Minding your mind through exercise: Running

Speaker 1

Hi everyone, welcome back to Zevo Talk. I’m John Paul Hughes, a health coach here at Zevo Health. And today we are starting a journey looking at different areas of health and fitness for all of us. We wanted to create something like this because people have a bunch of questions when getting into something new around health and wellbeing.

 

Speaker 1

So we wanted to bring in some experience and help pull the veil away from some of these wellbeing topics where you might have some questions. So today we are going to start with possibly the most purest of wellness topics, and that is running.

 

Speaker 1

So personally myself, I’m a bit of a hobbyist runner, but fortunately on our staff, we have someone with much, much more experience than me. And that is of course, Garrett Moran. Welcome to the podcast, Garrett.

 

Speaker 2

Hi, Jeff. Hey, thanks. It’s great to be here.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, no, it’s nice. So I know that Garret’s not one to brag about his achievements. Well, maybe Garret, you could take us through a brief history of your time in running.

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, sure. So I am running, I guess you’d call kind of semi-seriously for like probably about 13 years. I did the Dublin marathon in 2008, just kind of on a whim. I was just playing a few sports like tag rope at the time.

 

Speaker 2

Someone said you’re a pretty okay runner. So I just kind of trained for about 12 weeks for that time. I set myself a goal in that and kind of went and did it. And then kind of the next winter, I guess kind of in early 2009, I decided, I like this kind of running crack.

 

Speaker 2

So I decided to join club and I joined sports world running club. It’s been there ever since.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, brilliant. So with that kind of firepower, Turkey near the experience in my couple years experience, we’re hopefully going to debunk some of the myths and answer some of the questions about people, hopefully just getting into running.

 

Speaker 1

So maybe you’ve done a little bit of running in the past, maybe you’ve played some team sports, or maybe you haven’t run ever, or in a long time, we’re going to address things like equipment, what you should be doing on your first session, how you should be tracking your exercise, what are the sort of things you should be focusing on, pre rituals for before you start running, how to like structure your running in terms of doing some training,

 

Speaker 1

we’re going to cover some beginner mistakes. And we’re also going to talk about how a workplace can promote different areas of wellness like running. So the first thing I wanted to cover and start on is probably equipment.

 

Speaker 1

Before you run, you have to put some equipment on, you got to get changed these things, you got to get your runners. So what should people be thinking about before they start running in terms of what equipment do they definitely need, or possibly need, you know, before they start kicking off their journey?

 

Speaker 2

the most important thing you’re going to need is a pair of running shoes. I’ll often kind of see people will decide to go out and run in what I call kind of fashion shoes, so they’ll have a pair of shoes built from their local, you know, just lifestyle or footlocker or something like that, and they’ll start to go out for a run.

 

Speaker 2

That’s generally kind of seen as a bad idea. You want to get something that’s actually specific to running. So what I recommend there is that you actually go into a speciality running shop and actually kind of get them to kind of have a look and get some shoes that actually suit your foot because if you do a small bit of kind of research online, you’ll see that like a lot of people have very different types of foots,

 

Speaker 2

some are wide, some are long, some are, you know, high arch, low arch, and they can just take all that kind of jargon and kind of, you know, do a quick analysis for five minutes and give you the exact kind of shoe that’s going to work for you.

 

Speaker 2

So shoes would be the kind of the main thing that we encourage people to go and get a good pair of first. You don’t need to spend the fortune. You know, you can spend, you know, 70, 80 euro on a pair of shoes and actually get quite a good pair that will last you quite a while.

 

Speaker 2

And I would probably say that’s the most important thing. You don’t need to be going and spending a fortune on the best, you know, Nike or Adidas kind of clothing and all that kind of stuff. Like, you know, a t-shirt that you pick up any person you have already is good.

 

Speaker 2

Obviously, if you’re running in winter, you might want some reflective gear, but the actual running clothes themselves, you know, it’s not that important to be going out and buying new stuff straight away.

 

Speaker 2

The shoes are way, way more important. And then when you get into, sorry, go on.

 

Speaker 1

I was just going to say while you’re on it, what are the shops around Dublin or the areas that you know that might be able to do a service like that? Where could people go to start that process?

 

Speaker 2

Well, I’d say there’s a couple in Dublin that I know and recommend. So there’s like Amphibian King, which is like a few locations. They have a good website. You can look those guys up. And there’s also Rotten Hub, which have a few locations around town.

 

Speaker 2

Amphibian King being kind of in the triathlon space, but good in running and then Rotten Hub, you know, are specific for running. Elvis is obviously a big brand that people would know as well. Some of their stores do have the gate analysis.

 

Speaker 2

So kind of looking at your foot and your run style and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, if you really want to get into it, say kind of go into somewhere that really focus on running cause you’ll just get, you know, the really good service from them.

 

Speaker 2

And they won’t try and just sell you the most expensive power runners as well. They’ll get you something that actually will work for you, which is a good, important piece.

 

Speaker 1

And I sort of can be tempting for a lot of people who do a lot of online shopping just to go onto a website and try to get a good bargain. But what are some of the issues you might see if someone gets the wrong pair of runners for themselves?

 

Speaker 2

The biggest thing that I’ll see generally is that they’ll get blisters or something on their foot because it’s just it’s rubbing up there against in the wrong way in the foot. Like it’s always got to be in anybody that’s kind of buying a pair of running shoes or walking shoes really for that matter.

 

Speaker 2

I would say you should be getting something that’s half a size bigger than you would normally wear in your dress shoes because you’re just when you exercise your limbs, your muscles, your feet get bigger.

 

Speaker 2

So it’s just always good to have that extra room. So you know when you were young you might have had someone kind of saying you know your toes sticking at the front of that toe and that’s definitely something you don’t want in a running shoe.

 

Speaker 2

You want to have your toe well back when you put them on first and you let your foot expand and put them naturally move through its gait cycle so it’s important to be doing that.

 

Speaker 1

And what about, you know, I know we’re in kind of a cooler climate here at Ireland, and I suppose a lot of people are going to be running throughout the whole year. And so what are the things that can do in regards to cold running, cold weather, wet weather?

 

Speaker 1

Like, is there specific types of clothing that people might want to look at instead of just going for a run in a cotton t-shirt in a fair short time?

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, you see a lot of people doing that. And like, I think, you know, like cyclists or runners, you can sometimes be aghast that people will go out like in a black t-shirt and a black pair of shorts on a winter’s night.

 

Speaker 2

So getting yourself something reflective is the most important place to start. And you can pick up like reflective gear for next to nothing. You can even get them free from the road safety authority and stuff like that.

 

Speaker 2

They don’t require it to be kind of, you know, you’re wearing it over your t-shirt. So it’s like, it’s not going to need to be as washed as many times as your actual t-shirt or shorts might be. So it’s not much hassle in that respect either.

