382 Holly Worton ~ Know Your Why For Your Outdoor Adventures

Transcript

Holly: Hello adventurers! And welcome to the Into The Woods podcast episode 382, this is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode.

I have really missed these! It has only been two weeks since I have done a solo episode, but I have been kind of missing this, so I have been really excited to be back doing this.

I am also loving the interviews that I have been doing and I have got two more interviews lined up between now and the rest of the year. So I am really excited about that as well. I am really enjoying this podcast! And I think for me that the important thing over these last few years, is changing it up when it feels not right, so I am really liking where this is going, and I hope you are too.

As always I welcome your suggestions, and ideas for topics, even ideas for guests, I can add them to my list, and send them all in to [email protected] or find me online and send me a message.

So what are we talking about? Today I am talking about why it is so important to know your why for your outdoors adventures. And this is a topic that has been on my mind as I stretch myself, and as I train for events, and I run further and hike further.

So what am I going to talk about today? I am going to talk about, what is your why and what that means. Why it is so important to know why you are doing your outdoors adventures. Why each adventure is different, there is not a single why for each activity. There is a also a why for each time you have that adventure or do that activity. And I am also going to share the questions to ask yourself before you start each adventure, or questions to have in mind when you get stuck during an adventure and you need to troubleshoot or pivot, or change something.

So, without further ado, let’s get into today’s topic.

What is your why?

Your why is your purpose, it is your reason for doing something, it is: Why do you go hiking? Why did you go walking? Why do you hike long distance trails? Why do you do whatever it is that you do?

And I think a lot of times we don’t think about that, and a lot of times we may not understand our why until we have been doing something for a while. I think it is an important question to be asking on a regular basis because that why may change.

And it is also an important question to ask because, as I have said before, for the first 35 years or so of my life I was just kind of drifting through life, I was doing exciting things, and I was achieving exciting things, but I didn’t really know why I was doing them. I was just doing them because that was kind of what happened, that’s what I fell into doing and that did lead me to make some not-great decisions in life. So knowing your why really helps with that.

Why is it really important to know your why for your outdoor adventures? (I feel like the word why, I am going to be using it so much today.)

It gives you clarity, so it gives you clarity on why you are doing something, of course, but it gives you clarity on the purpose of this adventure, the purpose of this activity, why are you dedicating time to this? Why are you making this a part of your life? It helps you understand the big picture of why you are doing this thing.

It also make decision-making easier, I am going to share some examples of recent decisions that I have had to make during my outdoors activities and outdoors adventures. It also helps you to achieve your goals, because it helps you to keep going, it helps you to be resilient. It helps you see that goal in the distance, understand that you are doing this thing now so that you can get to that thing in the future. So, knowing your why is very important.

As I said a minute ago, each adventure is different. So you may have your why for each type of activity: why I go hiking, why I go running, why I do kickboxing. But there is also a why for each time you have an adventure or experience an activity within each of those adventures.

So for example, kickboxing, why do I go to class – well now it is lockdown again – but when we didn’t have lockdown why do I go to class two or three times a week, or four times a week? Why, because I want to improve in my technique. Why, because I am training for my black belt eventually. Why do I go running a couple of times a week? It is because I am training for an upcoming race, which hopefully will happen at the end of December. Why? Because I want to do a marathon next year and possibly an ultra next year. Why do I go hiking? Partly it is because I am training for my walking ultra next year, partly because I am training for future long-distance trails that I might do, but also because I just love hiking and that’s something that I can apply also to running and kickboxing.

So you have your why for the type of activity, but then you have a why for each specific time. So for example, a couple of weeks ago, on October 31st, I did this race in my local town which was a loop race and I thought I wouldn’t like it, because I didn’t think I would like doing loops, and it was a really good experience and I am really glad I did it. I signed up for the race, partly because it was loops and I wanted to see how I honestly felt about loops, and I also did it because it is in my local town, I mean I could have walked there from my house (and I probably should of rather than driving but I was really nervous). So when I was going into the race, it was the kind of thing where you could do as many loops as you want: you could do one loop and you would still be a finisher – it was a 5k loop. Or you could do two loops and do a 10k; or you could do four loops and do a half-marathon; you could do eight loops and do a marathon or you could do nine loops and do an ultra. So it was really whatever you wanted to do.

