73. Training Plan Entitlement: The Trap That Can Cost You Your Race
You chose the right training plan. You did the miles. You checked the boxes. So when race day turns out to be much harder than you expected, it’s easy to assume something has gone wrong. And when you can’t figure out what, your brain may decide the problem must be you.
Training plan entitlement is the belief that choosing and completing the right training plan means you’re owed a good race. In this episode, I’ll show you why this thinking can undermine your self-trust, how handing your decisions and expectations over to a training plan can actually work against you, and what to do instead so you’re prepared to handle whatever happens on race day.
This episode will show you how to use your training plan as a tool without letting it make your decisions for you and teach you how to build the kind of self-trust that doesn’t depend on having an easy race, but on knowing you can handle a hard one.
My 1:1 Mental Mastery Coaching for Ultrarunners is a six-month coaching program where we build the mental skills experienced ultrarunners use to handle difficult races well. Schedule a consult call to learn more here.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
What training plan entitlement is and how it can show up in your ultrarunning.
Why following a training plan exactly can prevent you from building self-trust.
The problem with expecting your training to earn you a good race.
How to uncover the expectations that could blindside you on race day.
What to do if you realize mid-race that you were expecting the day to be easier.
How to use your training plan as a tool while staying in charge of your training and your race.
Why real confidence comes from knowing you can handle whatever shows up, not from completing every mile on your training plan.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
The Ultrarunner’s Mastery Debrief Template helps you evaluate your races like experienced ultrarunners do - identifying what worked, what didn’t work, and what to do differently next time. Download yours for free here.
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Episodes Related to Training Plan Entitlement: The Trap That Can Cost You Your Race:
Ep #20. The Simple Training Plan for the Mental Side of Ultra Running
Ep #45. Self Validation: The Skill That Makes You Unstoppable
Full Episode Transcript:
You chose the right training plan and did every mile of it. This race should be easy. So why are you struggling so hard? There’s a trap that even experienced runners fall into sometimes, one you don't choose consciously. And today, I'm talking about how to catch it before it costs you a race or more.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 73. This might be a tough episode, but it's an important one. I really want to get it to you now so that you don't fall into this common trap in an upcoming race because fall season is right around the corner. It is rapidly approaching. And I really, really want you to run well and enjoy ultra running. And I have seen this trap a lot around big races and big steps up in distance. The type of race that you're intimidated by.
I've heard it from runners in the middle of a race, right before they drop. And I see it all over social media all the time. And the cost of this in races and self-confidence is high. So I'm going to challenge you here in this episode to get honest with yourself as you listen and check to see if this is you, even a little, in the back of your mind. And even if you're not there right now or you think, this isn't me, it could never be me, learn to see this trap so that you don't fall into it.
All right, the problem we're talking about today is entitlement, specifically training plan entitlement. And it shows up in two ways, and these two things usually go together. The first one is, I picked the right plan, so I can just follow it and turn my brain off. It'll tell me what to do. And the second one is, I followed the plan, so I'm entitled to. I am owed a good race and a finish.
Both of these beliefs hand your autonomy over to something outside of you, the training plan. One of these thoughts actually hands over your decision making and the other hands over your results. Either way, you are not the one driving anymore. The training plan is. And here's what this looks like.
First of all, you pick the “right” training plan, which is smart, but more than that, more applicable here, it feels safe. Because if you just follow somebody else's formula exactly, you don't risk making the wrong decisions. So, you pick the right training plan, you complete the plan, mostly, or all to the letter, and knowing that feels great. You go into the race confident because you picked the right plan and you did all the work. So, this is going to be a fantastic race.
But once the race starts, the gun goes off and everybody starts, you're shocked. I mean, once that first couple of yards wears off, you're shocked because it's way harder than it's supposed to be. You're struggling when nobody else around you seems to be from the start. And not just in an off race kind of way. It starts to dawn on you slowly that you're going to have to work a lot harder today, the whole way. And even then, the finish you were counting on is in danger. And it shouldn't be this way. So, something is wrong.
And here's where entitlement does its real damage. It's not in the moment where you realize it's going to be a way harder day than you expected. It's in what you decide that big gap between what you expected and the reality of the day means. So there you are, running along in the race, trying to focus on what you're doing and not fall, but at the same time, trying in the back of your mind to pin down what went wrong. Why am I feeling this way? Was it training, sleep, hormones? That week I was sick and didn't get any mileage in?
