February 19th: A Lesson in Mental Toughness

Sometimes you do the right thing for the wrong reason. This morning’s run was one of those times for me. 

Here's the Chia Fresca I forgot

Last night, I prepared a pint of Chia Fresca to drink before my workout. It’s actually a great drink before a run, because the natural sugar in the lime juice and agave have low glycemic indices, so you get a steady stream of energy, instead of a spike. And the small amount of protein in the chia seeds is just right to have moving through you as your muscle fibers break down. (Shoot me a note if you want the recipe.) Since I pushed hard yesterday on the interval run, I figured it would be good to have a little boost this morning.

That is, until I totally forgot about it.

So I wound up doing a glycogen-depleted run, which isn’t a bad thing. Teaching your body how to push on when your sugar stores are gone is a key to marathon runners. Regardless of what gels I take during the race, I’m going to hit a point where I just want to stop. So I want to get used to that feeling now, so I can plan for how to overcome it.

I came across an interesting article yesterday about the role of mental toughness in running. It’s a lot to digest, but the gist of it is this: You frequently hit your mental breaking point long before your body actually hits the wall. It’s a natural defense mechanism -- your brain is trying to keep your body out of danger. But the success of endurance athletes hinges on the ability to override that impulse.

This is not to say that you want to push yourself to the edge of collapse every time you work out. A major part of mental toughness is the ability to listen to your body to know when something is truly about to go wrong. But part of that is experience. Today, after I hit about 3 miles, I felt the impulse to shut it down. But I knew that, Chia Fresca or not, my body is capable of well more than 3 miles. So I pushed through 4. I kept checking my time and distance, and it just didn’t seem to be going fast enough. Bumped up the speed to 6.5 (9:13 miles). And I really thought I just wasn’t going to make it. I got to 4.8 and was thinking, "OK, just two more minutes. Just get to 5." 

And then a funny thing happened: I hit 5 miles and almost instantly felt better. I knew I could hit 6 no problem. It was like once I got to that threshold, the anchors were removed from my ankles. I even started cranking up the speed. The last half-mile or so was in the 9:00/mile range, with a 8 mph (7:30 pace) burst the last couple of tenths. When it was all done, 6 miles in 55:40 -- a 9:16 pace.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I've been running up against a mental wall lately. But this is exactly the kind of victory that I needed to keep on truckin'. I'll need to keep thinking about strategies for overcoming my brain's obstacles, but I'm feeling a lot better now than I was after Sunday's long.

Tomorrow I'd like to get some miles in, but I really don't want to push the pace, since I've done two tough workouts in a row. Also, I realized that if I want to move my long back to Saturdays, I'm going to have to scrap the extra run this week and maybe squeeze it in on Monday. Friday is rest, and then Saturday is 16 or so. 

I'm likely going to register for the E. Murray Todd Half Marathon on 3/2. It starts at Brookdale Community College, goes through Thompson Park (a great paved loop course), and then wends through Holmdel and Lincroft. That fits exactly into the Higdon Novice 2 schedule.

Total miles since starting the blog: 345.1