So I went into it knowing that I could do 15k which is three loops, because I had gotten up to that point in my running and so I wanted to do a fourth loop because I knew that would be a stretch. And then I got there, and the weather was terrible! It was just pouring rain, and it just only got worse, I remember I think it was the second loop I was running, and the rain was really strong, and the wind was in my face and it was that really, just a harsh rain that hurts when it hits you in the face. It was just really, really, miserable. And the trail was muddy, and the more loops people did, the more the trail got chopped up and it was slippery, and it was stressful, and actually the next day I realised how stressful it was because my shoulders hurt from that shoulder tension. So it was a pretty miserable day!

So I was going around and thinking: do I still really want to do a fourth loop? I don’t enjoy this that much. There were parts of it where I really enjoyed it and I felt really good and I felt really strong and there were parts where I was like ‘ah this is so miserable’.

So I was thinking, I said I was going to do a fourth loop, will I do a fourth loop, am I going to commit to a fourth loop, why am I going to do a fourth loop? Is it to stretch myself? Yes. Will it be fun, will it be joyful? Maybe, maybe not. I am just doing it to push myself harder, to see if I can do it? Yes. But I started thinking, what do I want to get out of this experience, and how will I feel if I don’t do the fourth loop? And I realised the weather was miserable and the mud was miserable, but it wasn’t that bad! It wasn’t hailing – there was a moment where I thought it might be because the rain hurt so bad, – but it lightened up a little bit. So it wasn’t that bad and I realised that I did want to push myself in a good way, I wanted to challenge myself to do that fourth loop, to do that 20k, because I hadn’t run 20k at that point in my training. And I wanted to have that experience and I wanted to feel proud of myself for challenging myself to do that fourth loop, to get those extra kilometres in and have that experience.

And so I decided about half way through the third loop that for sure I was going to do a fourth loop. So I came in after the third loop, I came across the finish line, stopped, had a little bit of water, rested for maybe 30 seconds, and then went right back out. And I didn’t even think about it, because at that point I had done the thinking, so when I finished that third loop I just hydrated a little bit and then went.

So I was really clear, after some thinking on the trail, why I wanted to do that fourth loop and it made it so much more enjoyable and I realised that I was going to commit to the fourth loop even if I had to walk it, even if I had to walk the entire thing, just because I wanted to do it.

And I was really pleasantly surprised, when I was doing the fourth loop, I was really kind of tired starting out, started out up on a hill and then once I got to the level part of the loop I felt better, I was running better. I had a hill again, walked a little bit of that, and when I was coming downhill it felt easy of course. And I was just really pleased that I had done it because it was easier than I thought, that fourth loop, and I ran more of it than I thought, I ran most of it and it was a good stretch and it felt really good and I wouldn’t have had that experience if I had quit and I hadn’t done that fourth loop.

So taking the time to evaluate my why (why would I do a fourth loop?), really helped me to make it happen and to make it happen and experience the benefits of challenging myself to do something a little bit more than I was used to doing in my training.

As I said, I am also training for a walking ultra next year, I have got two of them, a 50k, and a 100k, so I planned in my calendar about once a month these longer training walks. I had kind of planned them about once a month between now and April: 30k, 35k, 45k, 50k and I planned to do a 30k on Saturday of last weekend. And then I woke up earlier than I planned to, I woke up before my alarm which meant that I was able to leave earlier for the walk than I had planned, and I thought, ‘you know what, I think I have time to fit in 35k instead of 30k’. I have walked 30k before, so I know that I can do it, so why not just switch the 30k training walk and go straight to 35k. And I did, and I am so glad that I did, and it was a stretch, I really felt those last 5k, I had to make some changes throughout the walk, and it was a really, really, good experience and I am glad that I challenged myself. But I knew my why, I knew it was a training walk from my walking ultra in April, this was not a leisure walk, this was not a pleasant stroll in the woods, it was training, it was not training for a long distance trail, it was training for an ultra. So I made some very different decisions in my gear, for example.