And nothing really explains how hard you're having to work right now just to stay in the race, just to stay up with everybody. So your brain reaches for the only explanation that is left. It must be you. Your heart sinks as this devastating conclusion hits you. I'm not cut out for this. That's the only answer. It must be true. And right now, mid race, you have undeniable proof it's true. You're living it right now. You know it's true. You see it.
It doesn't matter how many ultras you've completed. It's you. But it isn't. And nothing is wrong with you. The only thing here that went wrong is that you made a faulty but common assumption. You thought that following the right training plan was like having the right answer to the test, that it would protect you from making the wrong training calls. And that completing that right plan would earn you an easy day.
But the self-trust to call your own shots and the confidence to handle any race and not need it to be easy, those aren't things that a training plan can give you. You only build those by making your own decisions and accepting that the race could be tough, things you delegated to the training plan. But entitlement doesn't let you see that. It makes you the failure instead. And it keeps you there because even if the problem was the plan, it wasn't the right plan, or even if the problem was the training you did, you're still the one responsible for both of those things.
You picked the training plan, you executed it. So there's no one and nothing else to blame it on. It all still points to you. And that's just the short-term cost. You spiral right there in the race, you drop your race goal down probably from the goal you had to survival. You just want the race to be over and be done. You just want to survive it and be done.
But there's a longer cost that outlasts this race. When you hand over your autonomy to a plan, both the decisions that you let it make for you and the outcome you expect it to give you, you don't know how to improve your training for the next race. Because the plan isn't to blame for this one, and you don't know how your implementation of the plan failed either. So, it's like there's nothing to learn. No specific improvements to make. You're just left with a belief that there's something wrong with you, lacking in you.
And that belief sticks with you. It's there when you think about signing up for the next race, and it's there all the way through training for the next race because you don't want another experience like this one. But right now, running along in this race, you just want it to be over. When, if you actually cleared those entitled expectations out of your mind, even in the middle of the race, you could still turn it around and have a fantastic race.
So how does this happen? How does someone who knows better, because I know you know it's not going to be an easy day, how does somebody know who knows better end up here anyway? And I’ve got to give you two caveats before I get into that explanation. The first is that I don't want you to think that I'm hating on training plans because I'm not. I don't use a formal training plan myself. I never have. But this isn't about having a plan or which plan you choose. It has nothing to do with those things.
And the second caveat is that I am not calling you entitled either. Not at all what I'm doing. It's the thinking that is entitled. And it's a common thought. I've been there. This isn't something you consciously choose to think. I've made this mistake training in the mountains, expecting a flatter race to be easy, and discovering rudely to my surprise that it was most definitely not easy. So I've been there too.
And here is why it happens. Your brain and social conditioning set you up to fall into this trap. Remember, there are two parts to this. First one is handing your training decisions over to the right plan. And the second is expecting that plan, completing that plan, if you do that, it entitles you to a good race. So let's start with handing your decisions to a plan.
And that's because training is genuinely an uncertain thing. The race is an experiment and training is the hypothesis that you're testing in the experiment. You don't know the results of your training until race day. So it's totally uncertain. And you don't always know if this week is the week to add more vertical to those miles or less, or whether you can switch this week's long run for next week's long run, or whether your tiredness is from doing too much mileage or something else.
Making those calls yourself means that you might get some of them wrong. And that's uncomfortable enough that following a plan exactly to the letter feels a whole lot safer. Somebody else has already done the thinking for you. It has to be the right answer. All you have to do is follow it. So you hand over the risk of making a training mistake, which feels like a total relief. But what you also hand over at the same time is a decision-making reps of learning to read your body and trusting your own calls that you get in the training when you retain the decision-making capability.
And the risk didn't even go away. It just feels like it did. What really happened is it got pushed down the road to race day when the stakes are higher and you're least equipped to do anything about it. At the same time, we're also taught from a young age that good students get good grades or in this case, good races. Hard work will be rewarded with an equal amount of payoff. It's fair.
And women, we get an extra layer of this. We're taught that there is safety in perfection. So, we're even more likely to try and nail down the perfect plan and worry if we don't complete it exactly. So, you do the training, you check the boxes, and then you taper. And tapering down in mileage before the race just reinforces the feeling that the work is done. There's no more long runs, no more big weeks. You have spare time. You're ready to accept the A+ that you earned in training.