 

Speaker 2

And I’d say they’re the kind of the essential things just to be seen when you’re actually, you know, out there on the road is the most important piece there. And you can also as well, like, I mean, double up on your t-shirts, like if you don’t mind doing a bit more washing and stuff, double up on your t-shirts and get a nice light and a beanie and a pair of gloves, your hat and your head are going to be the things like if you’re swimming or doing cycling,

 

Speaker 2

any other sport, when you’re outdoors, your hat and your, you’re sure your head and your hands are going to be the things that are most exposed and the things you want to protect. The rest of your body will warm up pretty quickly, actually, if they’re covered.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, for me, that’s, that’s definitely the big thing to keep warm. I wear a pair of gloves and I wear something to cover, especially my ears, you know, it could be like a headband or just a full on kind of like tight fitting hat, or the way to go.

 

Speaker 1

Otherwise, you know, it’s it can be quite miserable, you can manage it for two or three K, but then it just starts to bite into those fingers and ears. And yeah, and another thing that I found useful for myself, I like to listen to music when when I run and a product that I’ve found really beneficial instead of bringing your phone in your pocket, which your pockets are often quite cavernous, so that the phone can kind of jump around in there.

 

Speaker 1

And you can have it on the arm on these kind of straps, but they’re quite clumsy on them. You can get running belts, which you can get on Amazon for quite cheap. And they they’re like a nice material that’s quite stretchy.

 

Speaker 1

And you can put your phone into them. And you can also say other things, you can fit your house keys and things like that. And that’s been an invaluable sort of thing that’s got me through to help me out so I can listen to music without feeling things jumping around.

 

Speaker 1

So for me, gloves, hats, and my little my little running belt is my tree top tips for everyone.

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, the running belts are great actually because I’ve lost track of the amount of times that I’ve gone out for a run and you have your phones in and I’ve lost my house key and then you’re like, Oh God, what am I going to do next?

 

Speaker 2

So like the running belt is good because you can stick your phone in there, you can stick your key, you can stick, you know, a 10 euro note in there that you kind of never use unless it’s somewhere you can see, you have it all the time as well, quite beneficial as well.

 

Speaker 2

And plus if you’re going on a longer run, you could stick, you know, some gummy bears or something in there, a bit of fuel as well. I think you’re going to get more as well. You know, it’s nice. One of the things we didn’t talk about as well, we mentioned the phone there.

 

Speaker 2

So I think that’s interesting. You can spend a lot of money when you’re in news, running, getting all the kind of latest gadgets and stuff and you’ll see there’s all these watches from Garmin and Fitbit and all these kinds of things.

 

Speaker 2

Your phone actually does a pretty good job of recording that kind of stuff in the first instance. And so no matter what type of phone you have nowadays, you’ll have some basic app, be it Google Fit or Apple Health or something like that for tracking your steps.

 

Speaker 2

So running is exactly the same as walking in that respect. So all you need is a basic step tracker and you can start to record your activities. When you get into it a bit more, you might start downloading some of the other apps that are out there like Strava, which is a specific community for running and cycling.

 

Speaker 2

But when you’re beginning, like just don’t get, you know, too bogged in the actual numbers and don’t start looking at your phone like during the run, kind of seeing what pace you’re on and all that kind of stuff.

 

Speaker 2

You might look at that stuff six months down the road when you’re kind of a bit more further along the journey, but at the start, it’s much better just to kind of go really basic on that perspective.

 

Speaker 2

Just to actually just go by natural kind of feel. You always listen to the music on your phone, you know, once it’s kind of safe to do so and all that kind of stuff, but you don’t need to kind of go overly tracking everything with kind of fancy watches and all that kind of stuff.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think it’s definitely tempting to do that. For a lot of people, they’re so data-driven that they want to track everything. But I think learning the sensations yourself first instead of the data telling you can be probably a good advantage for the first while.

 

Speaker 1

And I suppose we’re starting to get into across this spectrum. So you’ve got your gear, you’ve got your clothing, and you’ve all figured yourself out. So you’re going to start either you’re going to have your first session or you’ve done a couple in the past and you never got into it really too much.

 

Speaker 1

So what should people be focusing on on their first couple of sessions? Should they just be going out the door and just going straight forward through their local loop? Or is there a few tips you can give to people on how they should plan out their first couple of sessions?

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, so I’d say if you’re totally starting out and you’re not, you know, playing some other sport at the moment, then like kind of running 5k is a good target. You’ll see these things like couch to 5k in park run kind of advertised around the country.

 

Speaker 2

So 5k is kind of seen like a distance that if you know you train for a bit of time, you’ll be able to kind of do, no matter what fitness level you’re coming from. It’s always a good place to be starting kind of, you know, from a lower base is kind of to do a run walk kind of plan at the start and just do it like a 50-50 split like, you know, run for a minute, walk for a minute, run for a minute, walk for a minute and kind of do it that way.

 

Speaker 2

You’ll actually be amazed how quickly the time will go. And then, you know, what you would do then is every week kind of once you’re happy that you’re progressing and you’re not picking up any injuries or that kind of thing, then, you know, you can start to change that up a bit.

 

Speaker 2

You might go from one minute walk to one minute run and then you might go like 90 seconds run, one minute walk or else you might decide that you want to go two minute run, two minute walk. So there’s different ways that you can kind of split it up.

 

Speaker 2

Like you can change the intervals and go kind of longer on each section or else you can do a bit more running and kind of a bit less walking over time. And you can just try out the different options there.

 

Speaker 2

There’s no kind of set rule along. It’s just kind of, you know, depending on how you progress and that kind of stuff, it’s going to make you kind of, it’s going to feel better for you. I guess it’s a good way of putting up.

 

Speaker 1

Hmm. I think for me anyway, when I first started running and I had a background in field sports and things like that, I was so used to just running hard all the time. When you go for your first run, you just go out the door and you have your route and you try to do it as quickly as possible.

 

Speaker 1

And you finish getting back to your house in a pool of sweat, you’re absolutely dying. You couldn’t take another step. Is that the right thing? Should be people almost be emptying themselves out on their first couple of sessions or is there a smarter way to go about

 

Speaker 2

it’s much better off to come through stronger than you actually think you can. You can use that kind of, if you’re going to sprint for 100 meters, you can kind of use that to kind of gauge what your fitness is.

 

Speaker 2

But if you do that for a kilometer and you know you’re only making it 200 meters, then you know that you need to kind of maybe split that, sorry, slow that down by like 34% and then try and pick up towards the end.

 

Speaker 2

It’s much, much better to do it that way. And when you get into it a bit more, there’s some kind of stuff you could look up online as well in terms of using those kind of shorter duration intervals and stuff to kind of improve a bit more as well.

 

Speaker 2

I think we’ll get into that a bit more as well and kind of be progressive and kind of in the conversation a bit more.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, I suppose a good direction to take it, you know, like, I suppose, how do people track those first few weeks? How do they know, you know, if they’re improving? Should they be looking at how much distance they’re doing, you know, every session or every week?