So a lot of times when I got out on my leisure walks on the weekends, I will wear a big daypack and I will load it up with a ton of stuff. Why? Because it helps me to train for my long distance trails. When I first walked the South Downs Way, in 2015, one of my hardest things to come to terms with on that trip was that I was used to doing day hikes with a very tiny day pack, with just the absolute minimal stuff. And then when I was walking my long distance trail I had a 35 litre pack, or 36 litres, with a ton of stuff in it and that was really tough on my feet, it really made it difficult, it was rough. So from that I learned that in order to make my experience easier, on future long distance trails, I would do my day walks with a really heavy pack – and it has worked, it has helped.

So I was thinking what if I wore my running vest for these ultras and so yesterday, two days ago, when I was going out for this walk, I thought: what if I wear my running vest for my training walk and see how it goes? Great decision! Oh my god it was just beautiful, I had enough water, I did fill up water at one point, but it was fine seeing as how I was able to fill up my bottles at one point. I had my lightweight running waterproofs which are different from my heavier walking waterproofs, I had those and didn’t need them, I had sports gels, I had some Compeed, I had a tiny first aid kit, I had a space blanket. I had all the stuff that I normally had in that pack, because that is the stuff that I would be required to wear or have with me for a race, but it was ultra light, it was very, very, light. Such a great decision, it really helped me with my training walk, I was able to keep a swift pace, very few stops, unlike my usual walks.

So if you have read any of my walking books, I talk about how I like to rest early and often and so for my last long distance walks I have actually gotten to the point where I like to rest once an hour and take off my shoes and switch my socks up and really it is working for me on my long distance trails. But I didn’t do that because I thought: this is going to be a race; I want to keep going. So I made only a couple of stops, I think three stops, and they were very brief. So this was very unlike my usual walks and the reason why was because I was training for a walking ultra, I wasn’t doing a leisurely long distance trail. So knowing my why helped with my pace. It was fantastic, it was so, so, fantastic. I shared some pictures of it on Instagram which I can link to in the show notes, but it was such a gorgeous walk because I was walking for a longer distance than I usually do, my weekend walks are usually – I don’t know- 15/20k, so this was quite a bit longer. So I started out along trails and I finished up along trails that I was very familiar with, but in the middle I got to a point where I experienced trails that I had never been on before, even though they were in walking distance from my house, so that was really exciting. It felt really adventurous.

But I have been thinking about my training for my walking ultra, when I do the walking ultra I am not going to be carrying a big, heavy, pack, that is not what I want to do, that does not make sense. What does make sense is to wear a very small lightweight pack with the absolute minimal gear. It is going to be assisted, there are going to be aid stations, so I don’t need to bring a ton of stuff like I usually do. I had actually been thinking what do I do? Do I get a new backpack, a really small backpack? And thankfully I haven’t done that, because as you will know if you have read my recent blogpost on backpacks that I have a backpack problem and I have far too many of them, which is probably why I was tempted to buy a new one!

But one of the things I had been thinking was: what if I wear my running vests?. I have this really lovely Salomon running vest/pack that I use for running trails when I am training here at home. And I thought, you know it is a running vest, but why can’t I use it for walking? It is such a beautiful vest, it fits me like it is part of my body, it doesn’t bounce, it is small, it is light weight, but it is a 12 litre pack which means that it does have room for waterproofs and water and stuff. It is also super convenient for water because it has these two 500ml soft flasks right on the straps of it, so you don’t even have to take them out to drink, you just kind of tilt your head and drink from the bottle, it is so fantastic, I am going to link to this vest in the show notes because I love it so much! So I was thinking what if I wore my running vest for these ultras?

And so yesterday, two days ago, when I was going out for this walk, I thought, what if I wear the running vest for my training walk and see how it goes. Great decision! Oh my God it was just beautiful, I had enough water, I did fill up water at one point, I probably will need more water than one litre for longer walks but it was fine, seeing as how I was able to fill up my bottles at one point. I had my lightweight running waterproofs, which are different from my heavier walking waterproofs. I had those and didn’t need them, I had sports gels, I had some Compeed, I had a tiny first aid kit, I had a space blanket. I had all the stuff that I normally had in that pack, because that is the stuff that I would be required to wear, or have with me, for a race, but it was ultra light, it was very, very, light. Such a great decision, it really helped me with my training walk, I was able to keep a swift pace, I made very few stops, unlike my usual walks.

