Month: January 2018

In Part 1 of this post, I introduced my thoughts on meditation and how my experience with a 5 minute daily practice has compared to the mental struggles during the hardest parts of a marathon. I also referred to a theoretical form of mental purgatory in marathoning. Given you have the mental ability to actively control your negative thoughts and achieve some sort of this mental neutrality, which I proposed you could develop through consistent meditation, you can benefit from simply pushing away the toxic unconscious that creeps in at the worst times of the race. 

Considering this blog is based on my own theories, we’re going to keep working with the idea that our “mental purgatory,” a form of meditation in itself, is a much better position to be in than allowing negative self talk slowly creep into our mental state at mile 20. In Valencia, I tried to get into a state of mental purgatory for a good portion of the race. We had a pace group through 16, so I slipped into the pack, trusted the pacer, and just focussed on taking one easy step at a time until mile 10, when I had planned to reassess how I was feeling and how the race was developing. Muscle memory is powerful, so as long as the pace felt relatively easy, as it should through early portions of the marathon, then why wouldn’t I zone out for this portion of the race?

While I don’t believe (yet!) that a complete meditative, non-thinking state is all-together possible, let’s ground ourselves a bit, once we’re comfortable with the idea that we can clear our minds and improve our mental focus, we do want to ask the question…what’s next? What mental state do you want to be in come 16, 20, etc.?  I only know what I know, so I’m going to reference my race in Valencia one more time. At mile 16, when the pacer dropped out and two men made a move off the front of the pack, I let them go. I LET THEM GO DAMN IT!

Why did I do this? I was afraid, and I had 10 miles to go. I’ve run the last 8 miles of a marathon in pure agony, and that’s a fear that’s hard to suppress. That could have been the end of my race right there, but about three minutes later I decided I would also chase after those two guys. I don’t remember consciously making that decision, but after I caught them, two miles later, they were only two people I ran with for the next 7 miles until approximately 800 meters to go when a demon running 4:30 pace blew by me. I can confidently say that self-belief I somehow (uncharacteristically) mustered saved my race. No one in the pack that I left broke 2:19 (except the demon running 4:30 pace). 

Every runner’s nightmares of the last 6 – 8 miles of a marathon creep in eventually, we’re not monks. Whether the pack breaks up and you’re stuck in no man’s land, you get the butt clench, or any other of the many dreaded marathoning fates befalls us, we still want to be able to catch ourselves if, and when, our mental fortitude starts to waver. Further, if we have a chance to actually make a soul crushing drive for the finish, then we want to be able to will ourselves to this fate and avoid moseying through the line in mental tranquility. Let’s make it hurt and push ourselves!

A Visual Evolution of Positive Thought

Many Negative Thoughts Mode, M.N.T. Mode, “Mountain” Mode

I don’t know who this guy below is, but he’s in Mountain Mode, as in, he’s got a mountain between him and the finish. He’s begun to let the negative thoughts creep in, that it hurts, that he can’t do it. He’s straining…and has to climb a metaphorical mountain to get to the finish. WARNING: this mode is not to be confused with “Mountain Mode,” which is a mental state desired when climbing a real life mountain. This mode is DEFINITELY not to be confused with “The Mountain” Mode, the Game of Thrones character. Don’t fall into Mountain Mode and become a Mountain Mode Mouse! Prepare yourself mentally!

Zen Mode

The man below has obviously taken up a steady meditation practice before starting his daily 9-5 job, and actually appears to be levitating. I may go into levitation in a later post in order to fully elaborate on the benefits of such a skill, but I don’t have any practical knowledge as of today, so I’m going to side-step this topic. I digress, because the guy below does appear to be mentally strong, focussed, and buffered for the longest parts of the marathon. Mentally prepare yourself to be a Zen Mode Zebra for a good portion of the race and you’re bound to come out on the bad side of the first 20 in good shape.

