Episode Transcript
[00:00:25] SA welcome back to you versus you in this episode. It's a bonus episode in anticipation for the New Year's 2025 coming up with them them New Year's resolutions and to stick to it. So I'm a huge fan of doing New Year's resolutions and I've learned over the years kind of just keep it more to myself because a lot of people are not interested in. In hearing someone else's New Year's resolution. So I thought because of the podcast, I would share with you and to look at it early in order to commit to it for June. June 2, which is a Monday.
[00:01:31] All right, My.
[00:01:35] The epitome of health in my experience was when I was 19 years old and I was running five miles a day, I built up to it. I did not like it, but I could do it. But it wasn't something that I dreaded. And to not be able to do that now, I say, well, there's nothing holding me back. I just have to train for it. So with enough practice, repetition, you get back in shape and then you do things that are no longer armchair speculation. So this is my theory on how to do it. This is my strategy that I implement.
[00:02:11] It's bound to change, but this is the game plan until the feet actually hit the dirt, to keep running. All right, what I would do and what I plan on doing is timing, Getting the pace of the mile in and getting it low and then slowly increasing the mileage.
[00:02:34] Right now out of the gate, I don't even know how fast I'd run a mile. If I had to guess, It'd be between 10 minutes and 12 minutes. But that's just pure speculation. And I will record those results soon of just physically running and not. Not doing it on a track, not doing an elliptical machine, but physically running outside to do it. All right, so the first thing is to time myself running it. And in the previous episode with Colin, I had mentioned that the. The beginner's way that I would suggest to anyone trying to run a mile is to walk on the straightaways, on the lap, and then on the curves. Oh, my. I said that wrong. To run or jog on the straightaway and then to walk around the curves, hit the straightaway, run or jog, hit the curve. You walk, catch your breath, do that four times. That's one mile. In my case. I would be immediately out of the gate. After I warmed up, I would run the mile straight just to time myself. So I now have the data for how fast I would run a mile and it wouldn't be speculation. I would know that for a fact. When I have that, I would record what those results are. And then for the next week, I'd be training with that in mind of increasing the my stamina and then working out like weight training with that in mind. Every Monday would be the mild test where I would time it.
[00:04:14] Okay, after one month, I would have increased what that pace looks like or I'd have to adjust my training along the way. So that does increase.
[00:04:27] To put that in perspective, it would be the first month is focused just on physically running a mile every Monday.
[00:04:37] The this is not including going to the gym and lifting weights, moving, picking up heavy stuff and putting it down. It'd be with the intent of increasing my record. So if we're doing a social experiment or a psychological experiment of postulating how fast I run a mile, I'm going to go with the furthest away from the ideal, which is 11 minutes. And say, I'm going to say 11 minutes is the mile. I'm going to beat 11 minutes the next time. That's the next Monday.
[00:05:13] The following Monday after that, I beat the time that I just wrote down. The next Monday after that, keep going until I hit a tighter grouping on what that looks like in a very accurate way.
[00:05:27] It might only be nine minutes, who knows? But I know after about a month, it would be better than just, you know, having recorded it in 2024 and thinking what it's going to look like in January.
[00:05:39] From there it would be go to 2 miles, regardless of the time.
[00:05:45] On a Monday, it would be running two miles, recording the time.
[00:05:51] Rinse, wash, repeat, keep doing that for one month.
[00:05:56] That third month would be going up to three miles, regardless of the time. Seeing what it feels like to run three miles straight, knowing what I'm there for. This is a test, this is a trial run. Here we go.
[00:06:10] And then adjusting it from there for the following month, you'd be running with the, for the three mile pace.
[00:06:17] Fourth month, same thing, fifth month, that's the test. Come June, June 2nd, which is a Monday, 2025, it'd be run five miles straight.
[00:06:30] I will know by June 2nd, 2025, what my time is for running five miles. It'll be a better, it'll be a better idea of what it looks like, especially after having implemented this for the past couple months. And then the ultimate test, January 2nd, getting after it. Okay, going back to the beginning of training, it would be tightening the pace for one mile after having done it a couple times. But Then doing more agility work in between time. So that looks like the abductors, strengthening the abductors and adductors by doing side shuffles, ladder drills. I'm not a fan of jump ropes. I'm not going to jump rope. But it'd be footwork, foot drills and then sprint training.
[00:07:30] Agility, such as stepping over a rope or stepping over an imaginary box or jumping over a box or jumping onto a box, things like that are going to be strengthening the supportive muscles and then also helping with the get up and go.
[00:07:50] I will be able to do that once a week in terms of testing agility work by timing myself doing sprints. And I already know just from past experience it'd be the 40 yard dash. So implementing the 40 yard dash into a day, a daily routine, well, I'd say once a week I'd be doing spin drills, you'd be focusing on the explosiveness.
[00:08:17] Right from there it's saying when I go to the gym and doing elliptical machine, it would be with the express intent of increasing my VO2 max. And that's the just the ability to settle down and catch my breath. Not going to be sucking wind. I'm going to be increasing that capacity for workload and then testing it on Mondays by running the mile and timing it.