And well-meaning people add to it, even though they don't know it, when they reassure you that you've done the work, the hay's in the barn. Now you get to enjoy the race. So without realizing it, you go into the race feeling entitled to a good one. It's like you aced all the homework. You aced every homework assignment and every pop quiz the entire semester. You did all the work. You're a good student. So you shouldn't even have to try on the final. You've already earned the grade. The final exam is just a formality, one last box to check.
You forget that the training plan is there to prepare you for the race. The training plan's not the point. The race is. And what happens when the plan becomes the point instead of the race? You get surprised with a disappointing race, and you might not even finish. So, that's training plan entitlement. Here are three things you can do about it.
First, in training, every time your plan says do X, make the call yourself for your own body, your race, your schedule. You can choose to do what the plan says. I'm not saying do something that the plan doesn't say. You might choose to do what the plan says every day, but trust yourself to decide, to decide if you need to swap mileage days or run for hours instead of miles, or split your long run from one day into two. Don't just blindly look at the number and obey the plan. Decide.
Even if you decide to follow the plan, when you make that conscious decision, you're building that self-trust muscle now while the stakes are low so that it's there, that self-trust is there on race day when the stakes are high. You can also write down every expectation that you're carrying into race day, and you might not know what these are. But these could be things like, I won't have to dig deep. I'll feel strong most of the way. I'll finish well ahead of cutoff.
When you write these things down, when you identify them in your brain and write them down, this exposes them. And once you've exposed them, once you see them, you can correct each one of them. Like, digging deep is part of the race. It's not a warning sign. Feeling rough some of the miles doesn't mean I'm falling apart. And my planned pace is something I execute to the best of my ability. It's not a promise.
And if you do this, if you write down all your expectations before race day, they're not going to blindside you. And I've had to do this myself plenty of times. Like one year, I had like a two and a half month gap between Havalina 100 in October and Coldwater 100 in January. I realized I'd forgotten what running 100 actually felt like. And I had to remind myself in detail before the race caught me off guard.
And third, all is not lost if you get all the way to the race before you realize that you've been feeling entitled to an easy one. And you're in the race, you're running along just like my example earlier in this podcast, you might be reluctant to, but see that expectation as something that was never supposed to be true. And let it go. You might feel a little grief for the imagined race that you're having to let go. But let it go.
And once you've done that, accept that this is the race you've got today. This is it. And you're more than capable of making it a great one, a fantastic one. It's just going to take a little bit more work and effort and discomfort than you wanted it to. But you have all the skills and the strength and the know-how to make it happen. Here's an example from one of my clients. She doesn't follow a specific training plan. She's very type A.
She knows herself well enough to know that if a plan told her the mileage to run each day, she'd feel obligated to hit it exactly each day. Even if that meant cramming the miles in at midnight. The plan would stop being a tool for her and become the thing she was serving, whether or not it was actually right for her that week or not. She would fall for that first part of entitlement about the right plan and having to complete it.
Instead, she knows how to train, and she manages her own training. She checks in with how her body feels and adjusts when she decides to, like a long day when the weather is good, less when the week has been hard, more vertical technical miles than flat ones to build confidence on the race course. She makes the calls every day, not a plan. And because she never handed those decisions away, she never fell for the other half of entitlement either, that completing a training plan would earn her an easy race.
She happens to be facing a very tough 100-mile race that she's DNF'd before, and she knows what it'll take. And she knows that training and working with me will make it easier, but she's still going to have to work for it. I mean, we are planning her race assuming the hard parts are coming, maybe even worst-case scenario and deciding ahead of time how she'll handle them.
Not because she's pessimistic, but because she's not expecting her training mileage to earn her an easy race. She's kept the exam the point, not the homework. And she'll be ready because she knows herself and she's been building that trust muscle in training by making her calls all the way through her training. When you let go of training plan entitlement, here's what changes. You stop spiraling into that I'm not cut out for this stuff the moment a race gets harder than you expected, because you weren't expecting easy in the first place.
You stop freezing up when you have a hard problem to solve because you got used to making your own calls and solving your own problems in training. And you get to prove that you are capable of a tough race. And if you were owed a good race, you'd never learn how strong you really are or how far your limits actually stretch. You'd just check boxes, collect your buckle, nothing else required.
And a harder than expected race stops meaning that something is wrong with you. It's just harder than you thought it would be. And once you accept that, you can turn it into your best race ever. And if the race doesn't turn out the way you wanted, you're still ahead because you made all the calls in training, so you know what worked, what didn't work, and what you would do differently. It's not you changing you. That's self-trust.
