Mental Toughness
How much pain can you endure to reach your goal? Watching our local, fast, flat 10km this weekend a common theme emerged from the supporters was about how much pain the front runners appeared to be in as they reached the final 400m sprint finish. I even read on social media this morning that a supporter had commented on the race “One runner I saw had a pile of vomit down his beard, but that didn't seem to stop him”.
Personally, I think vomiting would be my limit! I was asked during the warmup before Sunday’s race, why couldn’t they go out as fast as they could and then just hang on until the bitter end, I said, of course you can, those last miles won’t be very pleasant, but it will be over quickly.
Recent research has suggested that endurance runners implement numerous mental strategies/skills when runs become tough, that being comfortable with being uncomfortable is an integral part of training. There will often be times during a run or race where you will feel rubbish, you might feel too cold, or too hot, your shoelace is too tight, or you feel sick, you have foot pain, chaffing, a blister or that you just want to stop and cry. And trust me the voice in your head that tells you to quit, that tells you to stop, that you are going to die, that you can try again next year will get LOUDER & LOUDER.
Part of building your mental skills toolkit, is to be able to recognise these thoughts, these uncomfortable feelings and move on from them and finish the race.
When runners make things look “easy” it isn’t that it is easy, it’s just that they have learnt to smile through the pain and not give into it and if you build this uncomfortableness into your training, you are well on your way to becoming a more resilient runner.
Here are just a few things that you can do to practice being uncomfortable in your everyday life.
Take a cold shower.
Finish your shower with 1-2 minutes ice cold.
Take a cold bath - top tip - sit in an empty bath with a t-shirt on and slowly fill the bath up with cold water.
Run with less layers when it’s cold outside.
Run with more layers when it’s hot outside.
Walk barefoot on a stony beach.
Run with a raging hangover.
To be honest the possibilities are endless, you could do something to challenge your comfort levels every day, be creative! Gaining experience of running in different and difficult situations really helps make you a stronger runner, so the next time you see snow or rain, or brilliant hot sunshine and you are due to train, look at it as part of your overall training programme that will help develop your mental toughness.