Your mind is the athlete

In the beginning of your running journey, a 30 minute run can feel overwhelming and the thought of running even further seem very out of reach. How on earth does someone go about running an ultramarathon?

It requires an inner desire to accomplish something that most people will never attempt.

Endurance is the road to adventure

According to the dictionary, endurance is the ability to resist the outcomes of fatigue for a prolonged period of time without giving way, such as an elevated heart rate or the continuous burn in the legs.

Running is a huge architectural work you need to build progressively, implementing adjustments along the way, as and when needed. Your plans are to be constantly improved by applying critical thinking and naturally learning from mistakes.

Even though endurance often is referred to as being something bodily, it is very much also a psychological game. Running long distances transcends phycological boundaries. The further you reach inwardly, the further you can run outwardly.

Patience is key

Trail running in general takes times and patience; ultra running takes even more. Patience is perhaps the most neglected aspect of mental resilience.

Many will claim impatience without knowing how it holds them back. Sadly, society has accustomed us to want and expect things to happen overnight. If they do not happen almost instantly, we have a tendency to lose interest.

We do not value the process anymore, we just want the results. The idea that time is short and that we cannot waste it has become very popular, so everyone are in a perpetual hurry. Time is now an indicator of competitiveness.

Impatience dismantles goals and obstructs progress.

Feeling exhausted at the end of each run or workout is massively overrated. Working until you have nothing left is a recipe for burnout, which is likely to be accompanied by injury. Effort does not mean anything if it only last for a week or two.

From a physical point of view, our lungs, muscles, bones, and tendons all need time to adapt and strengthen to account for the impact running has on our bodies. From a phycological point of view, our minds also requires time to get stronger, time to broaden. Building an enduring physical and mental base is likely to take several years.

You can teach yourself the way of patience through the rejection of rehearsed haste by forcing yourself to purposely wait for the next bus or train in one of weekly commutes. If you are driving to work in your car, try to stay in the slower lane for the majority of your journey. Avoid stress by consciously leaving home a little earlier, you are doing this to learn the positivity of patience after all.

Next time you go to the supermarket, try to purposely sit down on a bench for 5 minutes before entering the store — without looking at your phone. It will teach you to exercise your discipline in quiet reflection. Even better when practised in bad weather, as you will then also entertain your resilience.

Once you are in the queue with your groceries, act intentially by letting the person behind you take your place. This one will earn you some good karma points too!

Just like the body, the mind needs to be exercised

A great introductory exercise for mental training is this simple activity you can try right now. Hold your arms straight out in front of you. Keep them parallel to the ground. Keep holding...

Eventually you are going to experience some discomfort as your arms become what seems heavier, thanks to gravity. Notice both the sensation you feel and your reaction to it, but as separate perceptions. Just like the colours of the objects around you and the sounds you may hear, the sensation itself is nothing more than information. Your reaction is independent to this feeling. Keep holding.

Notice the desire to end the discomfort. Your eagerness to put your arms down simply arises because you dislike the feeling the sensation gives you. Now, tell yourself that the sensation you are feeling is going to last forever, but that it is okay, as it is tolerable. You know that because you are currently tolerating it. Keep holding.

Focus on the sensation and see it with curiosity and interest. What you are feeling might be unpleasant, but your life is not in danger. When you separate the actual sensation from your reaction to it, it becomes possible to stop clinging to the desire for your circumstances to change.

The key in this exercise is to fully appreciate that your reactions are different from the sensations themselves. You can relax your arms now.

Sometimes it is simply about detaching from the neck down

Every time you are experiencing a similar feeling of discomfort in a run (such a running far, up a steep hill or fast intervals), try to relax your mind and observe the sensations of your body as if they belonged to someone else, or as if they were in a movie.

If you become the observer of the thought, rather than the thinker, you can eliminate self-limiting beliefs that prevent you from running longer distances.

Your mind does not receive suffering — it simply receives information. What you do with that information determines whether you suffer or merely experience the sensations. It is your interpretations, perceptions, and desires for the sensations to be different that produce the suffering.

Practise the skill of observing information about discomfort with interest and curiosity. Every time you notice yourself thinking thoughts like » I cannot wait for this interval to be over! « try instead to be a) grateful for your health and that you are able to run at all, and b) aware of the physical sensations with curiosity, without attachment to them, or a desire for them to be different. Notice what happens to them when you simply observe them.

Over time this will become more natural to you and the pain will turn into a sensation in the background rather than the forefront. You are not ignoring it, just giving it less importance.

Draw on these skills to make your future runs more enjoyable, especially when the conditions gets challenging. Let go of any associated desires for your circumstances, in that very moment, to be different. You should notice that the same amount of effort now contains less struggle.

Our goal is never to get good at suffering and make running easier. Our goal is to suffer less under the same conditions and to run with greater ease.