It's not I did the miles, it's I can handle whatever shows up, no matter what. And that, not a completed training log, is what actually gets you to the finish line. So ask yourself, before the gun goes off, what did I actually train for? It probably wasn't to guarantee an easy day. You trained for the strength to handle a hard race, to make it easier, but to handle a hard race.
And you trained to build the self-trust to make that race happen, no matter how hard it is. So, that's the shift. And here's what I want to leave you with. Entitled thinking is like taking your hands off the wheel and expecting everything to go great. It's not something you do wrong. It's just what an untrained brain defaults to. So, now that you know it, you can catch it in training and in the race.
And here's why I've been direct about something as easy to take the wrong way as entitlement. I want you at that finish line, not standing somewhere on the side of the trail thinking you're not cut out for ultra running. You are. In fact, you're more capable than you know, and a race is your chance to discover how much more. Because training prepares you for the race. It doesn't replace the work of running it. That part's still yours.
The race is where you get to show off what your training prepared you to do, but you do the running. And that is the payoff. So go get it. All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know someone who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 73. This might be a tough episode, but it's an important one. I really want to get it to you now so that you don't fall into this common trap in an upcoming race because fall season is right around the corner. It is rapidly approaching. And I really, really want you to run well and enjoy ultra running. And I have seen this trap a lot around big races and big steps up in distance. The type of race that you're intimidated by.
I've heard it from runners in the middle of a race, right before they drop. And I see it all over social media all the time. And the cost of this in races and self-confidence is high. So I'm going to challenge you here in this episode to get honest with yourself as you listen and check to see if this is you, even a little, in the back of your mind. And even if you're not there right now or you think, this isn't me, it could never be me, learn to see this trap so that you don't fall into it.
All right, the problem we're talking about today is entitlement, specifically training plan entitlement. And it shows up in two ways, and these two things usually go together. The first one is, I picked the right plan, so I can just follow it and turn my brain off. It'll tell me what to do. And the second one is, I followed the plan, so I'm entitled to. I am owed a good race and a finish.
Both of these beliefs hand your autonomy over to something outside of you, the training plan. One of these thoughts actually hands over your decision making and the other hands over your results. Either way, you are not the one driving anymore. The training plan is. And here's what this looks like.
First of all, you pick the “right” training plan, which is smart, but more than that, more applicable here, it feels safe. Because if you just follow somebody else's formula exactly, you don't risk making the wrong decisions. So, you pick the right training plan, you complete the plan, mostly, or all to the letter, and knowing that feels great. You go into the race confident because you picked the right plan and you did all the work. So, this is going to be a fantastic race.
But once the race starts, the gun goes off and everybody starts, you're shocked. I mean, once that first couple of yards wears off, you're shocked because it's way harder than it's supposed to be. You're struggling when nobody else around you seems to be from the start. And not just in an off race kind of way. It starts to dawn on you slowly that you're going to have to work a lot harder today, the whole way. And even then, the finish you were counting on is in danger. And it shouldn't be this way. So, something is wrong.
And here's where entitlement does its real damage. It's not in the moment where you realize it's going to be a way harder day than you expected. It's in what you decide that big gap between what you expected and the reality of the day means. So there you are, running along in the race, trying to focus on what you're doing and not fall, but at the same time, trying in the back of your mind to pin down what went wrong. Why am I feeling this way? Was it training, sleep, hormones? That week I was sick and didn't get any mileage in?
And nothing really explains how hard you're having to work right now just to stay in the race, just to stay up with everybody. So your brain reaches for the only explanation that is left. It must be you. Your heart sinks as this devastating conclusion hits you. I'm not cut out for this. That's the only answer. It must be true. And right now, mid race, you have undeniable proof it's true. You're living it right now. You know it's true. You see it.
It doesn't matter how many ultras you've completed. It's you. But it isn't. And nothing is wrong with you. The only thing here that went wrong is that you made a faulty but common assumption. You thought that following the right training plan was like having the right answer to the test, that it would protect you from making the wrong training calls. And that completing that right plan would earn you an easy day.
But the self-trust to call your own shots and the confidence to handle any race and not need it to be easy, those aren't things that a training plan can give you. You only build those by making your own decisions and accepting that the race could be tough, things you delegated to the training plan. But entitlement doesn't let you see that. It makes you the failure instead. And it keeps you there because even if the problem was the plan, it wasn't the right plan, or even if the problem was the training you did, you're still the one responsible for both of those things.
