I had just passed the 16-mile marker in the Utah Valley Marathon on June 11, and the reality of setting a personal-record (PR) was slowly going by the wayside. The 3 hour, 25-minute pace runner faded out of view, and with that so did my main pre-race goal of producing an all-time best in the marathon.
Fortunately, I had a secondary goal: To finish the race knowing I didn’t leave a single second out on the 26.2-mile course. It would be the ultimate test of mental toughness. In my two previous marathons—Santa Rosa last August and the Western Pacific Marathon in Fremont in April—I faded badly, hitting the proverbial marathon wall.
In Santa Rosa, I ran the first 16 miles at a 7:15-mile pace, and paid for it starting at mile 20. In Fremont, I had to take several walk breaks in the final 3 miles, a result of having lost my fitness after being involved in an ATV accident and catching the flu a month before the marathon. In Santa Rosa, I made a tactical error.
In Fremont, I couldn’t make up for lost training time. In Utah, neither factor was present. What was present, however, was the inner voice telling me to quit, that it was too hard, that I was going to hit the wall again. Legs aching, arms fatigued and ego bruised, my third marathon was setting up to be like my first two: a weak finish seemed all but inevitable.
That’s when I started invoking two mantras: “You’ve got this” and “I’ll die if I have to.” I said these two phrases hundreds of times—perhaps thousands?—over the final 10.2 miles. Every time I felt like quitting or when things were getting too hard, I invoked these phrases. Not coincidentally, I finished the marathon stronger than I had ever done—going 8:45 in the final mile (I finished in 3:36.03, or a 8:15-mile pace).
A recent post in the health section of USNews.com detailed research in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise showing that regularly engaging in self talk during a workout makes exercise feel significantly better. In other words, less painful. People who tell themselves motivating mantras are able to push themselves harder and longer than they normally would.
Mind over matter really does matter. To reach any fitness goal, experts say that exercisers have to train their brain like it’s a muscle. That means utilizing self talk constantly, especially during the toughest part of a competition. Other effective mental training tools include making clear and challenging goals, visualizing success, focused breathing throughout competition and a continual reliance on positivity through self talk and body language.
Entering the race, I had all of the aforementioned factors on my checklist. I had a main goal and secondary goal, I visualized running fast while focusing on relaxed breathing. And I had two positive mantras when things got tough. But now it was time to put everything into the crucible of a marathon.
It wasn’t easy. After mile 18, the physical pounding started to take its toll. At times, my left hip felt like it was going to rip out of the socket. My hamstrings and calves felt like they were being pulled apart. I wondered on several occasions why I keep on doing this: the suffering, the pain, the misery.
This is why: I ran the final mile in 8:45, which was 30 seconds slower than my average mile pace but also my fastest finishing mile in a marathon by a whopping 38 seconds. Upon finishing, I could barely stand upright. For the next 24 hours, in fact, it hurt simply to walk. Why did I wake up at 3 a.m to catch a bus to the start line, then have to wait around for over an hour before embarking on a 26.2-mile sufferfest?
In the end, I am energized by the extreme exhaustion and suffering that comes with running a marathon. And by utilizing positive self talk, I was able to finish a marathon stronger than I had ever done before. Metaphorically, I left pieces of my body out on that course. The pain was constant. And I’ve never felt better.
