Inside the mind of a runner (aka a deranged idiot)

Once again it's been a while since my last post.

This time I thought, rather than bore you with the statistics of my latest run, I'd explore how the training affects me psychologically.

Repetitive questions seem to have emerged over the past 7 weeks since I began training. Firstly and most pervasively, should I ...? For example, should I put today's run off until tomorrow? Should I eat a curry, because it might affect my run tomorrow? Should I have a beer tonight or not? These and many other 'should I' questions form regular thoughts for me, and I'd imagine a lot of other runners. The best answer I've found for these so far, is to do what you'd normally do unless this has an adverse effect. At this point consider changing strategy for similar situations in the future. I guess the best example of this is having a curry the night before a run. I'm not going to take you down this road too far, as it just gets messy, suffice to say, from experience it's best to leave a curry until the night before a rest day.

The second sort of questions are the 'can I...' questions. These reflect doubts, which I like to think are inevitable when tackling new and challenging situations. 'Can I run 16 miles, even though I've never run that far before?', 'Can I manage 7 min 20 secs / per mile for 30 Min's threshold training?' Whereas the 'should I...' questions emerge in situations outside the actual act of running, 'can I...' questions often occur during the act of running itself. My strategy for dealing with these thus far has been to think: 'well you know what, I don't know, but I'm going to try' (unless I've had a curry the night before). Sorry for this rather American high school football coach attitude, but I'm stubborn, and so far it's worked pretty well.

The final category of questions always tend to occur during running. These are the 'when is...' questions and reflect notions of physical and psychological exhaustion, either from running intensity or pure distance. The best example is 'when is this going to stop?' but other examples include 'when is my knee going feel normal?', 'when is my stitch going to pass?', 'when is the Rottweiler going to stop looking at me that way?' etc. Now I think in the short term, these are the most difficult questions to deal with. This is because you know there is an easy answer (Rottweilers excluded)- STOP RUNNING. This would, however, constitute a breaking of the golden rule. How then, do I get passed this and not end up walking home? Well, I think the most frequent strategy I use is to kid myself that I'm only going to run a shorter distance, or run slower once I reach a certain marker. In Leeds this is usually the end of the canal, which means I've still got another mile to home. I find that this helps immensely and once I reach the marker, my mind switches to 'it's only another mile to go and you can keep this pace up'.

In the marathon then, all I need to do is find my marker and start kidding myself or think Roots Manuva, Witness!

Enjoy!

Gareth