Loop Courses Are Boring…Or Are They?

How do you survive the boredom of a multi-loop race?

You’ll be running around the the same circle over and over again for hours looking at the same things. It’s going to be hard and you’re going to feel like you aren’t getting anywhere.

And every lap, you’re near your car so it’s easy to drop. 

Like one of my clients, you might see boredom as your toughest challenge in a loop race.

So you think of all the ways to combat it.

Usually that’s either ways to push through it - like iron willpower or a fast pace - or ways to distract yourself from it - like music or a pacer.

Pushing through it - fighting against the boredom you’re sure is going to challenge you - uses a ton of energy that will eventually wear you out. It turns running loops in to a tedious chore you can’t wait to be done with. Boring.

Distracting yourself from boredom lets you tune out the miles and loops but also the experience. You put your mind on something else while you’re waiting out the time or the miles until you’re done. If the race isn’t interesting enough to experience - the definition of boring - why are you there in the first place?

Pushing through and distracting yourself both ultimately confirm the opposite of what’s intended - that loop courses are indeed boring.

The two approaches don’t work well because the problem isn’t that loop courses are boring.

It’s that you assume they’re boring.

It’s an easy assumption to make. You probably heard ultrarunners say “loop courses are boring” like a common fact before you ever tried a loop course. Did you decide this was true for yourself or or did you accept it as fact because other ultrarunners said it?

Either way, it makes logical sense. When you think about loops as boring, you can see why they would be.

And when you expect that to be a problem, it is.

A better strategy with any race problem like this is to notice it’s an assumption and see if you can poke holes in it:

Are ALL loop courses boring?

Are loop courses boring the whole race?

Is a loop course boring because it’s loops or because of something else?

Can other course formats like out-and-back or point-to-point be boring?

If you do this as well as my client did, you come up with surprisingly positive new ways to think about loop courses:

“Loop courses are all different.”

“Some runners love loop courses and don’t think they’re boring.”

“Loop courses aren’t always boring.”

“Loop courses have variation - ups and downs and curves - they’re not all flat.”

“I like knowing exactly what I’m doing. I like to run the same course every day - that could be boring but isn’t.”

“Loop courses are comfortable.”

Think of it this way - boring is in the mind, not in the loops.

If you want to run loop courses and want to see them in a better way, you can. Boring is only a way to think about loops, it’s not a fact.