And it can help you to get to your natural weight, whatever that is for you. So what’s next for me? People have been asking me like, what’s your next goal? What are you going to do? And seriously, I have no idea.
But I know that for me, I like to have something on the calendar. I like to feel like I’m training for something I have something out in the future that I’m working towards. It gets me motivated. You know, I don’t know if you guys feel that way or not. But for me, the having something out there helps me to get get motivated.
So I don’t know what that’s going to be yet. I’m not ready to commit to anything just yet. But I’d like to do another ultra sometime in the spring. So probably a spring marathon and probably some kind of an ultra sometime after that. So I’ll let you know. I’ll keep you posted on that.
Okay, so that’s my recap, I hope this has inspired you to consider becoming a fat adapted runner, I think it’s an amazing way to live your life. Remember that the Running Lean monthly coaching group is going to open on January 3, make 2021 your year become the badass fat adapted runner you’ve always wanted to be. Just go to runningleanpodcast.com/join, get on that list. And I’ll see you in the coaching group. Starting January. You guys are awesome. Lots and lots of love to each and every one of you. Keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a lien running machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
If you have big goals and dreams for yourself, if you’re the kind of person who wants more out of life, then achieving those big goals and dreams will require you to do hard things. To get there …
My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.
Hey there, and welcome to episode number 35 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today we’re talking about embracing the suck. I’m gonna say the word suck a lot today, just so you know, little forewarning.
But listen, if you have big goals and dreams for yourself, if you’re the kind of person who wants more out of life, than achieving those big goals and dreams will require you to do hard things. And to get there means there will definitely be a period of time when things were going to get hard things are eventually going to suck.
So today I’m talking about embracing the suck. Most people want to do the opposite, they want to avoid the suck. But here’s the thing, the suck is going to happen, whether you like it or not. So it’s better that you learn how to embrace it, rather than always trying to resist it. So that is coming up.
If you like this podcast, you have to come check out the Running Lean community on Facebook. This is a positive, informative, highly energized group of like minded runners and it kind of goes hand in hand with the podcast. I do weekly live trainings in there on a bunch of different topics.
We talk about nutrition, weight loss, some science stuff, some mindset stuff, and we got a big challenge coming up. This is my first time talking about this, we are doing a challenge for the month of September. So beginning September 1, it is intermittent fasting month in the Running Lean community. And no, it does not mean that we will not be eating anything for the entire month of September. Okay.
I will explain exactly what intermittent fasting is and what it isn’t. We’ll talk about how you can do intermittent fasting safely. And you’re kind of already doing it already right now, whether you like whether you know it or not, I’ll be busting all the myths about intermittent fasting like it will kill you. That’s a myth, it won’t kill you.
We’ll talk about how you can incorporate intermittent fasting into your training, all the amazing health benefits of intermittent fasting especially for running and weight loss. When you combine a low carbohydrate, high fat diet, along with intermittent fasting, this is like rocket fuel for your health and for your fitness and for your weight loss.
And we’ll talk about what all that means and how to do it. So just go over to Facebook, search for Running Lean the Running Lean community and join us for our September intermittent fasting challenge. It’s going to be cool. Also losing weight, becoming fat-adapted, learning how to do all these things like intermittent fasting. It’s hard to do on your own, I get it.
That’s why I’m here. I want to help you. And I do offer one-on-one coaching because we’re all different. We all have different goals, different needs, different lifestyles. Working with me, you’ll learn exactly how to do all this stuff in a way that works for you as an individual. In fact, here’s one of my very favorite clients Deborah had to say recently, she wrote this comment, so sweet.
She wrote, “I’m on day 14 of coaching with Patrick. I’ve seen many nutritionists and dietitians in my life, and also work with a dedicated running coach. Patrick is by far the most legit health coach I’ve had the pleasure of working with. He takes the whole body and the whole mind approach and helps you to battle through the tough stuff, cutting out sugar and carbs, and helps you to identify the reasons that are far bigger than calories or pounds. So you can stay with it. I was dying for a piece of supermarket birthday cake yesterday. And just knowing that Patrick is in my corner to make a smarter decision helped me to get through that craving.”
Thank you so much for those kind words. Deborah, you are so sweet and you are an awesome client. Also, that craving for that supermarket birthday cake is very, very specific. We need to talk about that. But it’s funny. That’s what sugar does to us. It has a powerful hold on as it causes all kinds of very specific cravings apparently.
But if you’re ready to make some big changes in your life if you’re ready to ditch the sugar and the carbs In the addiction to sugar and carbs and those crazy, specific cravings, if you’re ready to embrace the suck, at least temporarily, then you have to go to innerfiretribe.com/weightlosscoaching, one word, and apply for one on one coaching with me do it now I promise you, you will not regret it.
Alright, embracing the suck, embrace the suck is a fun phrase that is very popular in endurance sports, it means that it means this, it means things are gonna get hard. At some point during this event during this race, whatever it is you’re doing, things are going to suck, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You just have to accept it, embrace it, and keep going.
And I first started hearing about this a lot when I was training for Ironman. There’s a great deal of suck during that race, there’s a great deal of suck in the training for that event too, just so you know, it’s a lifetime of suck when you’re into Ironman Triathlon, as a lifestyle.
But anyway, so during that event, there’s a lot of suck, that’s going to happen, right. And I knew that at some point, during that day, I was going to have to face the suck, okay. And I didn’t really know when that was going to happen or whatever, until the day of the race.
So the day of the race, you know, do this swim, two and a half, 2.4 mile swim, get out of the water and, you know, cycling for 112 miles. And then I laced up my running shoes and started to run while this was Louisville, Kentucky, August 95 degrees and humid.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon, the hottest part of the day, arguably. And this is when I was heading out to start to run my marathon after the 2.4 mile swim and cycling 112 miles of rolling hills. So I had been out exerting myself since 7am. And this was now three o’clock in the afternoon. So this is like eight straight hours of continuous physical exertion. And I started running and my legs just would not move. I felt horrible. It sucked big time. And it’s in that very moment right there. I was like, oh, yeah, this is what they’re talking about. Embrace the suck. This is the sucky part.
And I knew what it meant intellectually, like, I knew like, oh, yeah, this is gonna happen at some point. But until you experience it in the moment, it is just a concept. It’s just a theory. But when it hits you hard like that, and I will tell you, it hit me hard, it was very, very difficult, I would start running for maybe 10 seconds, and I just had to start walking and try to start running again for maybe 15 seconds. And I just couldn’t do it, I had to walk.
And it took a while for me to get a little momentum going where I could actually run for any extended period of time. I mean, there were people, you know, at the beginning of the marathon that were just like, sitting on the ground, just like on the curb, like laying down, you know, just already they were just done.
And it kind of freaks you out a little bit because you’re like, oh my god, you know, what have I got myself into here? But as you know, I kept moving. And when I was fueling and hydrating and things like that I was able to get up a little running, but I just let it be sucky. And I just kept moving forward. That little mantra was in my mind, embrace the suck, just know it’s gonna suck. And keep moving.
Another crystal clear moment of embracing the suck for me, was during the Hallucination 100. So this was the 100 mile trail race that I did up in Hell, Michigan, which is an aptly named play by the way. And the trail is 16, roughly 16 miles, a little over 16 miles. And so you got to do the loop six times to get to 100 miles.
So I finished my fifth loop. And so there’s right around mile 84. So I just had one more loop to go and you’d think I’d be like, Yay, just one more loop to go. Well, my feet were swollen like crazy. I had these giant blisters. My feet hurt every step. I was in excruciating pain. Every muscle in my body was like, just sore and tense and tight.
I had been running nonstop for over 24 hours at this point. So I’d rip around all through the night. No sleep and here I was, I still had 60 more miles of trails and hills to go, I wanted to quit. So I had to make a choice, in that moment, you know, because it sucked big time, it was really, my whole body just wanted to shut down and just lay down and be done with it.
I had a choice though, I could call it a day, and just be done with it. You know, say, Hey, I got to mile 84 good job, or embrace the suck, and finish. I mustered up all the courage, I had all the determination. I knew it was going to be painful. And I just put one foot in front of the other.
And I set out on that single track trail, and started that last 16 grueling miles. And it was very hard. It hurt a lot. It sucked a lot. But I just allowed it. I allowed the pain to ache, I embraced the suck. The exhaustion, the fear, the frustration, all of it, I just was like, it’s all going to be there. And I’m going to keep moving forward no matter what.
I have this mantra, there’s a mantra and trail running, which is, or ultra running, I guess it’s relentless forward progress. And this is kind of my mantra for life in general. But relentless forward, progress is like the thing that keeps me moving in those moments, like no matter what, just keep moving forward. And I did. And I finished that.
I finished both those races to the hardest things I’ve ever done. Arguably, like, those two moments are like, the most sucky experiences of my life, but I embraced them. And I kept going, I didn’t quit.
