We're smack dab in the middle of winter and brrrrrr it's cold in here. Just kidding.  We live in Southern California and the mid 60s to low 70s temps are perfect for running.  December brings the perfect opportunity to reflect and create your running goals for the upcoming year. This newsletter will help you get there (hint: it rhymes with rabbits). Buckle in kids, we're saying goodbye to 2024 and racing our way to 2025. 

You're in for about an 8 minute read.

What's in this newsletter

1: Habits, they're not just for nuns. 

2: New Board Members! Giving Tuesday Thank you! Congrats!

3: Vocab word of the month: Cadence. A melody for your legs. 

4: Need a last minute gift idea? Gift a membership to the SDTC! A fun and exciting new option on the Haku platform!

5: What's that? A fun race? I'm in! Sign up!

Got an idea for this newsletter? Curious about the track workouts but don't know who to ask? Hit us up! No really, please.

Habits

Old habits die hard but new habits are incredibly hard to make.  If you listen to podcasts, read, followed basically anyone on Instagram in 2024, or found yourself standing too long at the water cooler on a Monday, you've probably been exposed to the cultural phenomenon that is HABITS.  

Habits hit the campaign trail hard in the mid to late '10s and continue to be a main feature in the zeitgeist.  With the new year approaching, they're guaranteed to put the pop in popularity once again. 

This author has done her fair share of research on habits (at least one book and several podcasts!!) and I've got the piping hot tea on the what, the why. and how habits might be your next best friend for running. 

What is a habit? Habits are actions, or small decisions, performed at such great repetition as to preclude thought.  For example: buckling your seat belt when you get in a car.  Saying "your welcome" when someone says "thank you." Our whole lives are made up of habits--to the point that we're not even aware of them. 

Why do we build habits? Because it makes life easier.  Can you imagine having to think through EVERY decision in your life? It would be debilitating. Someone walks up to you and smiles.  You spend the next 5 seconds debating what to do before finally landing on "smile" by which point the person has decided you're not it and moved on. Or, for my productive babes, spend the next minute considering what it would be like to not check your emails for a day.  Not because you're doing something fun, but because you've simply never. built. the. habit.  Financial ruin! Career who? 

How do they help with running? I'm going to make an assumption based on my own experience.  When you told people that you run at least one person said to you "urgh, I don't know how you do that.  I hate running."  And there might have been a moment where you thought: yea. I used to hate running too. Or maybe not! And you know. Good for you.

Either way, at some point in your running career you had to make running a, you guessed it, habit.  As we gear up for a new year with a whole new set of goals, it's time to reassess some of those habits and think about ways that our habits can help us reach those goals. 

Here's how to build a habit: 

1: Start small. Seriously. Teensy. Tiny. Here's a personal example. This author wanted to run a marathon last year (spoiler alert--I did!).  I didn't start by running a marathon.  I started by putting my running shoes on.  That was it.  My habit of running started every day with putting my running shoes on. Here's the important part: the first step of my habit was that I made it easy. 

2: Build on your habits.  This is where it gets juicy. Now that you've gotten used to having your running shoes on, we build the next step. Go outside. Drive to the gym.  Show up at track club. Tell yourself you have to be there for a minimum of 2 minutes. Yep. That's it.  2 minutes and then you get to go home.  Your brain is probably going to get pretty curious about what happens after that 2 minutes. So maybe you stay for 5.  Maybe you stay for the whole thing.  Maybe you only run for 2 minutes, but you stay for the hour.  WHO KNOWS. Eventually though, you're going to be annoyed at stopping yourself at 2 minutes and build up until you're running a marathon.

3: Break your habits down into chunks.  Our brains loooveeee dopamine.  They want to get married and sit in a tree or whatever the song is with dopamine. The more our brains are rewarded (feel good dopamine floods) for building habits, the happier they are. So make goals that you can succeed at.  This is where Coach Paul comes in. Your brain knows minutes not miles. Tell your brain you want to run a marathon and it's going to shake and shiver and wonder what the hell it ever did to you.  Tell it you're going to run an hour this week and then maybe an hour and 15 next week with some super slow runs in between and your brain might be like: you're weird, reruns of Lost are on (for the post-millienials, reruns are shows that have already aired on TV but are being shown again for a limited time), but fine. 

4: Keep it up.  You're going to slip.  Unfortunately, this is the easy part. Why? Because slipping mostly means we did something that feels good quickly and our brains got all hopped up on dopamine and said MORE OF THIS PLEASE.  My advice: say "thank you brain, but we're gonna go for a run" then turn your music on so loudly that you can't hear your brain protesting.

TL;DR (for my pre-miliennials this is an acronym for "Too long; Didn't Read): Start small.  Build slowly.  Celebrate your rewards.