So if you have read any of my walking books, I talk about how I like to rest early and often and so in my last couple of long distance walks I have actually gotten to the point where I like to rest once an hour and take off my shoes and switch my socks up and really, it is working for me on my long distance trails. But I didn’t do that because I thought: this is going to be a race, I want to keep going. So I made only a couple of stops, I think three stops, and they were very brief, so this was very unlike my usual walks and the reason why was because I was training for a walking ultra, I wasn’t doing a leisurely long distance trail. So knowing my why helped with my pace.

It was fantastic, it was so, so, fantastic. I shared some pictures of it on Instagram, which I can link to in the show notes, but it was such a gorgeous walk, because I was walking for a longer distance than I usually do, my weekend walks are usually – I don’t know – 15/20k, so this was quite a bit longer. So I started out along trails and I finished up along trails that I was very familiar with, but in the middle I got to a point where I experienced trails that I had never been on before, even though they were within walking distance from my house, so that was really exciting and it felt really adventurous.

This walk felt adventurous because it was longer, because I was wearing different gear, because I was able to keep a super smooth pace and I really, really, really, enjoyed it. I had really great energy from kilometre 1 to kilometre 24.5, which is when I took my second break. At that point I realised that I was starting to feel the effects of the walk and I was starting to feel a little bit tired. And that was the point where I changed my socks – now this is something new that I did, something that I have learned from Joanna Penn. She is the one who has inspired me to do these walking ultras and she has a podcast episode, which I will link to in the show notes, where she talks about how she prepares for her ultras, and what her experience is like doing these walking ultras, and one thing that she does, that I don’t know why it never occurred to me before, is she puts powder in her socks. How did I not think of this!

So because I didn’t want to bring a bottle or container of powder with me in my pack, because I was walking ultra light, I powdered an extra pair of socks and then I folded them so the powder wouldn’t come out and at kilometre 24.5 I took off my sweaty socks and I put on my fresh powdery socks and it was so beautiful, oh it was just so lovely! It was just nice and refreshing and I really enjoyed it. So I highly recommend powder! And it was this lovely rose scented powder {laughing} that I use, it was just nice, and it smelled like roses and it was lovely – so, you know, do what you need to do to make your training extra special. So that was great.

And then about 30km, when I was about five km from my home, I was really tired, and I was sore, and it was starting to get dark and it wasn’t fun anymore. And I had been walking fasting, because that is how I usually walk and that is how I usually run, and I stopped and I sat at this little bus station cabin thing and I sat down on a bench and I thought: okay, I don’t have a lot of energy but I want to finish this 35k, I have got 5 left to go. Why am I doing this? Because I want to achieve my 35k, I want to finish my training. But what do I want my experience to be like? Do I just want to push through, and challenge myself and suffer and…? No, I didn’t. I had had such a glorious walk that I wanted to enjoy the last 5k as much I could. So I thought, well, I could keep going fasted, but it is probably going to be miserable, I do think having a bit of food in my stomach will give me the energy I need to finish this 5k in a tired but reasonably pleasant way.

So I pulled my sports gels out of my backpack and I looked at them, and I looked at all the three different flavours and I had three different flavours and I thought: I think I will try the fruit salad one, and. And so I tried the fruit salad one and started back on my journey and started drinking the gel, or eating the gel, and it was just so delicious {laughing}. This is kind of the sign for me that when I am running or doing an activity fasting and I decide to break my fast with a gel, because I don’t have energy, if I am really loving the gel, if it is the most delicious thing I have had in ages, I think: okay that really confirms the fact that my body needed some energy, because I was just enjoying this fruit salad gel so much. It was fruity, refreshing, it was this gel, it was so yummy and it did make me feel better.

But I was still a bit tired so I also have these caffeine gums – I will link to all this stuff in the show notes so you can see what I use. I am obviously not a nutritionist, but these things work for a lot of people who do sports stuff. So I always have caffeine gummies in my running vest because they do help. I don’t drink a lot of caffeine in my normal life, so when I do have something that has caffeine in it, my body feels the difference in a good way. So I pulled out my bag of caffeine gummies, I had one gummy, I think one gummy is about one cup of coffee, so I usually have one at a time and I put it back in my vest and I felt really good. I felt so much better and I finished my 35k tired, challenged, but good.