And then what happened to me, which surprised me, when I finished those races, the experience of of having gone through that sucky period, and like embracing it, and then keep moving forward. This was life changing for me, I became more of a person more than what I was before starting those events. You know, I got way outside my comfort zone. And I grew in more ways than I could ever have imagined.
And it didn’t happen because there weren’t any sucky periods or because it was easy. It happened because it was hard. You know, I’ve talked about this before, and, you know, we gotta like, accept the challenges that come our way. And that’s how we get to the, to the good stuff is we got to go through the challenges, kind of what we’re talking about here. embracing the suck, okay.
And this applies to many different areas of your life, you know, so I talk about my, my weight loss clients, I tell them that things are gonna get uncomfortable, you know, that they need to embrace the suck when they stop eating sugar. And they’re like, yes, Patrick, I’m down with all of that, bring it on, I’m ready.
And so they stop eating sugar. And a week or so goes by, you know, things are okay. But then they start having these withdrawal symptoms, you know, they get headaches they get, they feel lethargic, they start having these super strong cravings for sugar, they start dreaming of sheet cakes from the grocery stores and edible cookie dough.
And they start to feel like they’re missing out on all of life’s pleasures that their life really sucks now, and there’s never ever gonna be joy in their life again, their life is basically over. And I’m like, remember, when I said things were going to suck and get very uncomfortable? Well, that’s what we’re talking about. You’re in it now.
But they’re like, but I don’t want it now. I want it to go away. And I’m like, I know, I know. But here we are. Same thing with runners who want to, you know, kick the carbohydrate addiction and want to become fat-adapted runners. And I tell them very specifically, running will suck for a few weeks as your body adjusts to switching from, you know, glucose to fat as fuel, just it takes a while for your body to get to that process.
And they’re always like, I’m down with that. I’m ready, bring it on. So they stop eating the carbohydrates. And after a week or so the running gets really hard and they’re like, what’s happening? Running is really hard. I mean, it’s really hard and I’m like remember when I said you have to embrace the suck and you were all down with all that. Well, this is what we’re telling you. This is the suck. Okay.
You know, it just takes a few weeks to become fat-adapted. Once you do, it’s amazing. But there’s a period where it’s very uncomfortable and running is hard. And you just have to accept it. That is part of the process.
Okay, but here’s the thing. Anytime things start to get hard they start to suck, we have two choices. We can resist them, resist it, or we can embrace it, we can either resist it all, fight it, reject it, push it away. wish it wasn’t so hard wish it was different.
Or we can embrace it, we can allow it to be there, accept it, accept the fact that it’s going to be hard and keep going anyway. So when we, when we resist it, when we resist the sock, you know, we wish things were different. We’re basically not accepting reality. It’s like saying I wish the sky was red instead of blue.
Or, I wish running 100 miles didn’t hurt at all. Or I wish my sugar addiction wasn’t so real. These things are just the way things are. They are exactly how they’re supposed to be. And here’s a little pro tip, do you know how you know that this is how they’re supposed to be? Because that’s how they are.
You know, running 100 miles is going to hurt because it hurts. You know that sugar addiction is real, because it’s real. You know, this guy’s supposed to be blue, because it is. It’s when we don’t accept this reality, this is what causes us inner turmoil.
When we don’t accept things as they are, it actually makes the sucky part a lot worse. You know, and I get it, it’s like, I just want to feel better, like right now. But you know, it’s not how it works. It’s like trying to hold a big beach ball underwater.
So you push it down and you push it down, the more you push it down, the harder it is to hold it down, and you just can’t keep it up. And eventually, that beach ball is going to come up, it’s going to come splashing up into your face. And don’t ask me how I know how this works. But that’s what happens. Okay.
So we’re just like rejecting what is, we’re pushing away. This sucky part, when that is just part of the process of getting to those big goals and dreams. Anything worthwhile that we want to accomplish means we got to go through something sucky to get there, okay.
You can accept it, you can embrace it, or you can just resist it and fight it. Fighting it and resisting, it just makes it worse. Right. But when you embrace it, when you stop the resisting, when you stop pushing away, the reality of what it is, you let go of the beach ball, you just let it be there. All sucky and everything. When you can accept things as they are, even if they suck, and that’s okay. Just embrace it and keep moving forward.
You feel the pain, yeah. But you keep on running. You feel like quitting, but you don’t, you just keep going instead, you feel like eating a whole sheet cake to yourself. But you don’t, you just allow that craving to be there. And you don’t do anything about it. Maybe eat some bacon instead. Or you feel like going back to all the carbs.
So that running will be quote unquote, easy again. But you don’t, you just let it be hard. Because you know, you have to go through that sucky part to get to the amazing part. And here’s a little spoiler alert for you guys. Life is not supposed to be happy, and comfortable all the time. Life is like 50/50. it’s just not supposed to be happy, carefree, joyous, and amazing and super comfortable all the time. It’s just not.
It’s more like 50% of the time, life is amazing, and exciting and fun and uncomfortable. And then 50% of the time, it’s uncomfortable and kind of crappy and a little sucky. And that’s okay, this is normal. This is the way of life. This is what it means to be a human being alive on the planet today.
But if you think life is going to be good all the time, if you expect that you are going to be very disappointed and very miserable a lot of the time because you’re going to be rejecting and resisting the reality of what is. You have to accept it all. You have to embrace the suck.
Because without the pain, we don’t get to experience the pleasure. Without agony we don’t know what joy is without feeling sadness. We don’t know what happiness feels like without frustration, we don’t learn patience. Without feeling anxiety, we don’t experience peace. Without failing, we don’t want to know what accomplishment feels like.
You know, without uncertainty, we don’t know what confidence is. When you can embrace all of it, when you become willing to experience all of these emotions that we’re talking about a lot of emotions here fear, anxiety, frustration, anger, pain, when you’re willing to experience these emotions, when you’re willing to embrace the suck. There’s nothing you can’t do.
Most people, they’re afraid to feel uncomfortable. They are so afraid of the suck that they never do anything hard, they’re not even going to try. They don’t even get up off the couch. Because they know that to put on their running shoes and go start running when they haven’t been running forever.
And they want to run a 5k. They want to do that. But they know it’s going to be hard. And so they just stay on the couch. They don’t embrace the suck. So they never do anything hard. And guess what? They never accomplish anything. They stay comfortable. Yeah. They don’t have to experience the sucky things. Yeah. They stay in their comfort zone.
But what does that do for you? What does that get you? Is that what you want for your life? I don’t think so. If you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re listening to me, then I’m pretty sure that’s not you. That does not sound like you. Everything you want, but don’t already have, lies outside your comfort zone. So if you never embrace the suck, you never embrace the discomfort you never grow.
You never become more than what you are today, right here, now. You never accomplish anything bigger than what you’ve already done in your life. Like, this is it, this is where you are. And that’s it. If you don’t embrace the suck, you don’t get uncomfortable.
You never experience the amazing 50% of your life full of joy and satisfaction and accomplishment. You got to go through the 50% that’s hard and painful and sucky. Remember the sucky parts, you have to go through the sucky part, in order to get to the amazing part.
It just that’s just the way it works. So I want to encourage you to embrace it all. The good, the bad, and the suck, embrace the suck. Become an emotional badass, like allow all those things to come up. The pain, the frustration, the fear of missing out the exhaustion, whatever it is you’re doing, embrace it all.
Because when you do when you embrace the suck, you become a total badass you’d be there’s like nothing you can’t accomplish. Most people are so afraid to experience these emotions. Don’t be afraid to experience the emotions. And you’ll see what you can do. I guarantee you, it’s a much better way to live your life.
Well, we will be continuing this conversation over in the Running Lean community on Facebook. Just come and check us out. It’s really fun. And remember, September is going to be intermittent fasting month, we’re gonna be talking all about it, how to do it, why we do it, why it’s important, how it’ll help you.
And, you know, it’d be super awesome. If you enjoy this podcast. If you get something out of it. Just leave a quick little review on iTunes, just, you know, scroll down and your little iTunes podcast app, tap the stars. And then just write a couple words that that you’re getting something out of this, it would really mean a lot to me if you did that. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. That’s all I got for you today. Lots of love to each and every one of you, my friends, keep on Running Lean. Embrace the suck. I’ll talk to you soon.
If you’ve tried to lose weight by running miles and miles or starving yourself and you’ve had zero results, you are not alone. This model of weight loss is broken. It’s never worked, and it has to be replaced. That’s why I created a powerful new training just for you called How to Become a Lean Running Machine. You’ll discover why running more and eating less does not work for weight loss and you’ll learn the three secrets to losing weight and keeping it off for good to get this free training right now just go to runningleanpodcast.com/lean and learn how you can become lean running machine.