 

Speaker 1

Should they be timing their loops? You know, what should people be thinking about or even have they should be tracking how exhausted they feel in the session after the session? What are some good ways to kind of track things over time?

 

Speaker 1

Or should people even be thinking about that?

 

Speaker 2

I wouldn’t be thinking about doing any more at the start then if you have a journal or diary like just kind of writing down how you feel after the runs because if you don’t write down how you feel you quite quickly find that you forget and you might have something like very often like an example of an injury that runners will get when we’re starting out is shin splints so you can get pain the shin is kind of at the front and the side of your leg so you can get you know pain then those kind of areas and you know over time you may kind of forget when did this actually start is it two weeks that have had the problem or three weeks or you just start last week but if you write that down I think it can help and then if you do end up kind of in a situation where you’ve done a bit too much you pushed it a bit too hard if you go to see a physiotherapist you have that information and that’ll help them you know work on what exercises to kind of help you and kind of build you up.

 

Speaker 2

I would say that it’s always good if you do start to notice any kind of little niggles or stuff you know building up kind of when you start just ease back a bit you know don’t go for the run the next day kind of you know go back to walking and stuff it’s normally your body is telling you kind of that you’re over you know exerting yourself a bit too much you just push a bit too hard so just ease back that bit.

 

Speaker 2

In terms of actually kind of recording you know what you’re doing then I think it’s good to kind of set yourself a goal initially of running like two or three days a week and normally the way I’d suggest people break that up is you’re probably going to start with one walk and most people would you start with a minute or you start with two minutes kind of on and two minutes off on and off being running and walking but depending on kind of how fit you are you can change that up yourself you kind of get a good feel for it but you can also do things like what you can do is record your what’s called your RPE so it’s like your perceived exertion so if you were to rate from like one to ten you know how did that feel ten being very difficult and one being you know pretty easy I felt like I was walking that’s just a good kind of thing to put down in your in your notebook as well in terms of kind of you know you know how you felt on the day so any little niggles kind of you know ranked from one to ten and then over time you know the perceived exertion probably won’t get any less it’ll probably actually get higher but that’s a good sign you’ll often get people who are new to running asking you you know someone has been running a while when does it get easier it doesn’t actually really get that much easier it’s just your perception of kind of you know the pace that you’re running gets gets better like so you’ll get faster over time as well but you’ll actually probably end up just kind of running that bit faster as well and kind of what people do so you know there’s not really much difference between some guy who’s gone to the Olympics and someone is starting off a lot of the time in terms of you know what their body is feeling at any point in time when they’re actually running their pace may be completely different but you know at some point in time during that run they’ll be pushing themselves quite quite similarly you know kind of to be very similar and it’s all about kind of building up over time and kind of you know your perception of what you’re doing will improve and you’ll get faster kind of you know before you can kind of start to realize that yourself you’ll you’ll just you know it’ll be easier basically i wouldn’t be tracking your time per kilometer or anything like that at all at the start you know if you’re you know still in it and still enjoying it kind of you know three months later then you know you could start doing that because you can actually kind of start to look at that information and you could start to say well i’m going to try and you you know increase my pace on one of these runs like one of the days during the week by like five or ten seconds per kilometer and actually kind of actively try and do that whereas if when you’re starting out it’s just not worth doing that at all just think you know you shouldn’t you shouldn’t be bothered with that kind of thing one thing that you could do is um if you do run three days a week um and you’ve got a bit more time let’s say on a Saturday or Sunday you know you haven’t got work to go to um you can actually you know do go a bit longer on that one so say you’ve been doing um you know 15 minutes of running two minutes on two minutes off or something like that so it’s going to be 16 minutes you could push it up to 20 or something at the weekend because your body is probably like in a position where you’re going to be kind of sitting around you’re not going to be doing quite as much so on those quieter days during the week it’s kind of okay to add a tiny bit more volume and that can actually give you a bit of a boost as well once you don’t overdo it you can just do it in a small way you can kind of get more in there as well but in that

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, there’s some great tips. I know from experience that shinspin specifically is a big issue to a lot of new runners get. And I think that’s one thing that if I could recommend everyone, if you do feel those shinspins coming on that pain across your shin, just immediately try to pull it back because they’re, it’s quite quick for them to come on and it can take a long time for them to go away.

 

Speaker 1

So you’re better off nipping that one in the bud. So anyone that’s starting and running, be careful there. I guess the other thing was, in regards to getting fitter over time, I think for me, the big difference when I started developing a little bit of running fitness, is that over time, when you first start out, running at all paces is exhausting, essentially, you can’t maintain it for too long.

 

Speaker 1

I think as you start to get fitter, you have the ability to run at a slow pace without getting exhausted. And you can kind of maintain that for longer periods of time, it gives you more of a range really of levels you can kind of run at.

 

Speaker 1

And which can help, you know, I think a lot of people find running miserable because you just can’t run slow enough for it to not be miserable. But that does change over time. As you get fitter, you kind of you’ve got higher top end, and you can run at a slower pace.

 

Speaker 1

And it’s quite nice and enjoyable. And it’s sustainable. But it does take, you know, a couple months really to get there, would you say Garris?

 

Speaker 2

It does absolutely. I mean, it’s kind of like, you know, there’s all these different figures in psychology, kind of different walks of life, or like how long it becomes for takes to kind of become somewhat proficient at something, and where it kind of just becomes part of your natural kind of habit or kind of, you know, part of your daily kind of cycle in terms of what you do, I would say, kind of if you stick with it for about two months,

 

Speaker 2

you know, you’ll actually just kind of naturally get there. And you’ll actually be able to kind of run consistently. The 5k is it the race, that’s kind of the reason I mentioned 5k, because the programs like K to 5k are quite good, because they structure in such a way that, you know, you’ll be training for like six to eight weeks, and then you’ll actually kind of build up to, to run in 5k, consistently without stopping.

 

Speaker 2

And once you’ve kind of got the confidence boost have been able to do that, then I think there’s kind of nothing stopping you after that, you know, you can kind of build from there. One of the worst things I see, and I discourage anyone from doing it is setting up a goal like that they’re going to run a marathon in like October, February now, as we’re recording this, but like trying to do that in the same year,

 

Speaker 2

we’ve not run at all. It’s just a terrible, terrible idea. You should always start with that the shorter distance. And you know, if you do have a longer term goal to run a marathon, which is like 42k as opposed to 5k, then you know, you should be looking, you know, 18 months to two years out, like I know that might seem ridiculous.

 

Speaker 2

But it’s the surest way to kind of enjoy the experience and that kind of thing. You should always be looking to the shorter distances first, because you’re just, you’re not going to attract as much, you know, as many injuries, you’re going to enjoy it a lot more, and you’re just going to get kind of much more from it.