[00:08:47] It's simple as that. It'd be rinse, wash, repeat, and that's the focus.
[00:08:52] In order to keep myself in that, that, that headspace, my default is lifting weights. And what I've done over the last couple years is start off with cardio, then end with weights.
[00:09:09] I Show up, do 30 to 45 minutes and then 30, 45 minutes on a lithical machine, change the resistance, do a little cross training and then go lift weights with push, pull, carry in mind.
[00:09:25] Now that the goals have shifted, this is where the rubber hits the road and I can test it.
[00:09:31] Having come up with the plan. That's what it's, that's what it looks like on paper. Now I just got to record the results.
[00:09:39] I imagine just from having not done this in so many years, you'd be working on flexibility and then recovery more so than just physically completing the task. This is just the plan for the year. And so I know it's a moment of stretching myself and challenging myself, then also not blowing out my joints and then being like I was right. I always hated running right. It'd be more of putting myself into the area of uncomfortability and then adjusting to it and then doing it over and over again until I hit that Goal. So I think in my. In my own mind, it's kind of a subtle way of tricking myself into getting to that goal.
[00:10:34] What do I mean by that? It's. I'm not a fan of running, let alone big distance. And for me, five miles is a big distance. But in terms of thinking back on the past and then seeing how many roads lead to Rome in terms of getting to a goal, this actually overlaps in a ton of areas. One of them is hitting the 235 on the scale and then decreasing the weight from there, but then in such a way that I don't burn myself out or pop something or break something.
[00:11:09] The.
[00:11:11] The progressive overload part of it is. Is gradual, but it's gradual enough that there's room. There's a ton of room to adjust. Right. If I'm just running a mile, I know I can do that, but it's not gonna be glamorous. If I set it to be to beat 10 minutes, how fast did that look? That's not something I can just readily repeat unless I'm training for it.
[00:11:43] So I have the goal of one mile there, testing it on Mondays, and then testing the theory on how to get there.
[00:11:53] Just through the repetition, it's bound to increase. So I know that my breathing will need to be steady. And that only happens from practicing that. And the next thing is saying, oh, if I beat 10 minutes, would I be able to beat 9 minutes and 30 seconds? Oh, look at this. I can hold this, no problem. I didn't feel too gassed after doing it after one month. Well, now the test is two miles. Will I be able to hold that pace the entire time? Especially since I'm not used to carrying the weight that I have now for two miles. Okay, we'll mark it. This is what it looks like. I might have beat the time the second time, but it probably was not glamorous the third time. I'm going to be able to know, do I. Was it something with the breathing? Was it with my stride? Was it with not being completely in it and focused? Was I getting distracted? Was I coming up with excuses? Was something else in life happening that was hindering training for it? Well, that should only impact it one time, because if I'm able to do it, if I'm able to run three miles straight, there's no reason why I wouldn't be able to correct some of those issues. To be able to repeat it, repeat it, repeat it.
[00:13:21] Come March, I'll have a better idea of what my body can Handle and then what I'm doing and is it effective or not.
[00:13:32] From there I can adjust again and again and again.
[00:13:36] I don't want to say this is the locked in method of being able to run five miles straight by June, but I know that if I have the idea, I've conceived the idea, I've written it down, I've been training with that as the main goal.
[00:13:57] Everything else kind of falls in the line.
[00:14:00] The thing that I anticipate most from being effective is, is doing it with someone else.
[00:14:07] I'm mostly looking at my lady who's in doing half marathons and what she doesn't know is that I would sign up for a half marathon with her, but I wouldn't do it right away. So she probably does it twice a year, sometimes three times a year for these runs around month four, that's when I would say, oh, oh, you're doing that, that half marathon, oh, I'll join you. Or well, not half marathon because that's double. A little bit more than twice the, the goal that I'm going for. But if it's like a 3k, 5k, 6k, whatever it is, to be within range of five miles, I would do it whether it was at the five mile mark or not. So that's the, the backstop that I had before for weight loss Challenges was joining 8 week test, 8 week fitness challenge and then knowing I'm not going to get number one, number two, number three, but to do it. So it forces me to challenge, knowing that I'm under scrutiny, knowing that other people are around trying to lose weight. Also this is that, that same strategy, alright, so I have it marked down. I know what the goal is, I know what the time frame is, I know what I'm expecting. What I don't know is what it actually looks like given my life circumstances. The things that I can imagine is that the, the training can just shifts a little bit. Instead of it being an increment of, of cardio, this is the cardio section of the workout. And then I have the thing I prefer which is weightlifting. It'd be very focused on cardio in an, in a new way.
[00:16:03] This type of shift would mean recovery is gonna have to be huge because my hips are not as strong for running. And so if I strengthen the core, I know I can make that a better aspect. And it won't be something that needs to be fully rehabilitated in terms of physical therapy, but begin something that can be injury prevention and strength and conditioning that will match up to it for, for my state of life if that's the case. I know instead of just elliptical training for 30 to 45 minutes, it would be putting resistance on elliptical and then doing it at a longer pace at a longer segment.