Most of our problems are created because we're trying to change something about our past. We cause ourselves so much unnecessary stress and anxiety because we are constantly ruminating about past …
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m your host, and I’m the life coach for runners, I help you get better results from your running and from your life in general. And I’m really excited about an upcoming event I’m doing. It’s a three day challenge called How To Solve Any Problem.
And it’s totally free, you’re going to learn how to solve literally any problem that’s on your mind, big or small, earth shattering or just annoying. It might be something from your past that keeps coming up or something that’s just bugging the crap out of you right now. It couldn’t be running related or not.
Here’s the thing, you don’t have to keep struggling with those same old problems, you can end the anxiety and start feeling excited about things in your life. Again, whatever it is that you’re struggling with, just know that there is a solution. And I’ll show you exactly how to do it. This is going to be a fun, interactive challenge. And it all starts on Monday, March 9 2020.
I’ll be holding class in a private Facebook group, but you have to sign up in order to get in. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/challenge to save your spot. You’re gonna get live coaching and training with me, your master life and success coach. And you can ask me anything I know, there’s probably something on your mind right now that you want help with. And you’re like, I would love to ask Patrick this question.
Well, guess what? You can do it, I’d be happy to help you with that. You can also access the live trainings after the fact. So you don’t have to actually be in the live group and listen to the live trainings, you can go back and listen to them afterwards. But the most benefit you’re gonna get out of it is if you participate in the live trainings, okay.
And I’m calling this a challenge, because here’s the fact most people do not take action. Most people want something to change in their life, but they’re not willing to do anything different. Think about that. It’s crazy. So my challenge for you is to show up and do the work. Do it for yourself. Because you know what, you deserve this.
You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have more confidence, you deserve to have inner peace. You deserve to feel good about yourself for a change. So when you learn how to solve any problem that you may be experiencing now or in the future, you get to have all of that. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/challenge to sign up. I can’t wait to see you there. It’s gonna be so much fun.
All right, cool. Onto today’s topic, how to change your past. Now that title, I hope it grabbed your attention. Because we’re going to get into this today. One of the biggest ways that I see people get stuck and feel like they’re stuck is they ruminate about the past. They keep thinking about past events over and over and over again. Things that they did, things that they wish they had done, things they wish they had done differently. These could be past experiences, past events, it could be past heartaches, it could be people who have hurt us in the past, how we’ve hurt others failures, we’ve made mistakes we’ve made. The list goes on and on and on.
And we think about these events, and we replay them over and over and over and over again. And if this is you, if this sounds like you, welcome to the human race. We all do this. It’s very, very common. It’s part of the human experience. You know, we’ve evolved to learn from our mistakes, you know, we’ve evolved to learn that if we touch fire, it will burn us or stay away from that one animal because it will eat you or Hey, Jim, don’t eat those berries. You know, like we learn from the past and it’s good that we’ve evolved to learn from the past.
And you know, learning from the past and keeping those memories in our subconscious minds. It serves a purpose: it has helped us to survive as a species. So that’s all good. The problem, though, is that today, it’s really not necessary to keep ruminating about every past event that has ever happened to us in order to survive. We still do it though.
And here’s a few things that happen to us when we keep ruminating on the past. And we keep stewing about past events. Subconsciously, we’re reliving that event over and over and over again in our imagination. And here’s something interesting about the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind doesn’t know the difference between what’s real, and what’s imagined. So when we really relive a past event in our imagination, our subconscious mind is like, oh, yeah, hey, here we are, again, let’s get the body all stressed out, let’s, let’s feel those feelings again, let’s feel the guilt and the sadness and that frustration.
And what happens is, we feel all those old feelings again, we feel the old guilt, or the shame or the disappointment, we feel the worthlessness that we felt five years ago, or, you know, five days ago, or 30 years ago, we feel it as if it’s happening now, we are really good at using our imagination to fill ourselves with stress and anxiety. And we do this all the time, we beat ourselves up over and over again. This does not sound good.
I’m going to say that most of our problems are created because we’re trying to change something about the past, we’re resisting the past in some way. Most of our problems are created because there’s something about our past that we are in conflict with, and that we’re resisting. Most people cause themselves so much unnecessary stress and anxiety because they’re trying to change something about their past or they wish their past had been different.
If only I had done this things would be different. If only I had said this, finally, I hadn’t said that. And if you take this one step further, I say that most of our problems are created by us because we are just resisting, not just the past, but we’re resisting what is. We’re actually resisting the way things are. You know, if my wife would only talk to me this way, if my boss would only treat me like this, if only I trained harder for that last marathon.
Whatever it is we’re doing, we are resisting what is we’re resisting, accepting the way things are? Or the way things were the way things happened? Because what’s happened in the past has happened. And it’s over and done with. Okay, how well does it usually work for you? When you try to change something that’s outside of yourself, really, it doesn’t work ever. And your past is part of that; it’s no longer inside you. It’s no longer a part of who you are. It’s way in the past, it’s over and done with history.
You cannot change what’s happened in the past. And you cannot change most of what’s happening around you right now in the present. You know, I have no control over what the driver in front of me does on the highway. I have no control over what people think about me or say about me.
I have no control over how fast I ran my last race because it’s out of my hands now. Okay, during my last marathon, if I didn’t like my time, I had control over that while I was in that moment. But as soon as that moment is over the control I have over that is gone. It does me no good to keep thinking about oh, I should have changed my training or you know, done my nutrition differently, or if only I’d done you know, we can go on and on and on.
And what happens is we put ourselves into that state of stress. So you’re probably thinking like, Oh, I thought you said this podcast was titled How To Change Your Past and you just said you can’t change the past, what the hell, Patrick? Stick with me here. But you probably already knew that you can’t change the past right? So just be honest, though, you can own that one right now. Okay.
But think about this: when you think about the past, where does that live? It lives in your imagination. Everything that’s ever happened in the past exists in our mind. You know, it lives and breathes in our thoughts about it. And not only in our conscious mind, but in our subconscious mind.
So we can’t go back in time to physically change the events of the past. But here’s what we can do. We can change what they mean to us today, we can change how those past events affect us today. We can change how we think about those events today. So we go back to the past in our minds all the time. But what do we do so we can change the way we think about the past today?
In fact, there are no past thoughts. There are no there’s no past thinking anything you’re thinking about today, is current thinking. If you’re thinking a thought right now, even though it’s a thought about the past, it’s current thinking, it’s a current thought about a past experience.
Okay, so it’s not like, oh, these thoughts from my past keep coming up. No, this is you thinking about that today. Okay. So you might have a thought that you continue to think over and over and over again for years and decades even. But if it’s on your mind, right now, it’s a current thought.
So even though, you know, I had some friends that treated me like crap in, you know, seventh grade, I can still, I can go back to that moment right now and feel hurt all over again, if I choose to. Here’s another example. A few years ago, I was doing this 50k trail series, the Ohio River Road Runners 200k No Way series.
And here’s the deal, you are supposed to complete 4 50ks over one season over one summer. And I had done three of them. So I just needed to finish that last one. So we start the race. And the race is called Broken Toe 50k. And the name of this race is no joke, because there are lots of routes, lots of rocks, lots of people tripping and falling. Well, I tripped and fell at like mile one, we started on like a gravel pathway.
And then we headed into the trail into a single track trail. And as soon as I got onto the trail, I maybe went and 50 feet tripped, fell and bloodied up my knee. My knee was jacked up, okay, it got swollen. And it was one of those things where I’m like, I’m gonna run it off. Well, I’m gonna walk it off. So I started walking.
And then I was like, I don’t know about this. And I could run a little bit. And eventually I got to the point where I could run and it was okay, it still hurt, but it was okay. Well, it kept getting like more and more swollen as the race went on. And it kept getting more and more painful. And finally, I had, I got to a point at like, mile 21, where I could barely bend my leg anymore. And I had like four or five miles to go. So I had to walk like five miles back to the aid station.
So I got to mile 26. And I had to stop. I couldn’t bend my leg. And I was in so much pain. Walking was terribly painful. I had to stop because it was the only race I’ve ever DNF. And I go back to that over and over again. Like, what if I didn’t trip? What if I had stepped two inches to the left? What if I, you know, what if I wasn’t as tired? Maybe I know, what if I had gotten more sleep the night before? What if I had started a little bit slower?
Like I can drive myself crazy thinking about what could have been. And in my mind I’m like, trying to resist what I really wanted to do that 200k thing, you know, just for the sheer fact of like, being able to say I did it, and I couldn’t eke it out, you know what I mean? And I keep trying to change that. But no matter what I do, or how I think about it, the results are never going to change. They’re exactly the same. I did not finish that race. I did not get to the 200k.
So when I think about it, I keep feeling disappointed. I keep feeling frustrated. I keep feeling bummed out. I feel like a failure. Okay. So I think these thoughts and this is years later, by the way, and when I think those thoughts, in the moment I get frustrated all over again, I feel bummed out all over again. And I feel like a failure all over again.