 

Speaker 2

You’ll actually end up then with, you know, running being kind of part of your life and something you enjoy as opposed to kind of, I’ve done it, I’ve kind of exhausted myself and I hate it now, you know, but I see that a lot, like with people who kind of do a marathon, they force themselves to do it once and they very often kind of don’t do the proper training and they’ll end up kind of walking those parts,

 

Speaker 2

but you’re just not enjoying it at all.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah, it’s probably more of a badge of honor than it is, you know, a lifestyle changing.

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, whereas we want to be kind of setting people up to kind of get the benefits and run kind of on a long-term basis, you know

 

Speaker 1

Yeah. Okay, well, let’s get into the actual run. So you’ve planned it out, you know what, you know, you should be kind of tracking in terms of your RP and things like that. But when you’re actually running, what are some things that you’d advise people to actually focus on internally and externally?

 

Speaker 1

You know, what do people, you know, spend their mental capacity on?

 

Speaker 2

Well, the first thing I would say is before you go out the door, like it’s good to do some stretches. So you should actually be kind of you know, just doing some, you can look up different routines, but just some lunges, some squats, and putting your hands down the ground kind of in a push up position, just kind of going up and down with your legs.

 

Speaker 2

So if you’re basically just trying to warm your body up, because the last thing you want to do is kind of get into a run when you’ve been sitting in the desk all day. And I’m just trying to go out because you’re just your glutes, which your muscles, you know, at the bottom of your back there, they’re basically not going to be enabled.

 

Speaker 2

And you want to basically kind of get them far and for you to have much more likely if you’re going to enjoy the experience a lot more. So a small bit of that would be good before you go out. And I myself run with music.

 

Speaker 2

So I think a good a good playlist is good. Nowadays, like, you know, you can get a good pair of Bluetooth headphones for for next to nothing, really, like, you know, you can pick up a pair for 20 or 30 euro.

 

Speaker 2

And I probably suggest that people actually kind of, you know, start when they’re running with kind of a cheaper pair of headphones, because it’s quite possible they’ll fall out, you’ll lose them, they’ll get wet, you know, so rather than kind of using your big, expensive two, 300 euro pair that you might have around the house.

 

Speaker 2

And if you’re there for running is a good idea. And then just get a playlist that kind of motivates you. You don’t want to get something that makes you run too fast, obviously, because that’s quite easy to do when a fast tempo song comes on.

 

Speaker 2

So, and just bear it up in mind as well. But then once you have all that setup, and the things to do really are, you know, just kind of think about your, your, your running form, like, so you want to be, I would always say when you’re running, you should be trying to lean basically kind of with your whole body, you shouldn’t be kind of leaning from just where you’re now your your back kind of, you know,

 

Speaker 2

upper body things, you basically almost want to be kind of falling forward, if that makes sense. So you can imagine your whole, whole body being kind of up like a book, it’s almost like a book falling forward, the whole thing kind of falls together.

 

Speaker 2

It’s not like doesn’t spit in the middle and kind of lean forward. And you’ll often see that, you know, you can get issues, you know, from sitting too long or from running as well in terms of your kind of tight lower back.

 

Speaker 2

And that’s often because the muscles they’re not strong enough. So again, it’s one of the reasons to loosen that stuff up before you go out. But then if you do notice that happen while you’re on your run as well, that’s probably an area that you need to focus on is kind of to improve those muscles around there, and strengthen up those kind of areas.

 

Speaker 2

And then, you know, it’s just a case of getting out and enjoying it, I think, to be honest, because you can you can get out on a really kind of wet day, and windy day, winter day. But once you’ve got the right gear, so you have your your hat and your gloves on stuff, you can still really really enjoy it.

 

Speaker 2

You could be wondering why there’s not more people out like running in the rain, because you’re really kind of enjoying and getting the kick out of it. And you know, rather than kind of just saying oh, if the weather’s terrible, I can’t do anything to see, you know, that sort of thing.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think I think there are some really good clips. And personally, I’m something I it took me a while to learn and to focus on is actually focusing on what you had planned to do for today. So you might have planned to do a 30 minute walk run, something like that.

 

Speaker 1

But I think especially people that have backgrounds in sports and things like that, they can often get caught up with what’s going on around them. And if you’re in a location, you might be running in the city center or in a town that in the evening that has a lot of quite a lot of runners, you might just get caught up in the in the atmosphere of people running around you, you might be doing your little two minutes of walk before you start running again,

 

Speaker 1

someone runs past you. And you’re kind of sure you’re considered in them, you can just kind of get caught up in the process of running and your ego can almost get taken over. And so it’s just what I would say is, you know, regardless of your, your, your level, you know, do what you had planned for the day, don’t worry about what everyone else is doing.

 

Speaker 1

You know, if you want to be fast, then the road, you can get into races and things like that, you don’t need to be fast and the fastest person, you know, that’s running around your locality every single night of the week, it really doesn’t, doesn’t do anything positive for you.

 

Speaker 2

No, not at all, not at all. I mean, you know, you’re not, it’s like, none of us are going to the lifts. So the road is kind of like, it’s a race against yourself really, like it’s you trying to get better, you trying to get better.

 

Speaker 2

It’s almost kind of like, you know, self improvement for one of a better way of kind of describing it, you know, and because it is a great way to kind of improve your overall cardiovascular kind of fitness.

 

Speaker 2

So I think you’re not competing against anyone else, like, you know, you shouldn’t even be thinking about kind of doing that, you know, start. And one other good tip, I guess, in terms of getting into the zone kind of type thing, it’s great and a good thing to run with someone else.

 

Speaker 2

So if your partner friend is interested in getting into running as well, or, you know, is even a tiny bit further ahead of you further along in the journey, that can actually help a lot. Because whatever way our brains work, when you’re running with someone else, like the same effort that you’re putting in just seems so much easier.

 

Speaker 2

So you could actually like be going along with yourself and go, Oh, this is painful. This is like really tough. Whereas once you’re actually kind of your brain is kind of taken off for a few minutes, you’re having a chat with somebody about kind of what went on that day, it’s, it just becomes much, much easier.

 

Speaker 2

And so you’ll often see kind of, you know, runners that are training a few years and kind of, you know, clubs and stuff, because it’s much, much easier to run with, with a bunch of people than it is to kind of go out and do it by yourself.

 

Speaker 2

And that’s not to say you shouldn’t start by yourself, you want to start by yourself, it’s great. And it just, you know, it can make it easier if you have someone else to kind of go and train with as well.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think they’re great tips and it brings us real nicely onto the idea of training. I think a lot of people have done running in the past and they do their local loop. There might be a 5k loop and they start doing it for a few weeks and often they just feel a bit burnt out.

 

Speaker 1

There’s no kind of variation in it. They say, oh, I don’t like running. It’s boring or I just don’t enjoy it or they might not be seeing that much progression. In regards to training and structuring people’s week, should people be focusing on anything in particular?

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, I’d say like, you know, you’re going to be running in the same area, most people. So I’d say pick out a couple of routes, like you can look up, there’s a few different services online that you can kind of just Google kind of map or map or run or map or map or route type thing.

