Shifting From Impatience to Endurance

Thinking, “I don’t want to be out here all day,” can come up in training but also in races, especially the longer distances.

This stems from impatience—a desire to rush through the experience to the finish, or to something more exciting. 

But when it becomes your primary focus, it can rob you of the very finish you’re impatient to reach.

When you're trying to avoid being on the course all day, you have two choices - run faster or cut the race short. 

But neither of these gets you a finish.

Running faster seems like it should work and it might in the short term. But over the number of miles we run in an ultra, it can backfire. Pushing too hard increases the chances you’ll crash and burn. 

You can find yourself struggling to keep pace, growing more frustrated as the miles drag on. Fixating on the time makes it feel like it's crawling. Every moment spent waiting for the next aid station to appear builds frustration. Soon enough, you feel completely drained - mentally and physically.

When picking up the pace doesn’t work, your remaining option is cutting the race short. It’s an easy choice when you’re fed up and looking for a way to end it.

No matter how you do it, looking for ways to limit the time means giving up the finish you’re so impatient to reach.

The real issue isn’t that you’re out there all day - it’s that you’ve lost your willingness to embrace the actual doing of it - the sweaty, muscle-straining, step after foot-pounding step running of it. You might want the end result but you haven’t accepted putting in the limit-challenging, physical work it actually takes to get there. Your head’s not in the game.

This can happen when you’re feeling over-pressured to run well, priorities have changed since you signed up, or it seems like completing the training was the work and the race is now an unnecessary chore.

The most successful solution is to intentionally fall in love with the process of running the race: commit to expending the effort and enduring the discomfort it will take. 

A client of mine made this very shift. After noticing she was fighting the desire to rush through training and races, we changed her thinking to, “I’m willing to be out here as long as it takes to finish.” 

This one shift made all the difference. She stopped pushing against the hours she’d likely spend in the race and instead chose the quality of the experience of running the race, rather than the finish, as her goal. The finish and buckle became natural follow-ons to the experience.

Suddenly, the race shifted from a chore she had to complete to an experience she wanted to savor. She found all the reasons the climbs, miles, and the hours in a beautiful place she might never see again were something to look forward to. It became the reason she was there. 

Feel the difference between, “I don’t want to be out there all day,” and “I’m willing to be out there as long as it takes to finish.” That change in energy is the key to success. It’s not a ‘nice-to-have’ shift - it’s essential. 

Without it, you’ll constantly be searching for shortcuts or reasons to quit. With it, you’ll find yourself more resilient, patient, and certain to reach the finish line.

The takeaway is simple: instead of focusing on how long you have to be out there, focus on why you want to be out there.

The better you’re able to shift a negative thought like this for one that charges you up, the better you race.