So knowing your why is really important. I could have called my husband to say: pick me up, I am 5k outside of home and I am done. But I didn’t want to, because I wanted to keep going but I didn’t want to suffer so I just broke my fast. I didn’t need to push myself to fast as long as long as my training. And again, not a nutritionist, not a doctor, I have no advice for you about fasting, but I will tell you my story about fasting which is I am willing to break my fast if I feel like I need to. Now I wasn’t light headed, I wasn’t feeling unwell, but I just felt really tired and the gel and the gummy really gave me the energy I needed to keep going.

So those are my stories. And I hope that this helps you – hearing my stories, hearing why I do things and how I troubleshoot and make changes – will help you when you are planning your own outdoor adventures. So I have made a list of some questions that I think can be useful to ask yourself before you start each adventure or when you get stuck during an adventure and you need to troubleshoot, or pivot, or change something. Like when I was tying to decide, do I want to do the fourth loop on this race? Do I eat something?

Here are some questions. So knowing first of all what your core values are will help. So I have done a lot of values work in the past, I have got an episode on the values work which I have done with my friend Cara Wilde and. I have done further values work. I have done I think three values sessions with Cara, getting my values done on certain aspects of my life. I have also done my overall life values. And I was recently working with Jane Talbot, who has been a guest on this podcast ages ago, and I will link to her on the show notes as well. She is an NLP master practitioner, and she is a personal trainer and so I worked with her on my sports mindset. And we did some values work for me on my kind of sports and fitness values.

And last month, I did a values solicitation session with Jane on my values for sports and fitness. So my top value was doing fun things with my body. My second value was play. My third value was having fun with challenges. My fourth was feeling good. My fifth was going further and my sixth was energy, so feeling that energy that you get from having good fitness and doing fitness stuff and sports and running and hiking and all that stuff. So knowing my values has really helped me to make better decisions about how I am going to stretch myself, and how I need to pivot, and troubleshoot, when I am in the middle of adventure.

So knowing core values can help. So you can do this on your own maybe, try it on your own, or find someone who is an NLP practitioner. So I have had great sessions with my friend Cara Wilde and with Jane Talbot and I will link to both of them in the show notes, because they have both helped me a lot. So if you are going to try and do this on your own, I am not even going to try and teach you to do it the NLP way, because I haven’t trained in that, I am only a basic NLP practitioner and I don’t even use NLP with clients, I never have, it is very weird, I trained in that and then I never used it, but it is good stuff to know.

So core values, you can go online and fine a values list, I have got one on my website, I will look for it and I might actually update it and do an outdoors values list. I am making notes of this as I speak. So I will link to that in the show notes, my old values list and I will probably do an updated list of outdoors values, like why we do outdoors stuff.  

So go through a list, highlight everything that resonates with you, your values for doing fitness, and sports and outdoors stuff and then narrow it down to your top ten values, your top five values, your top three, your top one, or get down to five and rank them in order of 1-5, that is a good way of doing it, that’s a really good way of getting clarity on why you do the things that you do.

Next question, why are you doing this? What is the purpose of this activity in general and what is the purpose of this particular experience? So why do you go hiking? Why do you go hiking in general? What does it give you in life? And what is the purpose of this particular experience? So like last Saturday’s 35 hike. Why do I hike in general? Because I love getting outdoors, I love walking, I love being in nature, I love being in nature all day long for hours and I love that it gives me a little bit of fitness. So what was the purpose of last week’s experience, last Saturday’s experience? It was specifically to train for my walking ultra next year, that was the purpose.

What do you love about this activity? And what do you love about this particular experience? So what do I love about walking? It gets me outdoors and it gets me in nature, I love it so much! What did I love about last Saturday’s experience? I loved how it stretched me, I loved how it was so long that I was able to depart from my house, return to my house and see a ton of trails that I had never been on before, oh my god I loved it!