You picked the training plan, you executed it. So there's no one and nothing else to blame it on. It all still points to you. And that's just the short-term cost. You spiral right there in the race, you drop your race goal down probably from the goal you had to survival. You just want the race to be over and be done. You just want to survive it and be done.
But there's a longer cost that outlasts this race. When you hand over your autonomy to a plan, both the decisions that you let it make for you and the outcome you expect it to give you, you don't know how to improve your training for the next race. Because the plan isn't to blame for this one, and you don't know how your implementation of the plan failed either. So, it's like there's nothing to learn. No specific improvements to make. You're just left with a belief that there's something wrong with you, lacking in you.
And that belief sticks with you. It's there when you think about signing up for the next race, and it's there all the way through training for the next race because you don't want another experience like this one. But right now, running along in this race, you just want it to be over. When, if you actually cleared those entitled expectations out of your mind, even in the middle of the race, you could still turn it around and have a fantastic race.
So how does this happen? How does someone who knows better, because I know you know it's not going to be an easy day, how does somebody know who knows better end up here anyway? And I’ve got to give you two caveats before I get into that explanation. The first is that I don't want you to think that I'm hating on training plans because I'm not. I don't use a formal training plan myself. I never have. But this isn't about having a plan or which plan you choose. It has nothing to do with those things.
And the second caveat is that I am not calling you entitled either. Not at all what I'm doing. It's the thinking that is entitled. And it's a common thought. I've been there. This isn't something you consciously choose to think. I've made this mistake training in the mountains, expecting a flatter race to be easy, and discovering rudely to my surprise that it was most definitely not easy. So I've been there too.
And here is why it happens. Your brain and social conditioning set you up to fall into this trap. Remember, there are two parts to this. First one is handing your training decisions over to the right plan. And the second is expecting that plan, completing that plan, if you do that, it entitles you to a good race. So let's start with handing your decisions to a plan.
And that's because training is genuinely an uncertain thing. The race is an experiment and training is the hypothesis that you're testing in the experiment. You don't know the results of your training until race day. So it's totally uncertain. And you don't always know if this week is the week to add more vertical to those miles or less, or whether you can switch this week's long run for next week's long run, or whether your tiredness is from doing too much mileage or something else.
Making those calls yourself means that you might get some of them wrong. And that's uncomfortable enough that following a plan exactly to the letter feels a whole lot safer. Somebody else has already done the thinking for you. It has to be the right answer. All you have to do is follow it. So you hand over the risk of making a training mistake, which feels like a total relief. But what you also hand over at the same time is a decision-making reps of learning to read your body and trusting your own calls that you get in the training when you retain the decision-making capability.
And the risk didn't even go away. It just feels like it did. What really happened is it got pushed down the road to race day when the stakes are higher and you're least equipped to do anything about it. At the same time, we're also taught from a young age that good students get good grades or in this case, good races. Hard work will be rewarded with an equal amount of payoff. It's fair.
And women, we get an extra layer of this. We're taught that there is safety in perfection. So, we're even more likely to try and nail down the perfect plan and worry if we don't complete it exactly. So, you do the training, you check the boxes, and then you taper. And tapering down in mileage before the race just reinforces the feeling that the work is done. There's no more long runs, no more big weeks. You have spare time. You're ready to accept the A+ that you earned in training.
And well-meaning people add to it, even though they don't know it, when they reassure you that you've done the work, the hay's in the barn. Now you get to enjoy the race. So without realizing it, you go into the race feeling entitled to a good one. It's like you aced all the homework. You aced every homework assignment and every pop quiz the entire semester. You did all the work. You're a good student. So you shouldn't even have to try on the final. You've already earned the grade. The final exam is just a formality, one last box to check.
You forget that the training plan is there to prepare you for the race. The training plan's not the point. The race is. And what happens when the plan becomes the point instead of the race? You get surprised with a disappointing race, and you might not even finish. So, that's training plan entitlement. Here are three things you can do about it.
First, in training, every time your plan says do X, make the call yourself for your own body, your race, your schedule. You can choose to do what the plan says. I'm not saying do something that the plan doesn't say. You might choose to do what the plan says every day, but trust yourself to decide, to decide if you need to swap mileage days or run for hours instead of miles, or split your long run from one day into two. Don't just blindly look at the number and obey the plan. Decide.