 

Speaker 2

And so pick a few roads actually, and you know, that you can kind of run on consistently, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a very far distance, like you can do loops. And but do vary it up a bit, like, you know, even just going to go even doing the same loop on a Tuesday, say, but then going out on Thursday and doing it backwards can make the whole loop different, because you’re going to hit any kind of hilly parts or any kind of exposed parts to the wind at different times during the run.

 

Speaker 2

And so it can feel quite different. And you know, in terms of what you’re doing, and then I would say that if you’re, you know, it’s fine to do two if you’re starting out, but if you were doing three, depending on the kind of plan, you’re following cases, like there could be two or three, I’d say, you know, if you have a bit more time, you might, you know, go somewhere else or kind of go different routes the weekend,

 

Speaker 2

even drive up or kind of get up to one of the parks that are near you as well, which can kind of tell you change the experience as well. So I think that can be good. When you’re a tiny bit further along on the journey, you know, so once you’ve kind of you’ve conquered that first five K, and you can get into kind of different types of run sessions.

 

Speaker 2

So, and like, you might have worn like, it’s kind of, you know, a long steady run, which is, you know, you kind of know at that point in time, what your pace is, like, I’m able to run by 30 per kilometer, like, you know, for up to five K.

 

Speaker 2

So I know that I can kind of stick to that pace. So you might go ahead and name or run something like one K at that pace, and then you might slow down by 30 seconds, and you might pick it up again. So you can, you can start to play with the different times in terms of like, you know, what your targets are.

 

Speaker 2

And then, you know, a good way of doing it actually is if you have a figure, if you have a figure set, really simple figure of like 25 minutes for the five K. So that’s five minutes per kilometer, you might start to run a small bit faster than that.

 

Speaker 2

You might say, Okay, I’m going to go one kilometer at 430. The next one, I’m going to go back to 530. And I’m going to go to 430. And I got to 530. What that does is it kind of trains your systems kind of to go a little bit faster than you ran up to now.

 

Speaker 2

And notice over time that the first 430 will seem quite easy. And you might even go a little bit faster accidentally, you should pull back a bit, obviously. But then 530 will start to feel quite slow.

 

Speaker 2

And over time, it just starts to kind of to kind of bring your pace up and makes you kind of run a bit faster. And I would say that it’s important to you know, stick to no more than three runs a week at the start is plenty.

 

Speaker 2

Even people who I know have been running for like, you know, three, four years, you know, they probably mostly don’t run more than five times a week because you do need the recovery. The recovery is equally important, if not more important than the actual running itself.

 

Speaker 2

So if you’re blocking out your week, I would find that people generally don’t want to do things on a Monday because it’s starting off in the week. But you can either do Monday, Wednesday or Tuesday, Thursday.

 

Speaker 2

And then I probably put the other run at the weekend. So I always have that gap in between kind of giving your body that chance to recover. It doesn’t mean you need to be completely, you know, sedentary on those days, you can do yoga, you can do Pilates, you could even be cycling, be gone for a walk.

 

Speaker 2

Definitely good to you in some activities. But in terms of running, when you’re new, you should kind of space your your week up that way. And then getting back to the point a minute ago at the time, like when you’re a bit further along, you might decide that Tuesday’s gone to be my my day where I’m just going to kind of run easy, I’m just going to go by feel, I might be tired, some days, some days I’ll be feeling a bit more energetic,

 

Speaker 2

and that’s fine. Whereas then on Thursday, I might decide I’m going to try that, I’m going to go for 35, 34, 35, 30. You can kind of map out your run that way. But I do think that’s when you’re a bit further along, like at the start, you’re just going to go by time, you’re just going to say, two minutes on, two minutes off, I’m going to kind of do 16 minutes total, and then I’m done.

 

Speaker 2

And I would say if you do that, you’re not home, they just walk home. If you don’t, you know, run the extra bit, just get home a bit quicker and I stick to the program as always kind of good.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah. I think you started bringing up like some paces and things like that there. And I know it’s going to be completely different for everyone depending on their background or, you know, all sorts of factors.

 

Speaker 1

But I guess a lot of people are just interested in what are some of the standards. And I think back in the lockdowns of 2020, a lot of people started getting into running. And I know some of the most popular searches coming out of Ireland were what is a good 5k pace?

 

Speaker 1

What is a good, you know, 10k pace? So I know it’s, again, it’s different for everyone, but what are some of the really general things in terms of paces for something like a 5k that people might have in the back of their head?

 

Speaker 2

you’re totally new to running, then you should be kind of probably trying to break about 30 minutes. You know, if you’re if you’re a bit fitter, maybe 25, if you’re doing other sports already, I would add as well, though, if you’re running with a partner, like lads, as in kind of men, would have a fairly big advantage when it comes to running, like they’re generally just true strength and oxygen absorption stuff about 12 or 13% faster than a woman would be.

 

Speaker 2

And, you know, so just bear in mind that if you’re running with a partner, the guy might progress a tiny bit faster than the woman would. After a period of time, when you’re starting off, you know, running together, you can both get a very similar level, but he’s probably going to start to find it a bit easier quicker than you would, assuming you’re both starting from the exact same position.

 

Speaker 2

And that’s just not what you can do about that. It may even be, you know, kind of cancelled out by natural ability, because we haven’t spoken about that yet, obviously, as well. Different people are going to have different natural ability.

 

Speaker 2

And we need a separate podcast for that. But it can come it can, it can be down to a huge range of different factors, you know, terms of people’s natural ability as well. And so yeah, there’s a good bit there as well.

 

Speaker 1

Okay, so people, you say people do hit some of these numbers, things like that. I guess when people start to get interested, you know, they’re going to start thinking about, okay, is there, is there competition?

 

Speaker 1

Is there races? Is there clubs I can join? Could you maybe give some people a bit of a, you know, a little bit of an insight into what’s out there for people to get involved in?

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, definitely. There’s just plenty like, so I’d say there’s a lot of running clubs. I’m based in Dublin, there’s probably 12, 15 kind of very well known running clubs and probably even more than I’m not aware of out there.

 

Speaker 2

So they’ll like they’re always looking for new people to join. I guess the kind of the standard that they would have is because they have a coach and somebody is going to kind of give you advice, that kind of thing to really bring on your running.

 

Speaker 2

But the standard they would have is that you can run 5k without stopping. So it doesn’t matter if you’re taking 30 minutes, if you’re taking 20 minutes, but be able to kind of run that typically kind of without stopping.

 

Speaker 2

So you’d want to be kind of having done it yourself for a while and kind of done the case with 5k, you’ll be comfortable with that. As I said, the pace doesn’t matter at all. When you get into a running club, there’ll be people of all sorts of buildings.

 

Speaker 2

Some people will kind of do it mostly for the social aspect, whereas others will are kind of the OCD kind of very kind of intense kind of I want to always improve type people. It takes all courses, but it’s a great way to meet people as well.

