Oef that was a challenge! After the hill repeats my legs were quite heavy this morning. I decided to focus on the mental aspect of running today: pushing on when your feel like quiting.
These types of training do have their value if you do them correctly, doing them incorrect will cause issues. So let’s explore how to correctly train the mental aspect of running first.
Idea:
Most of the times the mind is weaker than the body. This means that when it get’s harder the mind will give signals that urge you to stop - in order prevent you to reach a point where the body can’t take it anymore and fails. There is quite a margin between when the body starts giving these signals and what is your actual limit. Listening to your body all the time will both prevent injuries (good!) but also slow down your growth (bad). Once in a while it is beneficial to purposely reach that point where your mind is urging you to quit - but in a controlled matter.
Where the general rule in marathon training is “no 2 hard trainings in a row” you can train the mind by doing the second training at medium intensity. Most of the times this means slow pace, medium to long distance on heavy legs. Key is finding the balance as too long or too fast would be asking for trouble.
Todays run was exactly this:
While the weather was amazing today, I didn’t feel like running. Had some stress during the weekend and not that much time to rest. So the perfect conditions for a good run. My legs started protesting from 12km in, but my mind started acting up around 18km and almost got the best of me by suggesting to make it 21.1 and call it a day. While it did consider that for some time I managed to control that feeling and just finish the run back home.
While the difference between 21.1 and finishing the route is only 2.4km , being able to push aside that voice is essential in marathon running as most of these runs you will get to a point where you feel like quiting.
Happy running!