[00:16:51] If this is the end goal is five miles, I would do cardio for one hour and then probably 30 minutes of weight training and it wouldn't be the same push, pull, carry strategy. It would be. Well it would be, but it wouldn't be the end all be all. Let's say right now where I'm sitting, push, pull, carry. I'm going pretty heavy, but we'll say between eight I'm going at 80% for push, pull, carry for five miles I would go at around 50%, 50 to 65% which would be average, average weight. Nothing too, nothing too crazy, but enough to give myself a challenge. It's giving, it's the resistance from. For what I need. But I'm not trying to hit any, any PRs in terms of lifting weights.
[00:17:47] All right, now that that's shifted down it would be. I can do that for 30 minutes to challenge the muscles and stimulate them in such a way that doesn't gas me out too much in terms of the. The weighted resistance that puts everything in perspective and in balance in terms of doing the thing that I like doing. But it's not the primary focus. It's to supplement the training that's cardio heavy.
[00:18:21] This idea is just the strategy that I realized for myself to keep myself motivated and not to let anything come stagnant or be so over the top that it's impossible to maintain the, the thing that I'm going for in terms of progressive revelation, revelation in terms of progressive overload is the frequency of adding a new mile to the testing that happens on Monday.
[00:18:52] That might be something that is overly ambitious, but I think at doing it once a month, adding that to the increment once a month, adding a new mile should be able to hit it fast.
[00:19:09] I don't know. I am 38 years old now. So the idea is that will the practice come out to be that? About to find out. Gladly. Use myself as a guinea pig. Alright, so there you have it. It's five miles. The New Year's resolution for 2025 is to run five miles.
[00:19:32] The oh big part is the time frame. Six months to run five miles. If only we're back in high school, right? This would be something that'd be very easy for whatever sport we're playing because of the drills, because the demands of competition but that is no longer here. I'm using something that's with some new circumstances, some new parameters. The thing that I like about this is that the slow increment is let me back up. The incremental nature of getting to five miles makes it something that's not, you know, climbing Mount Everest. Right. It's very doable.
[00:20:20] The, the way of doing this with this strategy is not to immediately jump in to doing five miles, but to slowly introduce myself to the, the physical experience of first running a mile, then timing myself to run a mile and then beating my time for one month. That's the one month test. The next month of adding two miles looks like just a gradual leveling up of the first test of running a mile.
[00:20:54] Same with the third mile. By the fourth mile I'll know what it looks like. Especially at the end of that fourth month before I introduce mile five, I'll know the pacing and what needs to change.
[00:21:08] I feel like most people who don't have injuries or some hindrance would be able to do this and haven't been training for the last couple years. I know that anything could happen, but this is not too far fetched to implement and then to carry off and say, hey, I committed to this, I did it.
[00:21:33] So June 2, 2025 is the, is the Monday where I'll be testing out this theory. There'll be a follow up episode, no doubt because this is what the, the M.O. is, this is what the training will revolve around and that's the end in mind.
[00:21:56] First, it's taking speculation, we'll say 11, 11 minutes testing that theory, getting it down to 10 minutes, then beating 10 minutes, putting it at 9 minute 45 pace, trying to get it down to a 9 mile pace. By the end of the first month. It might be the second month. I'm not surprised if the second month because it would be very taxing to just increase something like that, especially not as a cardio guy. But eventually it'd be, we'll say month three, that's March. Seeing what that pace looks like to be at for three miles.
[00:22:42] Month four, testing it for four, what does that look like? And then when I do the five mile test, I'll have a pretty accurate timing for what it would look like in my mind just to finish five miles is good. But then to say, I've come a long way to do this, let's just see if you can do it. That'll be the first test.
[00:23:11] I don't want to be overly ambitious, but come July I'LL know, having not given it up entirely just because I hit the goal, it would still be every Monday for the month of June, running five miles on Monday come July, let's see what that pacing looks like. And can I beat it?
[00:23:31] If you are thinking about coming up with a a goal, especially if it's a physical goal for 2025, I'd love to hear it. And if you have any suggestions, let me know. And if you hear this and you do come up with your resolution, I would love to have a conversation with you about it. And you can have your own mark if you come on the show. So let that be something that helps you finally get to that idea of where you want to be. And then the most important part is getting after it. In training with that in mind, every episode, I'm going to always talk about coming up with a goal, conceiving that goal, then writing it down, then getting after it. That's the thing that has been the red thread throughout all the things that I've done since day one. So instead of it just taking up space in your imagination, put it on paper, practice it, time yourself, tell people, keep yourself accountable, and then just see what you can do. You never know until you see someone do it right, let alone when you do it and you didn't know that it could be done. When you see that, it unlocks a lot of doors.
[00:24:42] Boldness goes up.
[00:24:46] The trust in yourself to know that you can commit to something that goes to the roof.
[00:24:52] The things that you learn along the way in terms of life lessons are indispensable. And who knows, you might find yourself with some new friends with in some new places saying, wow, here I am. I never thought this was possible. I'm glad I took that off the shelf of my mind and put it into practice.
[00:25:16] On that note, we will end it. And this is a shorty. A shorty but goodie of a bonus for 2025. What's your New Year's resolution? Here's mine. Five miles by June SA.