Why am I feeling like a failure today over some stupid trail race that I did a bunch of years ago? It’s crazy, right? Isn’t this crazy thinking? I know, you’re saying, Patrick, that is crazy thinking, but you do it and we do it all the time. Substitute this trail race for any other experience that, you know, causes you to feel pain today.
So, listen, if you’re suffering, the suffering that you experience inside, it’s almost all self induced, because we are incessantly trying to change the past. And when we can’t, we’re in conflict, we’re in turmoil, there’s inner conflict, internal turmoil, and it produces all these unwanted emotions. And if you’ve been listening to the podcast, I talk about problems, the problems we have are actually just unwanted emotions. We don’t want to feel those feelings.
You know, if we feel feelings of like joy and happiness, we’re like, cool, I’m good with that. But if there’s feelings of like, shame and guilt, or unworthiness, then we don’t want to feel those. And so we label that as being a problem. But what happens is, we keep looping through the trying to change the past, we keep looping through that, and we stay stuck, we stay in conflict, we stay in turmoil.
And we think, well, that’s just the way it is. There’s nothing I can do about that. This is just how I am, this is how I’m wired. I’ve heard people say that I’m just wired that way. It’s not true. You know, you may have some habits about how you think and how you feel. But you know, you’re not necessarily wired that way. Like you can, you can rewire, you can reprogram your mind and your subconscious mind, especially.
So I think that for most of us, a shift in our thinking is all we need to do to change the way we feel about some past events. Okay, it’s very powerful. Now, there may be some past events that are traumatic, you know, if you’ve, if you’ve gone through some certain kinds of traumas, too. Capital T traumas, you know, professional help may be required for that.
But for most of us, I think just shifting our thinking a little bit, can work wonders. So here’s the part you’ve been waiting for: how to change your past. So this is a writing exercise, most of the work that I do with my clients is writing, you know, we talk through a lot of stuff. But writing is so important when you write by hand and not typing into a computer, but when you sit down with a notebook, and you write by hand, it ingrains the ideas and the words and the thoughts and the feelings that ingrain them into your subconscious mind.
And you can look back over the things that you’re that you’ve written down, and you can see, these things will pop out at you. Whereas if you’re just thinking about this stuff, those thoughts will come and go, like clouds floating across the sky, they come in, they go, and then they’re gone. You want to write this stuff down.
Okay, so any of the work that we do, typically, we’re writing by hand, okay, you’ll want to reference it to you’ll want to go back and look through it. So this is a writing exercise. And here give yourself the gift of time to do this work. It may seem simple, it may seem like oh, Patrick, this seems pretty simple, but it is life changing work. Okay. It’s very powerful stuff.
And here’s how you do it. You get quiet, maybe even close your eyes. And I want you to think about that past event. If you’re driving right now, do not close your eyes. But think about that past event. Go back there now, get into it. What do you see? What do you hear? And especially like, what do you feel? And it may feel uncomfortable, but get into it. You’re going to feel those old feelings right now. And if you do, that’s good. That means if you feel those feelings right now, that’s good, because it means it’s all in your head. Okay? The actual event is not happening right now. Yet you are feeling those same exact feelings. So it’s all in your mind.
So write down those feelings, those one word emotional feelings, like I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m guilty, I’m hurt. I’m worthless. I feel enraged. Whatever it is. This is so important that you write down the feelings you’re feeling and you get in touch with whatever it is you’re feeling right here in this moment. Okay, so write down those feelings.
And then next, just do a complete thought download of everything you’re thinking about that past event, okay? Just get it all down. Just don’t censor it, don’t leave anything out, just dump it all out on the page. And it should be ugly, it should be petty, it may sound ridiculous, whatever it is, it does not matter. Write down all those crazy, obscure thoughts, whatever it is, wherever you’re thinking about that event, just write it all down.
And once you’ve got it down on paper, and this is why it’s so important to write it down, you’re going to go through all those thoughts that you’ve been thinking about that event, and you’re going to see if you can identify a few thoughts that are causing those unwanted feelings, circling them, write them on a separate sheet, whatever, but underlying them, right, you know, capture a few of those thoughts that are causing those feelings.
And you’ll know it because when you start reading through all your thoughts, you’ll, a couple of those thoughts, as you read them are going to stir up some emotional response inside you, you’ll get that tingling sensation inside that vibration inside your body. That’s a feeling that’s an emotion, that tingling sensation, that’s your emotions.
Okay, so you’re gonna identify a couple of the thoughts that are causing those feelings, okay. And now, for each of those thoughts that you’ve identified, the ones that are causing you to feel something you don’t want to feel. Answering this question is a very, very powerful question. Who am I, without this thought? Who am I? If I didn’t have this thought, if I didn’t think this thought, if this thought were gone, if I no longer believed this thought to be true, who would I be? Pow.
That is a powerful, powerful question. To go back to that past event again. Now, without that thought, how does it feel different? What do you see? What do you hear? What do you feel now? What do you do? How do you act? How are you showing up for others and for yourself? And what do you believe about yourself?
Now, if you do this work, if you really spend time to go back to your past, without the thoughts that are causing you to suffer internally, you can change the past, the entire meaning of that event changes, the emotional charge around that event melts away the unwanted feelings, they’re suddenly miraculously gone. So it may take a little bit of time to develop some new thoughts and feelings about your past. And this is why we write these things down.
And we write down the ways we want to think, feel and act instead. So that we can then read them every day, we want to ingrain those new thoughts into our subconscious, so they become a habit. And when we do this, we’re actually creating new neural pathways in our subconscious mind. We can actually reprogram our subconscious to believe new beliefs about that event, and about ourselves. We can reprogram our subconscious to believe new beliefs about ourselves and about that past event. And so in your mind, you have effectively changed the past.
I really encourage you to do this exercise. It is amazing and powerful. Okay, so think about that past event, that one thing that’s causing you that internal turmoil, that conflict, do the work around it. I think you’re going to be amazed. And don’t forget to sign up for my upcoming three day challenge on how to solve any problem.
And listen, people who take action, people who do the work, those are the people who actually get results, people that listen to the podcast or show up in a training like this. And they just kind of show up and hang out. They might get something out of it. But I’m calling this a challenge because most people will not take action, will not take action.
And I’m putting this out there because I want to challenge you, my runners, my people, the people who love challenges. I want to challenge you to show up and do the work on yourself. It’s not hard work. It’s not like running back to back 20 milers, you’ve done way harder things and honestly this requires you to do some thinking and some writing and to be open to changing the way you’ve been doing things.
So it’s like three days of mindset training, it’s totally free. There’s nothing to lose here at all. The worst thing that could happen is maybe you learn a little bit more about yourself. You know, maybe you feel a little bit better about yourself. Just go to innerfiretribe.com/challenge and sign up. And as always, I want you to reach out to me with questions or comments, you can email me at hello@innerfiretribe.com I’d love to hear what you think about this topic. I’d actually love to hear one takeaway that you got out of this today. You can hit me up on the socials @pmcgilvrayatinnerfiretribe. I hope you all have an amazing day much love to each and every one of you, my runners.
Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.
Randy Kreill is a cool cat and a passionate ultrarunner. In 2019, he ran 13 ultramarathons including 6 100-milers. The cool thing is that he does it all on a plant-based diet and running in …
Continue Reading about 7. Randy Kreill on the Joy of Running Ultramarathons →
Patrick McGilvray
My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, running coach and mindset expert. I believe mindset is the most powerful and most underrated tool you have as a runner. So I’ve devoted my life to helping runners like you develop the mindset you need to fuel your inner fire and become the badass runner you were meant to be. This is The Running Mind podcast.
Hey there, and welcome to The Running Mind podcast. My name is Patrick McGilvray. I’m your host, and I’m a life coach for runners. And I want to help you get better results from your running and from your life. And if you’re listening to this podcast, that means you want more out of your running and your life and I hear you. That’s why I created The Runner’s Edge. The Runner’s Edge is a community based coaching and training program where I share everything I know about mindset, building mental toughness, gaining confidence, getting your running mojo back, basically, everything you need to get the most out of your running and out of your life.
So I take the concepts I talked about here on the podcast, and we take them to the next level. This is a results based coaching program. It’s all about getting results. And it’s designed to help you get what you want to help you reach your goals, whatever those may be for you. So here’s the deal though, most people don’t take action.
Most people will listen to a podcast like this, they’ll hear a bunch of great stuff and they’ll think oh, that’s that’s good information. But they never do anything with it, they don’t apply it. And so nothing ever changes for those people. On the other hand, there are people who get results. Those are the people who do something different. They take action, they take the knowledge, they take the information, they take the things that they learned and they apply them.