Even if you decide to follow the plan, when you make that conscious decision, you're building that self-trust muscle now while the stakes are low so that it's there, that self-trust is there on race day when the stakes are high. You can also write down every expectation that you're carrying into race day, and you might not know what these are. But these could be things like, I won't have to dig deep. I'll feel strong most of the way. I'll finish well ahead of cutoff.
When you write these things down, when you identify them in your brain and write them down, this exposes them. And once you've exposed them, once you see them, you can correct each one of them. Like, digging deep is part of the race. It's not a warning sign. Feeling rough some of the miles doesn't mean I'm falling apart. And my planned pace is something I execute to the best of my ability. It's not a promise.
And if you do this, if you write down all your expectations before race day, they're not going to blindside you. And I've had to do this myself plenty of times. Like one year, I had like a two and a half month gap between Havalina 100 in October and Coldwater 100 in January. I realized I'd forgotten what running 100 actually felt like. And I had to remind myself in detail before the race caught me off guard.
And third, all is not lost if you get all the way to the race before you realize that you've been feeling entitled to an easy one. And you're in the race, you're running along just like my example earlier in this podcast, you might be reluctant to, but see that expectation as something that was never supposed to be true. And let it go. You might feel a little grief for the imagined race that you're having to let go. But let it go.
And once you've done that, accept that this is the race you've got today. This is it. And you're more than capable of making it a great one, a fantastic one. It's just going to take a little bit more work and effort and discomfort than you wanted it to. But you have all the skills and the strength and the know-how to make it happen. Here's an example from one of my clients. She doesn't follow a specific training plan. She's very type A.
She knows herself well enough to know that if a plan told her the mileage to run each day, she'd feel obligated to hit it exactly each day. Even if that meant cramming the miles in at midnight. The plan would stop being a tool for her and become the thing she was serving, whether or not it was actually right for her that week or not. She would fall for that first part of entitlement about the right plan and having to complete it.
Instead, she knows how to train, and she manages her own training. She checks in with how her body feels and adjusts when she decides to, like a long day when the weather is good, less when the week has been hard, more vertical technical miles than flat ones to build confidence on the race course. She makes the calls every day, not a plan. And because she never handed those decisions away, she never fell for the other half of entitlement either, that completing a training plan would earn her an easy race.
She happens to be facing a very tough 100-mile race that she's DNF'd before, and she knows what it'll take. And she knows that training and working with me will make it easier, but she's still going to have to work for it. I mean, we are planning her race assuming the hard parts are coming, maybe even worst-case scenario and deciding ahead of time how she'll handle them.
Not because she's pessimistic, but because she's not expecting her training mileage to earn her an easy race. She's kept the exam the point, not the homework. And she'll be ready because she knows herself and she's been building that trust muscle in training by making her calls all the way through her training. When you let go of training plan entitlement, here's what changes. You stop spiraling into that I'm not cut out for this stuff the moment a race gets harder than you expected, because you weren't expecting easy in the first place.
You stop freezing up when you have a hard problem to solve because you got used to making your own calls and solving your own problems in training. And you get to prove that you are capable of a tough race. And if you were owed a good race, you'd never learn how strong you really are or how far your limits actually stretch. You'd just check boxes, collect your buckle, nothing else required.
And a harder than expected race stops meaning that something is wrong with you. It's just harder than you thought it would be. And once you accept that, you can turn it into your best race ever. And if the race doesn't turn out the way you wanted, you're still ahead because you made all the calls in training, so you know what worked, what didn't work, and what you would do differently. It's not you changing you. That's self-trust.
It's not I did the miles, it's I can handle whatever shows up, no matter what. And that, not a completed training log, is what actually gets you to the finish line. So ask yourself, before the gun goes off, what did I actually train for? It probably wasn't to guarantee an easy day. You trained for the strength to handle a hard race, to make it easier, but to handle a hard race.
And you trained to build the self-trust to make that race happen, no matter how hard it is. So, that's the shift. And here's what I want to leave you with. Entitled thinking is like taking your hands off the wheel and expecting everything to go great. It's not something you do wrong. It's just what an untrained brain defaults to. So, now that you know it, you can catch it in training and in the race.
And here's why I've been direct about something as easy to take the wrong way as entitlement. I want you at that finish line, not standing somewhere on the side of the trail thinking you're not cut out for ultra running. You are. In fact, you're more capable than you know, and a race is your chance to discover how much more. Because training prepares you for the race. It doesn't replace the work of running it. That part's still yours.
The race is where you get to show off what your training prepared you to do, but you do the running. And that is the payoff. So go get it. All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know someone who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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