It's all in your head

There are plenty of reasons someone steps out their door and starts to run. As many reasons as there are stars. But its inevitable, eventually the thought of stopping works its way in there and you have to deal with it. Maybe you’re tired, maybe some part of you is beginning to ache or hurt. Maybe its just too darn hot or too cold. Regardless of what the motivation is to stop, runners and endurance athletes have developed their own way of dealing with it. Rationally, a hard realistic look at the concern should be among the first steps but we’ve all been there where we downplay an ache or mitigate a concern in some way. For me, it’s usually a bit of mind games of the following sort:

• It’s not really that far to go, only x more miles

• A sub category of this sort would involve breaking down the mileage to go, as in I’ve got 5 miles to go but its only 3.5 to that street on Main Street.

• It’s hot but the next two miles are mostly shade

• My favourite and similar to the above, is the reason I use miles to count my distance as opposed to kilometers. The numbers are lower with miles. For instance, a marathon is 26.2 miles but 42 kilometers. Last time I checked, 42 is a heck of alot more than 26 and when Im struggling I definitely don’t want to do more!

Anyway, today’s run was a long run in the heat because basically I was somewhat lazy and more engrossed in watching the Mont Tremblant Ironman webcast than I was in preparing for my own Ironman next summer. The total ended up being 11 miles over 1:25 not including the few minutes I stopped to help corral a dog that gotten away from its owner. Ended up running the last mile and a bit with a young guy who was just starting his run and together we pushed ourselves up to a nice 7 minute mile pace. So, a strong finish to what seemed in the middle to be one of those tough runs and finishing strong is always a good sign.