So if you want something different from your running, if you want something different in your life, if you want different results, you have to take different action. Check it out, go to innerfiretribe.com/edge and get the edge you need to perform at your best in running and in life.
All right, onto today’s interview. Randy Kreill is a cool cat. I’m just gonna tell you, I like this guy. He’s a passionate ultra runner. Last year he ran 13 ultras. So that’s more than one a month including 600 miles last year in 2019, and he does it all on a plant based diet. And he does it all running in sandals. And we talk about why he does all of this stuff.
And his answers are really interesting. And it’s not what most people say. So most people say they run because it’s hard. They want to push themselves. They want to see what they’re capable of. They want to challenge themselves. They want to move away from their past or who they used to be. And Randy has kind of a different take on this. It’s really cool.
And I’m gonna let him share that with you because I won’t do it justice by explaining to you here. But Randy and I are like fast friends and we could talk forever and just fair warning. Like we laugh a lot during this interview because it’s just so much fun talking with him. He’s such a positive guy and super fun and such an inspiration to me. So I’m going to stop talking now and get on to the interview with Randy Kreill.
Okay, today I’m talking with Randy Kreill. And Randy is an interesting character. I love everything about Randy and I first heard of him or met him out on a trail race. I was doing a 50k, I think. It was another day, another 50k. You were kind of passing me. I was passing you. We just kept kind of finding each other out there. And the reason I remembered you is because I’m like this dude’s running in sandals.
There was nobody else out there running and sandals. I’m like this is interesting, but I heard you talking to some people you’re running with about you know, eating a plant based diet and I eat a plant based diet and it was just like a cool you know, and and then I would see you around at other events and stuff and then I started following you on Facebook and YouTube and stuff like that.
And then a couple years ago I was running the Flying Pig. I think it was 2017 and I’m running down Erie Avenue and I just hear this slap, slap slap I’m on the pavement behind me. And I’m like, somebody’s running in sandals. I betcha that’s Randy. And sure enough, here you come running up behind me. We chatted for a little bit. That was really cool.
But that’s my introduction to you, Randy, the guy who runs Ultras, the guy who runs in sandals, the plant based guy, the YouTube guy, you’re just a cool, cool cat, you know that you really are. So I wanted to get you on here just so we could have a conversation and just talk about running, talk about Ultra running and whatever else comes to mind. So Randy, thanks for being here.
Randy Kreill
Well, thank you for having me. This is fantastic to finally do this. Not quite sure where to really start. I guess, going way back, I did absolutely no sports in high school. And I used to hear a lot from my parents about how I was a late bloomer, I was yet one of the youngest kids in my class. And in kindergarten and first grade, the teacher, I believe, in first grade wanted to hold me back, because they could not teach me to skip.
So my brothers were fantastic popular students in high school, great athletes, I did nothing. So I kind of felt like, I was not the athlete, I didn’t get that gene. And so that was kind of where I came from. But then in my 20s, I was fascinated by the idea of the Ironman Triathlon. It was becoming popular kind of back in the 80s. And so in my 20s, I started doing some biking, a little bit of running, and really had to overcome some fears and swimming, to be able to do open water, sprint distance triathlons, never got really good.
Maybe on my best day, I was in the middle of my age group, but I loved it, and then kind of got away from it, got into building some homes, I was busy with my job, I finally got married, had kids, and all of a sudden, I’m 42 with a cancer diagnosis, overweight, quite a few health concerns, there were there were a lot of warning signs. And that ended up being a huge turning point in my life. Because I had to become a lot more honest about what you know, what caused the cancer, how can I minimize the risk of a recurrence.
So after a whole lot of lost sleep, kind of some, a lot, a few years, really filled, filled with a lot of fear. I was trying to figure it all out. And it was a few years after that, cancer was in ‘04, the book Born to Run came out. And I was really ready for a lot of the messages there. And so I started changing my diet right away, I started adopting all those changes right away.
I ended up on a 100% plant based diet after going minimalist and barefoot with my shoes. And I’m not even sure when I first realized that people could run 100 miles, I thought an Ironman Triathlon was an incredible feat. And it might have been born to run where I learned that people could actually run for 30-40 or more miles at one stretch. And I was intrigued with it.
But again, I’m not an athlete, I didn’t get that gene I never would have imagined going from, you know, my deteriorated physical condition with flat feet and broken ankles. I had a couple broken ankles to actually be able to do it myself. But as I started adopting the barefoot and minimalist running, I noticed that my stride improved.
I was finally learning how to run properly in my late 40s and came off of a first marathon at the Air Force marathon here in Dayton and barely stumbled across the finish line, really literally hopping on one leg. But that was before Born to Run. Before reading Danny Dreyer’s book, Tai Chi Runnin. I like Tai Chi Running, that really taught me everything I needed to do from my head to my toes to learn how to run in a more natural injury free sort of way, efficient way.
And so you know that changing the diet, changing the footwear, I started noticing my feet getting stronger, the mid foot got thicker, I was running longer distances with less energy used, I’d say I was feeling better about it all and losing some weight. And I’ve even found out that my vision was actually improving.
And so, you know, when I initially went with this 100% plant based diet over nine years ago, I didn’t realize how many incredible unintended positive benefits there would be. But in my late 40s, I was told that my bifocals wouldn’t get thicker. It just happens. That’s life. But in fact, with these changes, I didn’t need my bifocals. I wasn’t using them anymore. And I still don’t.
And it’s so it’s been nine years of improving or stable vision, my eye doctor, she’s just kind of stunned. She doesn’t see 57 year old patients with the way my eyes focus in and out really quick and how healthy they are and not needing the bifocals that I used to wear. So it’s just been a fascinating trip into something I never thought I was capable of doing.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, that’s cool. And I can really relate to a lot of that, because I had the cancer diagnosis back in ‘03. And at that time, I was in very ill health, I was really overweight, drinking too much, eating, you know, the standard American diet and was very unhealthy. That cancer diagnosis was my wake up call.
Yeah, I completely changed my life. And I started running, I started eating better. I went from like, eating every, you know, just the regular American diet to going vegetarian. And then some years later going plant based. And, and for me, running was the catalyst, you know, running was the thing that kept me on that path. You know, it kept me on the beam, so to speak, you know, so I kept I wanted to do more and more like I wanted to, you know, run my first marathon and then I wanted to do start doing the triathlons and I wanted to do an ultra marathon and then so it just kind of was this thing that kept me moving in that direction, that healthy direction. And so I can really relate to a lot of that and I wasn’t athletic in high school, either. I didn’t play sports or anything like that. I’m very surprised they wanted to hold you back because you couldn’t skip. That’s ridiculous. Like that’s their criteria of like an athlete.
Randy Kreill
When I crossed the finish line of the Falls 100 about a month and a month or so ago, only eight people finished out of about 28 starters. And I don’t know if anybody even noticed it was late at night but I skipped across the finish line which I also got an honor.
Patrick McGilvray
They’re like, you know, this kid smart and everything but the skipping I don’t know. I think we should just hold him back. So, tell me what was your year like this year for your ultras? Because this is something I wanted to kind of touch on and I’m just gonna like, prompt you here because I want to hear about your okay, what you did this year, what you accomplished?
Randy Kreill
It’s been absolutely phenomenal since 2011. Spring I guess running that first 50k another dam up in Inglewood. Really each year I’ve ramped it up. So in ‘18, I ran 11 ultra marathons, I can’t remember how many 100 milers and then in ‘19 I wasn’t necessarily setting out to run an ultra marathon every single month. But I ended up running 13 Ultras, finished all 13, ran at least one per month and ran 600 milers including three, which to me I considered really hard to resist and it was just unbelievable.
I just everything came together on how the weather was always just good enough to get me through. Got redemption at one of my hardest races ever. Injury free running for almost nine years. Everything just came together phenomenally and just a couple of weeks ago, ran a 50k in Columbus through lots of rocks and roots in the sandals but with some toe socks on and finished in like eight minutes under the cut off time.
And that made it that put me at 13 months in a row of running ultra marathons. So anyways, I’m not fast. I’m not out there to try to be on the podium or anything but the consistency of it and enjoying the time running as a person close to obsessing about the pace, my time is my focus.
But what’s become the real goal I think is to maximize the number of hours of runner’s high that I expect it’s over a lifetime. So it makes it a really long term goal, I would hope to maybe be running Ultras, at least that decades into my 70s, possibly beyond. So my race, I guess, as I think of it different way more than five years out, planning for that, and we’re hoping for the best.
Patrick McGilvray
Talk, talk a little bit about that. That runner’s high, like, what do you, you know, different people have different interpretations of what that means, tell me what that means for you.
Randy Kreill
Um, sometimes it’s pretty subtle. But obviously, there’s a lot of biochemical changes that happen. And I guess what I’ve noticed is, if I work hard enough and execute the plan, I can really increase my odds of a runner’s high, but it’s basically a euphoric feeling. And it can happen really any time during a run.
