Embracing the Hard, Miserable Miles

You entered an ultra to do something hard (remember?).

But halfway through the race, you’re tired, defeated and barely plodding along.

This isn’t how you wanted it to be.

The miles still left to go will be long, miserable, and exhausting. Your all might not be enough. 

You just want to be done.

Without realizing it, you start drawing a line in your head between the confident, “I can do hard things,” and the dejected, “Too hard.”

Finishing the rest of the race goes on the “too hard” side. You drop.

The next race, your solution is to definitely not drop. You won’t make that mistake again. 

You train hard and keep reminding yourself, “Don’t drop, don’t drop.”

Which actually raises the pressure…so you’re more likely to drop.

When you do, you tell yourself and everyone else you feel good about it and did everything you could.

Still, you’re a little confused about what went wrong. You start worrying you're too weak to follow through and achieve a race goal - it’s you.

But what really went wrong was you came to a point in the race where the ‘hard’ stuff ahead seemed more grueling than a finish would be rewarding.

In other words, the amount of hard you imagined ahead would cost more pain and effort than you were willing to pay for a finish.

The best solution to this dilemma is to reduce the cost of going forward. 

And you can do that in your head because you control the ‘volume’ of hard - up or down.

All you need to do is learn a simple mind skill.

Pain, exertion, and difficulty are integral parts of ultrarunning - that’s the challenge you’re there to overcome. We’re not changing that.

We’re changing the way you think about the pain, exertion and difficulty - how much you accept, where you draw the line…and whether you let it freak you out.

For instance, you decide how fast and hard you push for how long, and when to back off.

You decide how much muscle tightness you tolerate and how high you’ll let your heart rate climb.

You decide where your limits sit at the moment…and whether you want to move them out a little and take on more.

You decide if you give in to the urge to stop…or keep going one more section.

Knowing you control how much pain you accept makes it safe to let go of the fear of it.

It’s safe to allow yourself to experience the strain and misery of those long, tough last half miles because you can always back off. 

You don’t have to brace against the hard part - you can relax into it.

Which means those miles take less effort to endure.

So you run faster.

And it’s easier to get to the finish, which is what we want.

So ask yourself what you believe about how hard it will be to finish.

It’s only as hard as you think it will be.