 

Speaker 2

And as I say, you’re always going to get the benefit then if you’re going to those club training sessions of running with other people, you know, with a range of different abilities, and you’re going to improve even more from doing that.

 

Speaker 2

And make friends and stuff is a great way to, you know, true sport is always a good way to meet new people with kind of similar interests. There’s other programs as well that you can get into. So there’s the fit for life is a thing very similar.

 

Speaker 2

It’s kind of an Irish initiative, which is very similar to 5k. And very often that will be run by running clubs themselves and kind of one of the coaches will be involved in that. And that’s very much at a kind of couch to 5k kind of very beginner level.

 

Speaker 2

There’s no requirement of round four at all. And if you Google that kind of in your local area, I’m sure you’ll kind of come up against something that’s there for you There’s a last one as well, like I mentioned, which is meet and train, which is running clubs, but specifically for female runners.

 

Speaker 2

And it kind of gives that opportunity to compete. And just in kind of female only kind of races that are there that they do a season of cross country and a season of road races. So it gives people who are guests kind of more novice kind of entry level kind of runners opportunity to kind of race against each other, and you know, bring each other on and prove that way as well by competition.

 

Speaker 2

And rather than kind of being in kind of, you know, I guess open races, which can be a bit longer distance, these races kind of tend to be a kind of a shorter distances up, maybe, you know, kind of to look just kind of 5k.

 

Speaker 2

So, but all very good and kind of, you know, come a good recommendation.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, and probably the last one that I’m aware of, and I know it’s called possibly a gateway into a lot of these clubs and getting yourself the confidence to do it is the park run. Yeah, park run is brilliant.

 

Speaker 2

So park run is a people don’t know it’s like 5k runs that are run, you know, every Saturday up and down the country. But fortunately, you know, during lockdowns and stuff, it’s kind of a tap to be have to be parked and stuff to help people get back up running soon enough.

 

Speaker 2

And but the great thing about park run is just sign up. And then you can run not only in any park run in Ireland, but if you’re on holidays in Spain, in America, in the UK, you can get involved in park run, all you do is you turn up with a barcode, a barcode that you get for free when you sign up.

 

Speaker 2

And you show that at the very end of the race and that records your position and your time and all that kind of stuff. And it’s probably no better atmosphere at a running race than a park run race. There’s all sorts of levels there from, you know, families kind of running together, people pushing strollers to kind of the faster runners as well that run the clubs that might be in the local area kind of want to park that week.

 

Speaker 2

I’d say it’s free, which is great, like it’s all recorded and photographs are taken. So I love to go for coffee and stuff after. So again, it’s a great conceptual part as well.

 

Speaker 1

Great. So I want to kind of shift a little bit. I’m going to some of the mistakes possibly people make when they first started getting into running. Now we talked about things like ego or just running too hard and things like that.

 

Speaker 1

But is there anything else that you would just help people, you know, to keep an eye on over their first couple of months getting into running or things maybe not even focused on at all?

 

Speaker 2

And injury is probably the biggest one, to be honest. So like, you’re looking for the surfaces that you’re running on. And, you know, it’s very easy to just go straight outside your house and kind of run on the kind of nearest available kind of footpath and stuff.

 

Speaker 2

But if that’s made out of hard concrete, then maybe it’s not the best place to kind of go. You should be kind of walking a bit further and then kind of starting from there. Asphalt is probably the best kind of surface that you can run on if you’re kind of limited to the roads and stuff, which is kind of the black kind of darker surface that bike lanes are often made out of.

 

Speaker 2

I don’t encourage running on the actual row itself. It’s made out of the same surface, but, you know, you can kind of, you can choose a softer surface is always going to be a good thing. I would say grass as well, but grass can be difficult to run on in winter when the evenings are dark and all that kind of stuff.

 

Speaker 2

But if you don’t have that option, then that’s all the better. It’s going to be much more accommodating on your body and that kind of thing. Other areas, let’s say, are not kind of fueling correctly and stuff like so.

 

Speaker 2

Your body does kind of need carbs and stuff to kind of use up for exercise. So if you’re on like a low carb diet or stuff like that, and you’re going to start running, you might need to kind of increase your carbohydrate intake a small bit.

 

Speaker 2

But then at the opposite end of that as well, when you’re starting out, like you don’t want to kind of, you need to be aware of kind of how many calories you’re burning from the distance that you’re doing.

 

Speaker 2

So, you know, typically what you’re going to be talking about is that about a mile of running is going to be about 100 calories for the average kind of person that would be out there. But it’ll obviously vary quite a lot by your fitness levels, your height, your weight, your age, all these different things.

 

Speaker 2

But you want to be sure that you’re not over-eating as well, like, you know, because you are going to get some of the benefits there, but you can negate someone when you’re kind of eating too much as well at the same time.

 

Speaker 2

I would say as well that, you know, sorry, did you want to jump in there?

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, I was just going to say like I see that a lot, especially when you’re starting out, because again, a lot of people start running very hard. And I think that intensity is often correlated with like an increase in appetite.

 

Speaker 1

When you run hard, your appetite starts to burn up real hard. And you often come home thinking you deserve a lot of food, but in reality, just as you’re saying, you’ve possibly burned a lot less calories than your appetite is, telling you to go for.

 

Speaker 1

So just be cautious of that one, you know, and because you can kind of, a lot of people use running as a tool for weight loss, when in reality, you know, your diet is really going to be that big driver of any kind of weight change over time and not the running itself.

 

Speaker 1

So just that’s one to definitely keep an eye on.

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, it is. Absolutely. I mean, I’ve heard one thing a long time ago, and it’s actually like that your abs are made in the kitchen, they’re not made by running or any other kind of sport, like if I go into the gym, it’s you’ve got to kind of have the two things in balance.

 

Speaker 2

You could argue that, you know, if you’re a recreational runner and you do have a tiny bit more flexibility, now that you might not put on weight, you know, by having that talk about after lunch and stuff, but you’d also want to counterbalance that the people that are, you know, more focused on training and get more into it actually become more aware of what good healthy eating is.

 

Speaker 2

And actually, their kind of preference kind of turns away, you know, somewhat from the unhealthy kind of foods as well. And they kind of, they start to kind of get more interested in kind of, you know, educating themselves in those different areas and cooking more healthy stuff as well.

 

Speaker 2

So that can be kind of a win-win that can kind of happen from, you know, trying to improve and kind of look for those kind of gains, especially into a bit more. And then I’d say some of the other areas that I’ve seen kind of, and I’ve done this myself a lot as well in the process, regardless of whether it’s running or whatever it is in life, you can kind of get overly focused on one particular thing.