And it varies though. The 100 miler, but I think when I got truly hooked at 100 milers was my very first one. And I think we started about 7am. And by 7pm, it was dark. And the coffee was coming out. And I had gone past 50 miles. So I noticed, gosh, once I made it to 50, and everything was still working. And I’m counting down from 50.
So my mindset, mindset shifted big time. And so counting down from 50 was a big I don’t know it was a boost to my energy level. And as you know, I got some fluids in me, took care of a little dehydration and started feeling better than when the coffee came out about the same time. All these things were in deploy, the weather was good. A runner’s high kind of kicked in and it just went for hours.
And one thing that sticks out in my mind was I don’t know what time it was. It might have been 1, 2, 3 in the morning, running by myself on a course I’d never been to. No Pacer, no crew just walking around the 100 mile race near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. And I was just honest, crazy high come into this aid station, just kind of hooting and hollering.
And I remember one of the volunteers really thought that maybe it was not a natural high. I was just like come in there hooting and hollering, and said, you know, I wish I could bottle this up and sell it because I would probably be a billionaire. If I could just give this feeling to people, they wouldn’t have to work for it, they wouldn’t have to run, then I’d be set for life. But it’s not that it’s not that easy.
And I think what I’ve been doing kind of since then it’s just riding this way. Once I finished that 100 and a lot of pain. The last 5-10 miles were extraordinarily painful, but I didn’t care. I knew I was coming back. And I don’t know, I just got to the point where I realized everything that I can do in all areas of my life, that would make me a better runner. Kind of makes me a better person in general. And so kind of chasing that runner’s high as part of it.
Patrick McGilvray
Oh, man, I love that you just said that. Because I tell people all the time. So I work as a life coach, you know, and I coach people through difficult stuff, and through getting rid of the baggage from their past and helping them to just live the best life anyway, I focus a lot on runners. And what I say is, you know, it’s not about running. It’s about life, you know, the stuff we talk about the mindset of running. Running is essentially a metaphor.
You know, it’s a metaphor for the hard things that we have to do in life and the challenges and the things that make us stronger. And the things that push us outside our comfort zone are the things that make us grow. And I love it as a metaphor. I love just running in general too. I love that runner’s high as well. But it’s the same principles when we talk about the mindset it takes to run 100 miles, you know, the same principles apply to life in general, they apply to, you know, getting through that tough week at work, or that big project or, you know, starting a business or, you know, going through a breakup or whatever it is, you know, like we can get through the tough stuff with the right mental toughness, you know, yeah.
Randy Kreill
Yeah, there’s something special about running. Last injury I had was actually that first and now they’re damn 50k and 2011. I didn’t know that note at the time, but I ran it on a stress fracture, a tibial stress fracture and right ankle so you can run on that but it’s really a bad idea. I just had no, I was so green, I didn’t even understand what a stress fracture was.
So after the race, I can barely walk back to my car. And you know, after three weeks of soaking it in ice, I realized it hurt just as bad as it did after the 50k finally got an x-ray verified, it was in fact, a stress fracture. So I had 12 weeks or so to recover from that point. And I rode my bike from Beavercreek, Ohio to Cincinnati and back out 120-130 miles.
I did a lot of long distance swimming, but nothing, those things did not replicate, replicate what running does for my general well being and feeling really good. I was positive what I could when I couldn’t run, but it didn’t replace the running. So I became just laser focused on doing everything I could to become an injury free running, so I would never have to take a break from it again. And so not a knock on wood, I want to knock on wood, because every single step as a potential, you know, foot injury or leg injury or whatever.
Patrick McGilvray
So, especially running races, like roots and rocks or whatever, like there’s…
Randy Kreill
Yeah, cloud splitter, 100 mile route in Northern Virginia was the hardest one even harder than Superior 100. So yeah, to run that one in sandals, and Superior in sandals, it was a lot of fun doing in sandals. I guess I’m more known for that than anything else. But the real message behind the sandals is, we’re usually best served by wearing the very least we can get away with for any given application. So I preferred to feel the open air on my feet, and running the sandals, but a pair of minimal shoes can be even more minimalist underfoot than a thicker pair of sandals.
Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, and I’ve never run in sandals before. In fact, I was the Hoka guy for a long time. Thy were in my big, you know, as much cushioning as possible. But then I’ve gone back to the minimalist shoe and I wear like a pretty minimalist, you know, running shoe now. And I love it. You know, I feel it feels good.
It feels good to feel the the road and the trail under my feet. Yeah. Yes. And there’s this thing about like, just feeling the ground and like, you know, having that tactile sort of sensory connection to the earth. Like that is just kind of cool. You know, for you. I’m sure it’s even more. Very cool. Yeah.
So all the, all the ultras, all the hundreds, you know, how do you stay mentally? Like, here’s the word I’m going to use, like, how do you keep your mojo going? With the constant training and the constant showing up for these really challenging events?
Randy Kreill
Um, I don’t, I know a lot of ultra runners kind of glamorize the suffering and the pain and all that. And I kind of flip all that the other way. I do it mostly for fun and pleasure and adventure. Sure, it hurts a lot. But generally, I mean, for the 100 miler, the vast majority of those minutes, I expected to be feeling really good, if not phenomenal.
I like to think I joke with people semi joking that a 35 hour 100 miler is just a 35 hour free full body massage from the feet up, I’m gonna it’s just a body massage. And I think of it differently. You know, we’re going back to this whole mindset thing. And so I, you know, it goes back to what you think about and feel about you attract more of, and so if I’m focused with my running on, enjoying the time enjoying the place, enjoying the people being fully present.
There’s not much I don’t really need to keep myself hyped up and motivated. Although I’ve never really had a pacer crew at 19 100 mile attempts and 15 finishes at that distance. I think I part of the reason is, I enjoy the self motivation aspect of it, or even more, so if I find somebody out on a course that struggling, being able to maybe help them out. Helps me to feel better about what I’m doing and helps propel me along runners.
I was running with a wonderful woman who was doing her first 50k Roots and Rocks up in Columbus couple of weeks ago. And she was having a blast. She finished a couple minutes ahead of me too. But I said, you know, it’s, I just love what we do, because we we push and pull each other along. And that’s kind of what it’s all about. I don’t mind if a 70 year old woman passes me on the trail. I think it’s fantastic.
Patrick McGilvray
So, yeah, yeah, more power to them. Oh, my gosh, I hope I’m running trail, you know, ultra marathons at 70 years old. Yeah, so what you focus on you attract, I love that. I mean, I coach people and talk to people about that all the time, when you’re focused on how hard running is, or what if you might fail, you know, that’s what you’re gonna get, it’s gonna feel hard, it’s gonna, you know, your chances of failure go up exponentially, if that’s what you’re focused on.
So you sound like you have a pretty easygoing attitude about this stuff. You know, 100 miles is no joke. I’ve only done one. It was two years ago and, you know, I remember the training, you know, when I kind of started the training season for that, you know, I train maybe for a year or whatever, nine, 9-10 months. And I remember starting it and thinking, like, I don’t know how I’m gonna do this, I really have no idea. But at some point, you know, a few months later, I just got to this place where, where I was, like, I’m going to finish this, I’m going to do it, I can do it. I and I, it I shifted from, from I can’t to I can, and I kind of adopted this identity of like, I am 100 miler, you know, I’m 100 mile runner, I can do this. And it shifted things for me. And then I just, the training became easier. My thoughts became lighter about it. And I was focused on a successful outcome. Yeah. And it was, you know, painful at the end. But, you know, it was, it was successful.
Randy Kreill
Yeah, yeah. You’re probably familiar with the concept of VMR, or visual motor rehearsal. Have you heard of them? Put Olympic lates I collected a lot of high tech wires to them, and had them run through their routines just on their minds. And their bodies reacted as if they were really good.
And the race was about the power of the mind. And so I always try to use that in my hundreds. It doesn’t always work. I can go. I can visualize feeling the goal and finishing the race, but I still might not finish, but usually it does work. At C&O Canal 100 I met a guy at the pre race dinner, who had run the race the year before it finally happened to have his buckle with him. And so I was just like, oh, I kind of just check it out, because I wanted to feel it in my hand. Cuz I’ve been for months, feeling that knowing what it would be like to cross the finish line and get that hardware in my hand. It’s kind of squeezed and I got that feeling, I think even before the race started, which was nice.
Patrick McGilvray
So do you ever feel like during any one of your mantras that you said you’ve had like 19 attempts and 15 finishes of the 100? So let me ask you, I’m gonna ask you two questions. The first one is when you have to quit, you know, or you know, you’re not going to make the cut off like what’s going through your mind at that point?