What are your goals for this particular adventure? So for last Saturday’s adventure, my goal was to walk 35k, period, that was the goal. Does this particular experience serve as a stepping stone towards a future goal? Is it training for something? Yes, every week when I do my running training I have one day a week that is a longer run that is helping me to increase my distance and train for my half marathon at the end of the year and whatever marathon I decide to sign up for next year. So yes. And then my walking training on Saturday, was training for my walking ultra next year.

What do you want to get out of this particular experience? What kind of experience do you want to have? So, on Saturday I just wanted to achieve my goal and then I was just really enjoying the experience of being out for such a long walking day, it took me just under 9 hours to do 35k. What do I want to get out of it? I wanted to just get in the kilometres and just enjoy it as much as possible.

How do you want to feel during the adventure and how do you want to feel afterwards? You know that is not something that I thought about before I went out on that particular walk, but I wanted to feel good, I wanted to feel energised, I wanted to feel afterwards like I challenged myself but it was good, I didn’t push myself too hard and that is what I got. You know that is not something that I thought about before I went out on that particular walk, but I wanted to feel good, I wanted to feel energised, I wanted to feel afterwards like I challenged myself, but it was good, I didn’t push myself too hard and that is what I got.

You can also do some journalling either before or after your experience. So this is something that I got on this blog called participaction.com and I will link to it in the show notes, I found this really, really useful, complete the following sentence and I have changed this a little bit, ‘I do x because y’. So I go running because I love how it makes me feel. So this blog recommends that you do at least five version of this, so for example: I run because I love how it makes me feel; I run because it makes it easier for me to do my kickboxing and hiking; I run because I get to see new trails; I run because it improves my fitness; I run because I want to be healthy when I get older. So do at least five of those and the more you do it, the more you write out your reasons the deeper it will get and the juicer it will get and just kind of push yourself to keep writing until you really can’t think of anything else and then maybe leave a few spaces on the page and maybe come back to it later, because you might think of more stuff as you go about your day or go about your week. So I do x because y, and the y obvious why, it is your reason.

participaction.com and I will link to it in the show notes, I found this really, really useful. Complete the following sentence, and I have changed this a little bit, ‘I do x because y’. So I go running because I love how it makes me feel.

So this blog recommends that you do at least five versions of this, so for example: I run because I love how it makes me feel; I run because it makes it easier for me to do my kickboxing and hiking; I run because I get to see new trails; I run because it improves my fitness; I run because I want to be healthy when I get older. So do at least five of those because the more you do it and the more you write out your reasons the deeper it will get and the juicer it will get and just kind of push yourself to keep writing until you really can’t think of anything else. And then maybe leave a few spaces on the page and maybe come back to it later, because you might think of more stuff as you go about your day or go about your week. So I do x because y, and the y obviously is your why, it is your reason why.

 

So I hope you found this interesting and useful, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode, you can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there.

There is one thing that I want to mention before I sign out here, it was something that I meant to mention at the start of the episode. I recently listened to this podcast called TrailRunner Nation episode: Pedestrianism- Our Long Lost Relative, I think you might find it interesting so I am linking to it in the show notes. I really, really, enjoyed this episode.

Apparently walking, watching someone walk, was a super popular spectator sport in the 1870s and 1880s. So T=there were people that did long distance walking, this was called ‘pedestrianism’. Some people would walk across the country, some people would just do loops, laps, it was a big thing. And this sport, pedestrianism, spawned some of the United States first celebrity athletes. It made people rich – it is crazy! It was such a huge thing! People won tons of money for achieving their goals in pedestrianism, for completing these super events. People would bet on it, spectators would bet on timings and who would win, it was a huge thing in the 1870s and 1880s. So Trail Runner Nation is the podcast, and the episode is called ‘Pedestrianism – Our Long Lost Relative’. I think you will really enjoy this episode, if you like walking, I think you will be fascinated by this, it is like a whole other world of walking and again like I said I will link to that in the show notes.

So that is it for today, I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you got value from it I would love for you to join me on Patreon. If you head over to Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can join me there, tiers start at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to stuff that I don’t share anywhere else. I do a Q and A if people have any questions about anything that I have been talking about, or anything that I think I can answer, and I also give away my ebooks for free to patrons at certain levels. So Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can find that there.

So thank you so much for listening and remember to visit: hollyworton.com/382 for the show notes on this episode, thank you.