 

Speaker 2

And I’m kind of over focused on that one goal, and I think it’s always good to have balance. So I would always kind of recommend that, you know, you kind of keep a second hobby as well, whether that’s kind of, you know, reading, maybe playing golf, like it could be somewhat sport, it could be anything at all, it could be photography, but you want to basically kind of have something else that if you do get injured,

 

Speaker 2

you’re not going to see this big catastrophic thing. It’s just kind of a small blip on the road. And you know, in a few weeks, kind of when the injury is healed, when you give them time to rest. And I see a lot of people that get really kind of, you know, they’ve got this one goal, or they’re training for something, and then kind of they get an injury, they get really down about it, you know, and they often won’t even get back into it,

 

Speaker 2

they won’t start back up again. So I think that’s important as well to have that balance in your life in terms of something else that you can start out, you know, and get into a small injury. Because I would say, like, not to discourage people, but you know, if you’re going to run for years on end, it’s kind of a case of when, rather than if you’re going to pick up an injury.

 

Speaker 2

But none of us are going to set our Olympic athletes, so we’re going to have problems with the way we run, or this the style of running that we have, like we’re just going to eventually attract some kind of issue, because it’s repetitive use of certain muscles and kind of stuff.

 

Speaker 2

So that just kind of, you know, is important to kind of bear in mind as well, to kind of that extra kind of balance, I guess. But it’s also kind of a point there just to mention on the injuries, we do notice anything at all.

 

Speaker 2

And when you’re beginning, it’s another mistake, I guess is, you know, don’t wait to kind of, you know, call up the physio and stuff like it’s good to kind of, you know, get in there and get something solved, you know, quickly.

 

Speaker 2

And if you feel that you know, you’re getting quite sore, actually just taking that one day off now could actually save like two weeks, a bit further down the road, because the more you run on something, and then, you know, that keeps staying sore.

 

Speaker 2

And, you know, it’s just going to kind of make things worse. A good rule of thumb to people who isn’t running actually, is that because you learn this over time, like what’s actually kind of a niggle or an injury.

 

Speaker 2

So if you’re a bit stiff or sore, kind of, but it goes away, like, you know, five minutes after kind of starting running, then, you know, generally, it’s something you can put up with, and it’s fine.

 

Speaker 2

But if it’s something that kind of stays there, and kind of keeps niggling through the road, and then, you know, you’ve got something more serious there, and kind of need to take a look at that, and probably need to kind of go and see a physio, you know, or kind of do some, if you think it’s a small thing, you can try and do some kind of self massage, you want to see if it helps work it out.

 

Speaker 2

But very often, especially when you’re new, you’re better off getting some professional help.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, no doubt. I think that consistency over time is definitely probably the big factor in improving. I think a lot of people look at running and any kind of new activity is really short term. Do it four weeks and they’re going to run loads.

 

Speaker 1

But in reality, it’s all about just steady growth and being nice and consistent. And if that means taking an unplanned stay off so your body can heal up and that means that you’re able to stay more consistent over the next two or three months, that’s going to be so much more beneficial over the long term.

 

Speaker 2

It is. And I’m not going to say that like, I get that rider, everyone gets that rider plenty of examples where I kind of pushed on an injury for too long, and then kind of regret that later, like, but you know, given advice to people, that’s kind of always got me the kind of way to kind of spot these things early, if you can, be always going to be better.

 

Speaker 1

And one thing that I might add that’s been very beneficial to me is, you know, focusing on, you know, your recovery, but specifically your sleep, you know, I think when you’re stressing your body out with this new activity, you’re gonna need to focus on getting that little bit of sleep where you can recover a little bit more.

 

Speaker 1

I like to give people the advice that if you’re running for, you know, 30, 40 minutes in a day, maybe just give yourself that same extra allocated time to get some extra sleep. So you might give your get to bed half an hour earlier, or just plan your day a little bit differently, plus so you can wake up a little bit later, because your body is going to need that extra restoration.

 

Speaker 1

And that’s generally done during sleep. Sleep is really where we get better is where we recover, we’re not really getting any better from the run, per se, we’re breaking our body down, our muscles, our aerobic system.

 

Speaker 1

And that’s really recovered during sleep. So you need to all that allocation that you’ve given the running, maybe give that extra little bit of an allocation to sleep as well.

 

Speaker 2

Absolutely. That’s great advice and stuff. I would always advocate, try and do it myself as well, that your sleep cycles are important as well. You should really be spending 12 hours in bed on a Saturday and Sunday, and then seven or six on a weekday.

 

Speaker 2

You want to be consistent. When you start running, actually, you get a bit more into it as well. That can be quite good as well, because you’re just used to getting up at six or seven.

 

Speaker 1

Brilliant. So the last thing, and I really wanted to drive this one a little bit myself was around workplace promotion and what kind of organizations could do to promote not just running but any of these kind of well being topics that we’ve explored in class and we’re going to explore in the future.

 

Speaker 1

But for running, for say, some things that can really help individuals is being flexible with the hours worked. If you can give your team or your organization the ability to say, okay, I might start at, you know, half nine instead of nine, so I can get that rolling and get the shower and get a bit of food before work.

 

Speaker 1

That’s going to be huge and beneficial. Or if you can give the ability to, you know, go for that rolling at lunchtime, and maybe the person can can work, you know, 15 minutes later in the evening, or whatever it works out for that person, I think it’s going to be really beneficial.

 

Speaker 1

Would you say that?

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s much, I’ve not seen any research on this as such. But my own kind of feeling it’s much, much more enjoyable to go around during the day. And especially during winter when you’ve done it, it’s could be wet and cold in the evenings, are really more dangerous with traffic and stuff like, but it’s much more enjoyable to go around during the day.

 

Speaker 2

And I think you’ll get that much, you’ll get that performance boost as well in the afternoon by getting the exercise in at lunchtime as well. Or alternatively, waking yourself up in the morning by getting the run in, you know, early in the morning.

 

Speaker 2

So I think it’s definitely something the company should kind of take more advantage of. And because you could arguably, arguably get more productivity from the people that they actually get to have that run.

 

Speaker 2

I’ve learned about it within this 15 minutes, because there’ll be much more alert than someone who just went and had a big heavy lunch and kind of did nothing and then went straight back to work, you know.

 

Speaker 2

And especially if people are working at home at the moment, I think it’s kind of much easier for people to do that. You know, you can, you can be kind of, you can be kind of ready to go almost kind of in your running gear, you know, and just kind of really cut down on the kind of time.

 

Speaker 2

Whereas when you’re working in an office environment, like you have to go kind of in change and have a shower and all that kind of stuff. So it can take a bit of time. Or some people are working at home, it can actually work really, really nicely and stuff.

 

Speaker 2

And plus, you’re getting out of the quieter time of day. It’s nice.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, no doubt. And I think in regards to how they can support in other ways, I’d be looking I know some organizations and it completely depends on your organization. But I’ve seen organizations in the past have well being allocations in regards to time.

 

Speaker 1

So they might say, Okay, I’m gonna give my team one hour additional well being allocation of time, and they can use it on whatever they want. So they could go for a run during the week during, you know, office hours, or they might say, Oh, I’m gonna do some yoga or meditation.