Randy Kreill
Um, well, disappointment, but I don’t like to focus on the negative at every one of the 4 100 mile DNF. I’ve had extraordinary experiences. At the biggest race I ever tried to do at the time, Cloud Splitter, 100 mile or a tough time was based out of Elkhorn City, Kentucky, they had to move the race but for me, that was like my leadville.
It was a 40 hour race. 25,000 feet of climbing, super technical. I trained like it was the Olympics. I went out there. I was a little nervous. Beautiful weather had a great time with the runners, but I kept getting off course. And it just kept happening, whether I was running alone or with other people. And then in the middle of the night on a real long, lonely section in the most remote part of that course. I evidently went into the woods to use the bathroom and came out and went the wrong way for hours.
So while I’ve never quit a 100 mile race, I’ve timed out four different times. And you know, I gave it my best. I made about 100k on Cloud Splitter, but then got a ride. I was with him but he’s back to the finish and watched all the rest of the runners come in and talk to the volunteers and talk to the locals. I just had a blast there till the very last runners came in. And I’m still friends with some of those people.
But a few years later, I came back to that race in ‘19, and finally finished. So, I’ve had a case where I timed out at 32 hours at Mohican, I ran about 99 miles, and I was worried that if I kept going I knew I wasn’t gonna make the cutoff. I know it was a strict cutoff. So I pulled my bib off into a shortcut back to the start finish, because I didn’t want to maybe get in trouble and sit down. I’m trailed, dehydrated and have to be rescued by anybody. So I knew I couldn’t get back to the start. And that was a heartbreaker. But it was still a great story. And I was very proud. And you’ve heard a lot around those 99 miles.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, well, 99 miles is no joke. I mean, come on. It’s close enough. Let’s just say no buckle, whatever.
Yeah, so the second part of this is like, okay, so, because I’ve experienced this, like, have you ever felt like just quitting? You just felt like, I just, I gotta, I cannot do this. But somehow you mustered the mental fortitude to go on? Has that ever happened to you? And then like, what do you what do you like, do? Or what do you say to yourself to keep yourself going?
Randy Kreill
I’ve actually, I, I don’t think that’s ever happened. Many, many times where I’ve been very fearful that I would make the cut off. Or I’ve gotten very scared. Because I was off course. And that can be dangerous, whatever, who knows how long you might be lost? I’ve been through fearful moments of not finishing, but I’ve never wanted to quit any of them. Yeah. So I think part of my whole philosophy on this running is, and life is anything worth doing is worth doing less than perfectly. So I may not be the fastest, or important to be consistent. And, and, and that’s just what I’m chasing.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s really cool. I mean, that’s awesome, that you’ve never really felt like I just can’t go on anymore. You know, because, I mean, I think most of us have felt like that at some point. And then, you know, you gotta like, conjure up that I know, for me, you know, I ran the Hallucination 100, that was my 100. Yeah, sign off. Yeah, and that’s a 16 mile loop until you do six loops.
And then coming in, off off the fifth loop. Coming into the finish area, everybody was cheering for me. And they’re like, great job. And because they thought I was done. And I was like, I just got one more loop to do. And I just sort of felt dejected at that point, not because of them, really, but my feet were killing me. And just like I could barely, I could barely walk and I just didn’t know how I was going to do another loop and something.
You know, I sat down for a minute, I got some food or drink or whatever. And something just shifted in my mind. I was like, I am just going to just get out there and do the best I can and finish this thing. I’m going to finish strong. And I just started running hard. I was feeling the pain, but it wasn’t going to get any worse.
And I was just like, I’m just gonna keep going. And so anyway, it was just like I had to pull everything I had, everything I had. It was kind of like the training that I did for this thing helped me to build that endurance engine, you know, right, right.
Randy Kreill
Yeah. The self talk is critical. It’s like I said, I’ve had to dig deep a lot just just to try to finish. But I’ve always wanted to finish so badly that I’ve never, never considered quitting. Yeah, so I guess I’m lucky that way I’ve haven’t needed to have a crew and or peace or whatever to talk me off the ledge. It’s just been part of the challenge of learning to solve those problems more independently.
Patrick McGilvray
So, what does that look like for you digging deep?
Randy Kreill
I like how Eric Orton is one of those allegedly top running coaches in the world. The guy from Hawk from the Born to Run, book and store. He likes to say in his book, The cool impossible. I got some good training ideas out of that book. He likes to say athleticism is all about awareness, which you can obviously say that about just life in general.
So basically, when you’re so tired, you can barely walk. It’s just really a matter of finding some gratitude that you’re out there doing it. Taking a real deep breath, taking a full inventory of all the feelings in the body and emotions, and just doing whatever it takes.
Do I need hydration? Do I need food? Do I need to stretch some muscles? Do a little yoga out there in the truck, whatever it is. Be in tune enough with yourself and fully present to solve that problem. What is it I need to do to keep going and then just do it and keep moving? So like you said you wanted to do, do you want to get better and listen to Jim 100? Hallucination 100? Buckle.
Patrick McGilvray
Postnational honor.
Randy Kreill
Yeah, I still don’t have it. I did the 100k there. It was my first and only 100k. So I’d like to talk on that as well. But you want it bad enough and you weren’t going to get up on it. So you could do it. Just dig deep and get her done?
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, yeah. So you’ve done a lot of amazing things, you’ve got a lot of amazing accomplishments. You know, you’ve got a regular job. And as this isn’t your profession that you just have this passion about running, but what would it have been what’s been like, your proudest moment as a runner? Biggest accomplishment? Well, however you want to say it.
Randy Kreill
That’s really hard to pinpoint. One, I mean, getting Superior 100 done was huge. That was like a five year bucket list goal. But then earning the 500 mile club buckle at C&O Canal 100 was huge as well. Now I’m going after the 10 year on the 1000 mile vogel but getting finishing the C&O Canal, 100, 5 years in a row, five PRs on the courts in a row for me, and five consecutive years and get there at age 55? All the stars just kind of lined up. That was pretty huge.
Had a phenomenal final 20 miles. So that race was just beautiful. But all those moments are fantastic. But one of the things I love has been able to help another runner who’s struggling? One case, I think it was the second C&O canal 100 There was a guy 67 or 68 years old who was a legend in the ultra rank community. And I can’t think of his name right now. But he was the final finisher at C&O Canal that year, I think it would have been 2015.
And I caught up with this fella in the dark was sleeting runners were dropping left and right. It was miserable. Luckily, I had just enough warm clothes on. And anyways, I got to talk with this guy. And right away, I knew who he was because I’ve read all about his comeback at Pine Creek challenge 100. And he had had Lyme disease. And so he was out of alternative for maybe eight or 10 years and have really bad news from it really horrible night vision.
And so I was like, Oh, well, I’ll listen to your stories for quite a while. And I’ll help get you up that we had to do like sub stream crossings on real steep technical climb to get up to the start finish area. And he needed help with it. It was kind of scary. But anyway, stayed with him. And on the way up the hill. He stopped at one point and said, well, I’m gonna have to drop off here.
And I was like, well, don’t don’t make that decision. Yeah, once we get up there. I’ll wait for you. We’ll talk again, I’ll get you back down the hill if need be. And maybe 15 minutes later, the race directors writing down names left and right, people drop and it’s cold, trying to sleep was just miserable. Colder than predicted. So people weren’t ready.
And I see this guy all of a sudden sitting there with no shirt on. And I was like, oh, what’s what’s up? He’s like, Well, they’re giving me some dry shirts. And I said, Well, it means we’re going back down that hill. Right? And it was an honor to help this guy. It might have been his last 100 mile distance at his age and ended up taking a long time to get him down that hill but we got him down the hill safely.
And then he was okay on the towpath. And the next morning I don’t know how he got ahead of me. I thought maybe he dropped out but the next morning, I ended up passing him on my way into the finish and he ended up getting last place. So that was cool.
Another time at St. Mary’s. I was talking with a young guy I’m doing his first 100 miler. He had the pacer get a crew he had a coach out west he was working with it was really into it. But it was like in the 90s that day, way it way higher than record high temps really unseasonable for the rest, and humidity, there was pollen in the air, it was tough. And he was really loose on the water, I was concerned for him. And we talked for quite a while.
And he was really interested in not only the sandals, but my diet, a whole plant based diet, and just asked him a lot of questions. And some put mine I thought later hours and hours later that he must not have made it. But then right before the cut off, maybe two to five minutes before the 30 hour cut off. He comes into the finish. And it was really cool to get to see him do that.
And what was even better was several months later, I was actually on Thanksgiving Day, I get a text from him, saying, hey, my family, we’re having our first vegan Thanksgiving day, we’ve been staying in touch, I’ve been coaching him along on diet changes and some lots of information. And so both him and his wife and his child were making this big diet change. So being a little part of helping people make those kinds of changes as a result of these adventures in this run. And yet again, another unintended byproduct of all these changes, is helping other people learn these things.