Supersayan Mode, a.k.a. Kipchoge Mode

Super Sayan mode (a.k.a. Kipchoge mode), is the ultimate next level of emotion control. Kipchoge Mode in laments terms is what I also like to call, “Just developing a bit of self-confidence.” Kipchoge is the best in the world, and must have developed a supreme degree of mental control and confidence.

Confidence is obviously a state of mind, and one that varies based a unique variety of internal and external factors. While we can control for both, much of the time external factors are largely out our control. Therefore, I’m going to focus on the internal factors that we can potentially influence through practice.

I think its important to consider if confidence in running can be characterized in “chicken or egg” terms…does running fast promote confidence, or does confidence promote running fast? Maybe it’s the latter, and maybe we can positively impact running through a practice much like meditation. Further, maybe it’s more of a feedback loop than we think, where confidence feeds strong performance, which therefore feeds more confidence, etc! It sounds reasonable enough to my basic brain, so I’m going to try to inject a bit more effort into the internal factors driving confidence to see if it can speed up the loop. Let’s just try to be a Kipchoge Mode Kipchoge!

Can we all enter Kipchoge Mode?

Positive Self Talk

I ticked away at my laptop meticulously describing what “Positive Self Talk” is before realizing that everyone who reads this likely knows exactly what I mean. Everyone has some degree of internal dialogue running, some positive and some negative, but are we actively controlling for this? I don’t! No one coached me to! Hopefully some runners out there are doing this, but it doesn’t appear to be a widely developed enough skill for such a basic and obvious mental exercise. I know that I spend quite a bit of my time worrying about how my words affect how other people feel, but rarely give a thought to how my dialogue is impacting MY mental health. Why is this?

A study on male kickboxers described how a motivational self-talk routine improved confidence, increased positive affect (experience of joy and interest), and decreased negative affect (experience of anger, contempt, or nervousness). Simply applying a self-talk routine before, during, and after performance by both identifying negative self-talk and apply positive and motivational self-talk resulted in this statistically significant improvement in affect and confidence over the control group. If you read the study, there is a further mental training program utilized that shows even further mental benefits, but for now, let’s just worry about the self-talk routine!

Based on this study, we can conclude that three exercises may improve our mindset:

1. Practice control negative self-talk. We’re already  working on this independently of our positive self-talk routine through our meditation practice. The ability to actively identify these negative thoughts as they come and either suppress them or push them away is something we can improve through practice. Science already shows us that meditation improves the way the brain operates in a positive manner, which we may be able to use to support our mental strength in running.

2. Replace un-constrained negative thoughts with a positive alternative. Once we’re able to recognize when negative self-talk occurs, we can either support these thoughts with positive alternatives, or dismiss them completely as irrational, as they often are.

• Try keeping a notepad with you in order to identify negative thoughts relating to your running. Read them back and ask if it is something you would ever say to another individual besides yourself.
• Consider how this negative thought could influence your psychology down the road (hah…road racing), or how it may be a reoccurring thought pattern influencing your confidence.
• Frame the thought in a positive way, writing it down next to the negative thought.

3. Develop an independent positive self-talk routine. The possibilities are endless! While everyone will have a different preference regarding their own routine, experiment with what makes you feel the most confident. Or, you are welcome to try some of my pre-fab phrases:

Pre-run:”You are really really really ridiculously good looking.”

Mid-run:*Screaming* “I’M REALLY DOING IT! I’m FLYYYIIINNNNNGGG”

Post – run: “Did I just run? I barely felt it.”

Conclusion

To conclude on a serious, and philosophical note, if I could separate myself into Young Austin side 1 and Young Austin side 2, and speak soft whispers of love and affection into one ear while also speaking toxic negative self-talk into one ear, what difference would it make? Further, is this measurable and does it make a lick of difference in the end? Could I coax Young Austin side 1 into Kipchoge Mode while denigrating Young Austin side 2 into Mountain Mode? Would I kick more ferociously at the end of my race with a little more confidence? It’s possible that these techniques won’t do much, but it’s also possible that they makes all the difference in the world, and that this hypothetical verging from our best possible self is always occurring, we just can’t tell because it’s a slow moving train wreck. Even if it’s just a small difference, it’s placebo, or it has no application to running, what’s the harm in trying this 30 second exercise? Worst case scenario it has no effect, but in the best case scenario, it could be the confidence booster that allows you to make the decisive move.