 

Speaker 1

And that’s, they don’t have to make that time off. And yeah, as Garrett was saying, you know, when you’re when you’re giving your people that language to be healthier, they’re going to be more conductive.

 

Speaker 1

Oftentimes, they’re going to be sick less, you know, and they’re going to enjoy their work and their time in the company a lot more. Other things I’ve seen is wellness bursaries, a lot of companies say, Okay, here’s, you know, 250, 300, whatever amount of money per year, and you can spend it on whatever kind of thing that supports your wellness.

 

Speaker 1

So it might be that, you know, Garmin watch you wanted, there might be some exercise equipment, it might be some physio sessions or gym membership, but it supports those individuals. And it really shows that, you know, you care about them being healthy.

 

Speaker 1

And other things, branded gear, if there is a bit of a culture, or you wanted to get a bit of a culture, a lot of organizations will, you know, get some t shirts with their, you know, the company branding on it, things like that, which can just again, show you show that you the individuals in the company that you know, you care about them and you support them.

 

Speaker 1

And then finally, sorry, guys, jump in there on any of them.

 

Speaker 2

No, no, that’s good. I was just going to kind of say with the brand gear and stuff, I was just thinking back to a place I used to work before where actually when you’re a bit further along and you kind of get more experience or running can actually be a great way to kind of to, you know, become better friends, I guess, with some of your colleagues and stuff, because you can kind of bring them on during things you’ve been on,

 

Speaker 2

you can actually kind of get involved and kind of give them some advice in terms of how they can start out. And that can be really kind of, you know, not just encouraging for you, but it can also bring great satisfaction, I guess, and to kind of to help people along kind of in terms of kind of, you know, their running journey like that as well.

 

Speaker 2

And giving them the advice in terms of kind of some of the things that you might have kind of done wrong when you started out as well, that could be really good. There’s also with regard to kind of, you know, clubs and stuff, there’s a lot of people out there now actually that, you know, have different expertise in running.

 

Speaker 2

And I think some of them, I don’t know names per se, but there’s a lot of people that would do coaching and stuff for on a corporate kind of level. So they’ll actually come in like you’d have kind of a physio or, you know, like you’d have a Pilates class at lunchtime.

 

Speaker 2

And they’ll actually do kind of a running technique workshop in the company. So I think that can be quite good as well, like they can bring groups out on runs as well and kind of, you know, give them some advice on their on their form and stuff like because that is kind of things, they are things that people start to think about kind of when they’re a bit further along, like, is my running form good and kind of kind of there?

 

Speaker 2

And you know, and kind of what exercises could I do to build some strength or to kind of to loosen out some of my muscles and that kind of stuff. So I think companies can definitely boost that by, you know, bringing some money into kind of to give a kind of lecture, kind of help along the run club a bit.

 

Speaker 2

But it’s also just a really good way to meet more of your colleagues and kind of get out kind of in a formal kind of thing. It’s a great leveller as well, because you’ll often find when these things exist, they should have someone on the management team out there with someone who’s just in the door as well, like, you know, and the person who’s just in the door, you know, could be a lot younger and even much faster and stuff.

 

Speaker 2

So I think that can be a great way for people to socialize as well.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah. And companies spend so much time thinking about social connection and how to improve teamwork and stuff. And there’s nothing that bonds people like misery and working hard together and kind of breaking themselves down.

 

Speaker 1

It really connects people. A lot of people know that from being in sports teams growing up and you’re very connected to these people. And it’s a great way in an organization if you can get people to kind of suffer for the greater good together and something like this, it really bonds everyone together.

 

Speaker 1

So that small investment that you might be considering is probably worth it so much more than a lot of other things you might think that is more important.

 

Speaker 2

Yeah, absolutely. Great. So another thing there as well that I’d say is, you know, drinking a lot more water. So when you’re brand new to running, and for any sports, you’re going to be sweating a lot more, you’re going to be kind of burning a lot more energy.

 

Speaker 2

So running in particular does kind of, you know, you get quite hot very quickly. So you’re going to be drinking a lot more water, you’re going to need to drink a lot more water. So I’d be definitely kind of, you know, recommending that you’re kind of, you know, making sure that you hit those kind of recommended daily amounts.

 

Speaker 2

I think you’re just going to naturally kind of, you know, seek that out. And that’s absolutely fine. And to do it, but it’s also going to improve your running as well. Because there’s a lot of studies done that kind of show that, you know, if you’re not hydrated going into your running, that the perceived exertion is going to be way higher.

 

Speaker 2

And so it’s important that you actually go in hydrated as well. It’s as important as few, if not more important, just actually feel kind of starting in.

 

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think that’s especially relevant, possibly, you know, people often ask, you know, what should I be eating or drinking before, or after or during. And I think for most people, you know, if you’re running for under an hour, which I presume most people will be if you’re kind of starting off, you’re mostly going to be 30 minutes, just need to be have some nice meal beforehand, a couple hours before some kind of field just to kind of,

 

Speaker 1

you know, get you perked up, that might just be a bit of fruit or something, an hour before, and you just need a good hydration status. So a bit of water, you don’t need I don’t think to be excessively thinking about staying hydrated during your run and bringing a bottle, which is usually you’ll have enough kind of water on board if you’ve hydrated before to get through that yet, for sure, once you finish up,

 

Speaker 1

then re start rehydrating again. But I don’t think for those shorter under an hour sessions, and I don’t think you need to excessively be thinking about too much hydration in the session or too much kind of fueling in the session, which is absolutely

 

Speaker 2

supposed to do kind of research I’ve seen in my own experience kind of running markets and stuff like you can do you can do about two hours like without kind of requiring much more fuel or water to be honest like unless it’s a really hot day then you might change that up because being in Ireland where I just wouldn’t be used to that but in general circumstances yeah that would be absolutely absolutely fine to go if you know and you know it’d be grand and perfect Canadian guy and I just think it does a really good job of explaining kind of different types of workouts that you could be doing starting out running but also giving the exercises and stretches that are specific to running so there’s no point in going into the gym and lifting a load of weights if you know you’re trying to get leaner for running you know so I think this book just does a really good job of actually kind of you know giving you a program that’s specific to running and it’s actually going to make you a better runner and making it very easy to understand as well so it’s science of running by a and I just picked this up on Amazon it was a recommendation from a friend a couple years ago and I think it’s a really good one to read it’s not a book you’d read back to front it’s kind of a book you’d dip into different sections on but um it’s only I think it was only like 12-15 euro and so really really good buy to get and no matter what level you’re at it’s actually it’s a good one to pick up

 

Speaker 1

Okay, well, Garrett, thanks so much for joining me today. I think everyone’s going to get a lot of tips. Hopefully, you’re able to absorb most of them. Hopefully, that’s given you either some motivation to get out and try, or at least, you know, when you are ready, you’re going to have some of those tools to really help support you.

 

Speaker 1

So yeah, thanks again. And I look forward to talking to you guys on our next podcast. So thanks, everybody.