Hey Everyone,
When you’re in the middle of a
long run, you’re feeling cold, wet, like you’ve hit the wall, you just want to
pack it in and go home, what keeps you going?
For me, like many, I’m sure it is
words. Sometimes it’s the right song at the right time on your iPod which can
lift you up. Sometimes it’s your running buddy, sensing you reaching your
limit, speaking up “Only 3K left! You can do it, let’s go!” I’ve had those
moments, but I also have a very active internal dialogue.
When I’m running, I’ll argue with
myself, convince myself to keep going, get mad at myself when I think I can’t. In
the end, I always come back to a personal mantra/maxim/motto, whatever you want
to call it. Unfortunately, you’ll have to keep reading before I get to it.
The particular one I live by
comes from a book called “The Fighter’s Mind: Inside the Mental Game”. It’s
part of a series of books that tries to zero in on what makes a professional
fighter (specifically mixed martial artist) tick. It looks at the mental
aspects of pushing yourself to the highest levels, by exploring other onerous
tasks that humans participate in. I had been running for about a year when I
came across the books (including “The Fighters Heart”), and the chapter on
Ultra-Marathoners caught my attention (See link for a copy of the full
chapter).
These people are out running
races that exceed 100 miles. There are Ultra-Marathons that stretch a continent
and take place over months. Imagine running 40+ miles a day for 52 days. Where
do you find the will power and motivation to keep going? Well one of the
featured runners explained that he would use two statements to motivate him to
keep going. The first is one I’m sure we’ve all heart somewhere along the line,
“This too shall pass.” The book sums it up nicely “It will end. It can’t last
forever… because sometimes things will feel that way.”
The one that really stuck with me
was the second, “It never always gets worse.” Stop for a minute and think about it. Once
again, I’ll let the interviewee explain it, why re-invent the wheel.
"A lot of people think this way. If you said you just ran ten
miles they'd say, "That's great!," or if you said you just ran a
marathon they'd say, "That's fantastic!" He sighed.
"You run a fifty-mile race and they say `That's stupid, it's
crazy!' Now why is that? The reason is, people theorize, I know how I feel when
I run five miles, or twenty-six miles, and that hurts! So fifty miles must be
twice the pain and torture!
How many people here ran the Tely
10 before trying a Marathon? I’m sure when you pushed yourself to finish the
Tely, remembering how those 10 miles felt, the mere suggestion of running 21.1
miles seemed absolutely insane. Your legs would be aching twice as hard, that
blister would hurt twice as much, every miserable feeling would just be
magnified. But when you run that longer distance, when you push further, you
know what? It never always gets worse! I’ve started a run, a kilometer in, I’ve
said to myself “Shit, this sucks. I’m tired. I’m aching. I’m already winded. No
way I’ll make it through this”! Then in kilometer two, I’m finding my stride,
mentally I’m melting away into the run, not dwelling on every step, but embracing
it. It never got worse, it went away, you just needed to loosen up. Maybe it
just never got worse and you learned to tolerate what you were feeling.
So when I’m feeling like crap, I
like to take a nice deep breath and just remind myself, it never always gets
worse.
Mark
Blogger Disclaimer:
Please don’t run on a broken
leg or with severe asthma or something! Watch out if you’re pushing real hard
on a super warm day. The quote says NEVER ALWAYS not DEFINITELY NEVER!
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