I’m still looking .05% game changers, and this one is backed by solid science. Even if it doesn’t translate into running performance, maybe this will just make me a happier person overall. A little more self-confidence can’t hurt!

Do good, 

Young Austin

Have you heard of the importance of the mental component of athletics performance? If you’re like me, then yes, maybe hundreds of times. While I tend to just shake my head and brush off these basic, generalist types of statements, i.e., “Running is 90% mental and only 10% physical,”  I do recognize the obvious fact that there’s something more beneath the surface than the day to day of the training.

Why do some runs seem to violate the fabric of space time, ending almost as soon as they begin, while others drag on and on in misery. Why are we able to tap into pure instinct in some races, but overthink others. We give up or fall off the pace group, and end up kicking ourselves for days or weeks afterwards for a performance where we obviously didn’t squeeze out every drop of effort? We feel great, but it just wasn’t our day, and then sometimes we feel as if we’re pulling our feet through drying concrete, but crush a PR anyway.

I happen to believe the explanation for these sorts of struggles, where fitness and performance are misaligned, the ones that be excused due to poor weather and poor competition, lie somewhere within our mind frame, willpower, and mental stamina.

Framing the Issue

Getting straight to the point, however cliche it may be, if there is any thread of truth to the statement that running results are the outcome of 90% mental and 10% physical inputs, or even if they are only the result of 10% mental and 90% physical inputs, then the mental aspect deserves a deeper dive. In my development as a runner, no one even remotely suggested HOW to become mentally tough, or HOW to generate more internal motivation! Runners just either were tough, or were not!! Why aren’t we leveraging mental prowess to our advantage if it really is an untapped value, even if only a 5 or 10% driver of overall performance? I assume it’s possible that everyone besides myself is secretly working on this, behind closed doors, but who’s coming to practice bragging about how powerful their morning meditation was, or how much they believe in themselves? This is someting we should be talking about much more, but that’s what we’re about here. We want to try the things that no one is talking about, the things that seem to go slightly unnoticed but may have the ability to make a difference.

What I’ve been asking myself lately is whether our mental strength is something we can improve through a form of active mental training, or if it’s simply a fact that because we’re human, and not driven to run by pure instinctual fear that we will always talk ourselves into running slower than we need, to not hurt so bad. We all have the subconscious ability to rationalize, “you know body, this running thing is stupid. Why would we decide to start a long grind at mile 18 because we’re only a measly 15 seconds off sub 2:19 pace?” Ultimately, mid-race, excuses start to seep in. We should slow down because it hurts really bad and we still have 2 years before we need to qualify for the trials, and yada yada yada. The curse of the frontal lobe, our reason. I believe in the power of the mind, however, and that the mental component can be drastically improved to achieve a gain of 5%, 10%, or 100% in mental toughness. This incremental mental strength, I hope, will have a direct impact on my running, and also on my daily demeanor.

So here we go…I’m going to focus quite a bit on the mental aspect of training in a series of posts, which I am looking forward to as a way of keeping myself accountable.

Part 1: I want to talk about meditation

I’ve been experimenting with a daily 5 minute meditation practice. 5 minutes just feels like a good number to start with and something easy to accomplish right after I wake up in the morning. I sit here on the floor, where I also do most of my writing, and I try to think about nothing, continuously clearing my mind the endless stream of thoughts that creep in. It’s challenging, and I can never go 5 minutes without thinking of what I have to do at work, or whatever else I was stressing about before I went to sleep the night before. But you know, it’s gotten better, much better. I think of it like doing the dishes. If you work on clearing out the sink of your crummy dishes every single day then it always stays relatively clean, but the longer you wait, the harder it gets to scrape off the crusty sweet potatoes. That is your mind, full of sweet potatoes…keep it relatively clean with a consistent mental practice. It’s a skill that takes constant diligence, much like marathon training, so this is why I’m making it a daily habit of mine.

