Does the Mind Matter?

"It's 90% mental. The other half is physical."  (Yogi Berra- famous baseball player)

We have all heard the phrase "mind over matter," but what have you ever stopped and thought about what that means? I love the above quote, because even though it is obviously comically absurd (as Yogi Berra quotes usually are), it points out the mind-body interaction in athletes.  One thing that I have said to friends and family is that for me, distance running has been  more about training my mind to ignore my body's signals to stop, and instead to just keep running.  Our nervous systems are amazingly complex, and we have a normal point in physical activity at which the body involuntarily sends signals to your brain, saying "STOP! You're using  up all your extra stores of energy! What are you doing?? STOP IT." At this point, most people usually stop. Evolutionarily, this makes sense, because our brain is trying to protect us from literally running our bodies until we die; akin to the involuntary mechanism that makes you snatch your hand away from a hot burner.  But as I have mentioned more than once, the discomfort I feel during running is usually temporary, like a switch that turns on and off, and usually I don't feel that kind of pain for very long.  You just have to get over those humps and keep going.  Sometimes I am aware of every step I am taking and how much it hurts, and on others I literally just seem to go to another plane of my mind and I'm hardly even aware that my legs are moving.  There is no doubt in my mind that "mental" fatigue can be much more debilitating than physical fatigue.

Check out this article from Running Times Magazine: "Mind over Matter"

I think I gained a lot of that mental toughness from being a competitive distance swimmer, where I would also have very long workouts.  One thing that I have heard the most from new swimmers, even distance runners or cyclists who are attempting to convert into triathletes, is that they get really "bored" when they are swimming (especially because they can't listen to music).  From the age of 7 I would swim one to three hours a day with nothing but my own thoughts to entertain me, so I think I was trained to have that kind of mental longevity. Granted, the races for swimming (even the 1650, which is a mile) are never any longer than about twenty minutes or so, and most of them are only one, two or three minutes long.  So I had never experienced racing for two hours straight, like in a half marathon. 

I have mentioned in a few posts that I have gone on 10 mile runs without meaning or planning to- that I started out running on a Sunday evening, and just kept going because I felt like it.  Last weekend, however, I had to get in a 9 mile run according to my training schedule, and it's incredible how big a difference there was between those two runs.  For one thing, sometimes workouts seem much worse in anticipation; I was thinking about how and when I was going to run the 9 miles much more often in the days leading up to it than I was about those 10 mile runs (obviously, since I hadn't planned on doing them in the first place).  I was also really worried about the heat, so I was going to have to get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning, and I even reneged my Friday night plans in order to make that easier.  Moreover, Flash got in his 9 mile run on Thursday night, because he was getting an outpatient surgery on Friday (don't worry, guys! He's already back on his feet and itching to run), so I knew I was going to be running solo.

Luckily for me, it rained heavily on Friday afternoon, so I decided to just go on the run that night instead.  Flash had texted me the night before what his time was, so I aimed to generally hit the same pace overall.  I had run the three previous days in a row, though, which was abnormal for me (I usually cross train in between runs or take a day off before a long run).  So as I started out, I felt soreness in my thighs from the get-go.  What's more, I realized as I started running that I was going to be running for an hour and a half, starting at 7:30 pm.  Yes, I was physically more than capable of doing so, but when I had started out on those other 10 mile runs, I didn't think at the beginning "I think I will run for an hour and a half today"- it just evolved as I ran.  There's a huge difference in how daunting a long run can seem when you "have" to get in a a certain mileage versus when you just keep adding miles onto your original planned distance.

The run was fine, and although I didn't feel awesome, I was very grateful for the cool and rainy weather. Once again, I felt better at the end of the run than at the beginning, which could also be a psychological phenomenon: I knew that I only had a couple of miles left to go instead of 9.  I really have also started to miss running with Flash, and due to circumstances beyond our control we haven't been able to run much together lately. As I have said before, having someone with you while you are running can make it much easier. Just to point out how much of it is mental, I finished in just one second off Flash's 9 mile run time from the night before, almost as if we were shadow-pacing each other.

Another factor that has come up lately is the abominable heat.  As those of you who live in DC are aware, there has been a horrible heat wave recently, with the heat index at above 100 for a several days (today it's going to be 110). Even if I got up really early to run, it's possible that I could suffer from heat exhaustion, so yesterday I finally caved and used the treadmill for a short run. I used to only run on the treadmill, but as I started to train more I really transitioned to running outside, and now I can't stand running inside.  For some reason, running on the treadmill seems much more boring to me now, which once again points to "mental" fatigue versus physical.

It could be that some people are capable of shutting off their minds than others, and that those people are automatically more suited to distance sports, just as some people are born with a more natural affinity to play the piano.  But there is no one on earth who was born with the ability to play Chopin; they had to practice, even if they were naturally better at it. That's why we only train up to 20 miles before the marathon- our muscles can handle it after that, but we just have to power through the last six miles with gritted teeth on sheer will. So in essence, marathon training is about turning your mind from an impediment to your greatest weapon.  As Dory said in Finding Nemo, "Just keep swimming"-- Just keep running!!