Patrick McGilvray
That’s awesome. You’ve got like such a great attitude about life in general. Randy, you really do like, what, what how would you like? How would you? Like what’s your secret? What is your like philosophy? How do you stay so positive?
Randy Kreill
Um, well, after going through the cancer surgeries and all that stuff, that was a pretty dark, fearful time, but I felt really lucky to get through all that I don’t know, I guess we usually use the word secret. And it kind of made me smile because one of my favorite documentaries is called The Secret or they talk about quantum physics and the law of attraction. A lot of the movie is pretty hokey. A lot of it’s focused on money, rather than maybe health or fitness, which is weird, right?
My thing is more health is wealth and so that at this time, that’s more my focus, but so trying to come back from that low point. I learned from Ruth hydric, who Dr. Ruth hardrick is in her 80s Now, but she was a key part of the Born to Run book. And she was really the person who closed me on going all in on the diet change.
I picked her brain for about a week online via email, and I was like, Okay, I’m gonna do this 100% Cold tofurkey I’ll go plant based. That’s mid December of 2010. So, you know, here’s a woman who in her 40s had stage four breast cancer and is famous. I’d say she’s probably the most world famous, self healed cancer survivor, brilliant woman, she’s now written five books. And you know, she’ll tell you the most important thing is the four letter word diet.
So I’ve been kind of approaching this thing from a mindset, attitude point of view, a healthy emotion point of view, and the nutrition. And those are kind of to me, that’s the three fountains of views but that they all work together. So your topic mindset really caught my attention right away today. I wonder, you know what’s really most important for Ruth to heal herself from the cancer with no chemo, no radiation. She signed up for her first Ironman. She’d been a marathoner. And she thought on this doctor, he convinced her to not do chemo, not do radiation, simply go to an all plant based diet of mostly whole foods, and it worked then three months or cancer was fading off of her body scans.
And then she went on to become one of the fittest woman in the world, and was writing books and so forth with a sponsored athlete. I think she got first place at the Japan Ironman years ago. And so anyways you know, but she had to change her mindset first. She had to sign up for an Ironman too, she was going to change her diet and execute on that and stick with it.
And she doesn’t learn how to use your body in a healthy, healthy way, healthy motion combined with the right nutrition and the right mindset. But the healthy motion and the nutrition definitely impact the mindset. I know that if I’m not taking them the right nutrition, I don’t feel as well. I have, if I’m not feeling well, I’m probably going to have less positive emotions, which is going to impact the power of the mindset. So, you know, there’s just that kind of that yin yang to the balance of trying to create an upward spiral. And using all three of the fountains of youth so to speak.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, like, that’s your three legged stool there, right? Yeah. Yeah. You kind of need all three legs in order for it to work. Right. You know.
Randy Kreill
Yeah, they all work together. There’s a synergy. Yeah.
Patrick McGilvray
So yeah, that’s really cool. Like, I’m a firm believer in that you can heal, you know, all kinds of ailments, you know, using the power of your mind using the power of diet, and it’s really cool stuff. What’s next for you? What do you got coming up?
Randy Kreill
Um, my instinct is to kind of back off a little bit this year, but I still have that streak go when of, you know, 13 months in a row, run an altar every month. All right now I’m thinking about maybe keeping that going. But Rocks Roots 50k is on February 16. Coming right up. Usually, I barely finish, but I’m hoping to get that double 50k finishers buckled three years in a row, which is pretty hard to get.
The success ratio on that is probably a lot less than at most 100 milers like proud of those, those buckles. I’ve signed up for the seventh year in a row at C&O Canal 100 in late April, and then the Canal Corridor 100 up in Akron, Ohio for mid July. But I haven’t really, really committed to anything else yet. Lots of ideas. I’m still trying to decide what I want to do.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah, cool. Well, it sounds like you’ve got some things you’re committed to. So that’s awesome. It’s always good to have goals out there. Right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I know, having a goal for runners is kind of key like keeps you mentally moving toward that goal, you know? Awesome. Well, this has been really, really amazing. I just love talking to you. And we’re going to do this again, because there’s a lot more we can talk about. But for now, where can people reach out to say hey, or thank you or whatever? How can we connect with you?
Randy Kreill
On YouTube, I just use my real name Randy Kreill, last name is KR E I L L. So if you plug that into YouTube, you’ll see my channel and people can comment and connect there otherwise, is I’m really easy to find on Facebook. My intention here is to get a blog going very soon and have another way to get my messages out to people. So hopefully that will happen very soon. I do a little bit on Instagram, not a whole lot. But I try to keep my real name and all the social media presences. Not hiding behind any aliases or anything like that.
Patrick McGilvray
Cool. A podcast is a great way to get your message out to there.
Randy Kreill
People have suggested this has been fun. And I hope to do more of these. I actually wrote down almost five pages of notes of things for us to talk about. So we can definitely get together and do this again. I think if I go through these pages…
Patrick McGilvray
Of those five pages, do we hit some of the stuff you wanted to talk about? I hope so.
Randy Kreill
My main message I wanted to get out to your listeners was that it really to humanity is to focus on what you want. We don’t do that. What you focus on you get more so most people will tend to be obsessed and focusing on what they don’t want in the world or inadvertently probably contributing to creating more of that.
And one of the good examples I was wanting to mention was before I turned when I turned 49 I decided on my 50th birthday I was going to do a full Ironman Triathlon, but on a do it yourself basis. It was not an Ironman event, but it was fun. Hold distance. And a few months later, I ran the New Year’s Eve Resolution run 5k.
And while I got up to leave from that I was in sandals, my heels hurt so bad. I thought maybe I had plantar fasciitis or a major running injury, I couldn’t walk, I got put it into a boot. And I realized maybe three weeks later, it still hurt. I was barely doing any running. And I had this huge 50th Birthday lifetime goal coming up. And one day, I just realized that I’m focusing on not being injured so much, I need to flip that.
And I focused on, I’m going to be a healthy happy runner, and I’m going to run my Do It Yourself Ironman, I’m not going to be focused on injuries. And almost immediately, everything shifted. And it’s been eight and a half years of injury free running. So it’s just a mental shift that paradigm shift to you know, not thinking, Gosh, I’m not an athlete. Flipping, flipping, flipping the negatives over and staying laser focused on that. Humanity would benefit from getting away from the war on drugs, the war on hunger, the war on terror and focusing on the opposites. What we need is a warming broccoli.
Patrick McGilvray
More, yeah…
Randy Kreill
More people consuming broccoli, I guess.
Patrick McGilvray
Yeah. What you just mentioned is a very subtle devil, you know, focusing on what you don’t want. Because we think we’re doing the right thing. We’re like, I don’t want to fail, I don’t want to quit, I don’t want to drop out of this race, I don’t want to miss the cut off. And you just keep focusing all your effort, all your energy on that thing that you don’t want. Alright, it sounds like you want the opposite of that. But you’re not focusing on that.
And the interesting thing is at the subconscious level, the subconscious mind takes in so much. And just, it does what you tell it to do, you know, and it doesn’t really process the negative in there. When you say I don’t want to fail, all it’s hearing is like, oh, fail, okay, let’s do that, you know, it creates a picture in your mind of you dropping out or failing or tripping or, or whatever it is. And that’s what you get.
And so that’s a very subtle, but very important distinction there. And something that I talk to my clients about a lot because, you know, let’s say somebody who’s, you know, they want to lose weight, they’re like, I don’t want to be overweight, I don’t want to be fat, I don’t want to, and they’re just focusing on, on being overweight and being out of shape and, and being everything they don’t want to be. And they just keep getting more of that and they can’t understand. So very, very subtle, but very important distinction there.
Randy Kreill
Yes. Cool.
Patrick McGilvray
I love that. And I love this conversation today. This is really cool. Thank you very much for coming on here and talking with me. And like I said, we are going to do this again.We’ll take a deep dive into some of those other topics you wrote notes about.
Randy Kreill
Sounds good. Thanks for having me. I love the music that you play at the beginning and at the end. So by chance, if I said anything really cool during the interview, feel free to splice on some music.
Patrick McGilvray
Put in a few little guitar riffs just to go along with what you’re saying. I love it. That’s a good idea. I should start doing that. Awesome, Randy, thank you so much.
Randy Kreill
Hey, you’re welcome. Great talking to you.
Patrick McGilvray
Did you know that most runners fail to reach their goals? It’s not because of lack of training, lack of desire, whether it’s running faster or running farther, I believe most runners just haven’t developed the mental toughness they need to get them across the finish line. That’s why I created a step by step training called How to Build Mental Toughness and Become A Badass Runner. I want to show you how to train your mind so you can tough it out when the going gets tough. And the best part, this comprehensive training is yours absolutely free. To get it right now just go to innerfiretribe.com/badass and get started today.