When I’m meditating, I’m focussing mostly on clearing out the mental junk that makes me anxious, self-conscious, and unconfident on a daily basis. I may not be fixing the fact that I’m behind on a project at work, but I can feel that it buffers me from the worry and stress through improved mental strength. Why worry about that which you cannot change?

When I’m running, I’m similarly focussing on clearing out the mental junk that makes me anxious, self-conscious, and unconfident during the marathon. I may not be solving the fact that it hurts, that it’s a physically demanding and challenging race, but if through meditation I’ve developed the mental strength to control for the inevitable moment that negative and self-doubting thoughts creep in, then I should be able to push myself through more challenges mid-race. There is (almost) always a time when you say, either consciously or subconsciously, “That’s it, I can’t hang onto this pace, this group of runners, and I’m done.” There may be several of these during a marathon, but this is what we’re trying to solve for. How can we get this subconscious thought to vanish? It’s through honing our skill of being able to push it away, because honestly how often do you really need your conscious thought while racing? Let’s just worry about putting one foot in front of the other and breathing well.

Maybe we can…just stay there in this mental purgatory where we manage to push out the self-doubt, which is obviously better than the burden of managing it! Even more, maybe if we can just keep out the self-doubt we can also figure out a way to talk ourselves into the fact that we can like, pick up the pace or something equally as crazy. I think the mental component is a snowball, and that if we can just push out enough of the junk then we can build to some sort of mental position that we can truly build off of.

I’m not a scientist, but a few sources say:

1. Meditation may ease anxiety and mental stress, based on a meta-analysis  performed in 2017 (link to study).

2. Brain Activity is significantly altered during meditation, leading to an slowing of frontal lobe activity.

3. Meditators, based on a 2012 study, perform better on cognitive tests challenging a participant’s ventral posteromedial cortex (“PMC”) stability (whatever this is). The PMC, a region linked to spontaneous thoughts and mind-wandering, lies on the underside of the brain, in the middle of your head.

These represent just a few links, after a quick search, of the hundreds and thousands that boast the mental benefits of meditation. Meditation is an ancient Eastern practice which has been popularized, but nowhere near normalized in Western society. How many can actually say that they’ve truly utilized the mental benefits from a structured meditation practice? Maybe everyone but me! But I don’t know that!

So there I go. My theory is that meditation can solve a piece of the mental puzzle. If we manage to strengthen our mental capacity by even 5%, especially if you believe in the old adages of how large of a factor the mental side of marathoning is, then why wouldn’t that make a discernible impact on our running performance?

I’m going to explore a number of other interesting theories to developing mental toughness in other parts of “Can You Think Your Way Marathon Success?” but for now, this is a good place for me, and my audience of 0 to start.

Give it a try, worst case scenario, meditation is supposed to make you a friendlier and more compassionate person, so what do you really have to lose?

Do Good,

Young Austin

With 100 days remaining in my training program, I want to take the time to refocus and reframe this period of time as a heightened dedication to running.

According to Pedram Shojai of The Urban Monk blog, “A Gong in Chinese Taoist tradition is a set amount of days one devotes to a particular task.  It’s a promise to one’s self to stay focused and on path towards a designated goal.” My Gong is 100 days of London Marathon focus.

The count down I’ve started on my Training Log emphasizes that I’m working towards the goal within a finite period of time, a fact that I’ve overlooked during previous marathon cycles, which sometime feel never-ending, unfocussed, and at times, random. As opposed to getting lost in the middle of the cycle with no perspective as to the end goal, complacent because there’s always another run tomorrow, I’ll be counting down and framing this period of time to maintain my perspective. This countdown will remind myself that every training run counts. Every run counts and every week is a brand new emphasis on simply doing everything I can to squeeze out the last 2%.

Running under 2:19 again currently seems hard, if not impossible, but committing to the first 10 days seems doable, as does the next 10, and the next 10…for just 100 days.

Do good,

Young Austin