In sports psychology, we talk a lot about positive self-talk when teaching athletes to train, manage and control their internal chat. We hone in on being optimistic, and if it’s not, we encourage athletes to always pull their thoughts back to being optimistic. But a lot of sport psychology folks aren’t ultra runners or even endurance athletes and aren’t intimate with the unique psychological rigors of going really long. As an athlete, optimism should always be your aspiration, and its important to create a training process to generate this type of mind set, but in the world of endurance sports we know that positive isn’t always possible for the long haul.

When I first started learning about and using positive self-talk in my training and racing as a triathlete, I started at the beginning—noticing my general dialogue in various aspects of my athletic life. I then implemented positive self-talk words and phrases to replace the negative, as well as affirmations and imagery I designed over time. After several weeks of consistent focused mental training I noticed that in events or training sessions of a few hours or shorter I could remain positive, for the most part. But carrying this process into Ironman events, 100-mile ultra running races, or continuous or staged multi-day races, remaining positive was virtually impossible unless I flat out lied to myself.

Using word cues such as, “I am light and strong” just doesn’t sit right when you are at mile 85 of a 100-mile running race shuffling through some of the toughest stretch of trail in the country in the middle of the night, and you just clipped your blistered big toe on a rock and endo-ed into the creek because your hip flexors are too shot to lift your feet any higher than a shuffle. In situations like this, somehow even “patience,” seems like a bunch of crap.

You don’t need 85 miles of running behind you to get to this particular head space; you can thwart your positive thoughts on a long training jaunt or in a weary 8 miler if it’s just not your day. In any case, if you can’t seem to get positive, what do you do? You get rational. Rational basically means lucid, balanced, coherent, or sane. If “positive” is eluding you, isn’t sanity a pretty good second choice?

Here’s what your rational voice might look like.

Thought: “I’m so tired, I’m not sure I can keep going.”

Thought stopping cue: “STOP!”

Replace negative thought with rational thought: “Walk and eat a gel packet,” or, “Walk to the next telephone pole, stretch, then start running slowly.”

Rational self-talk speaks to the essential aspects of how you can stay in the game: eating, drinking, proper pacing, negotiating terrain and just generally continuing to move forward. The key is that it prevents your mind from going to the negative. That is our goal. Rational self-talk gives your body instructions when it wants to quit. A client who frequently uses rational talk commented, “I pick a spot on the trail and I tell myself I will return to full mental and physical peak at that point. This helps me a lot rather that trying to turn an emotion on a dime, which can become a bit of a punching bag sometimes.”

In longer events or in events of any distance that challenge your fitness level, the body wants to quit when the going gets really tough. The mind must step in to prod the body forward. The body waits for a weakness to allow it to slow, but the mind can’t allow for it. Your mind propels. If you can’t reach for positive to squelch the negative demons, reach for rational—your body will thank you and you’ll keep the negative thoughts at bay.

Here are some more rational self-talk words and phrases that are helpful:

“Slow your pace.”

“Pump your arms on this hill.”

“Pick up your feet.”

“Take an electrolyte tablet in 3 minutes.”

“Start running at the next tree.”

“Focus.”

“Stay with me.”

I have used rational self-talk in all of my Ironman races and have carried that process into many one and multi-day ultra running events and adventure races. I have never taken for granted that it will be there, I have trained it to be there—just like my positive self-talk. Rational self-talk, just like positive self-talk, can offer you satisfying event experiences. It can keep you present to your race strategy. Used in conjunction with your positive self-talk, it is a powerful tool for your mental toolbox.

Terri Schneider is a coach, sport psychology consultant, speaker, writer and multi-sport endurance athlete. Visit Terri at www.terrischneider.net.

When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get—Rational – Terri Schneider Multidays.com - Multiday and Ultrarunning News

Photo by Karl Leitz

Posted on the Ultralist and reprinted here with kind permission.

Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 17:10:00 -0500
From: Shannon McGinn
Subject: Re: A question about mileage and what I might do about it

I haven’t read all the responses, so I apologize about any duplication of ideas.

Last year I ran 3455 miles. My injury rate was low. I strained my plantar fascia once pretty bad in the middle of a 15k. I still ran every day (at least one painful shuffling mile) and got through it just fine. Set all my PR’s after healing up. I had more issues, including chronic PF, when I ran less.

I achieved a high mileage year by running very slow most of the time, running very fast sometimes (35 races in the year), and doubling up my runs as much as I could. That worked well for me.

I ran a few miles before work, a few after work, and when possible I would get dropped at work in the morning and run the 8 miles home with my pack of clothing on my back. I loved that! Traffic here stinks so it added 20 minutes to my travel time to do it on foot, but gave me more time once home to do other things.

I have two jobs now. One that is exactly 26.2 miles away and it is very tempting… except the commute is all highways. The other job is 16 miles away and that one involves a lot of evening shifts where I get off at 8:30pm. I would get home too late if I ran home. But I do get to run at lunch when I need to. I also worked very hard over the past two years to rearrange my work life to allow me to maximize my training time. I found that really, 14 hours per week is the maximum time I can spend training. After that amount I start to feel too beat up.

I do many of my long runs with a team of cancer-fundraising marathoners where I am a team training captain (Team in Training). Each weekend when I am not racing, I show up and find out that morning who is running the furthest. There are about 4 cycles of marathoners in training so mostly I get 10-20 milers. They run at very slow paces. I try to hook up with the fastest of the bunch – the fastest guy was just barely sub-9. Most are 10-11:00 paced runners. I usually start an hour early and run 5-6 miles at my pace also just sub-9 on the trail. Then run the last 10-15 miles at their pace.

I think people underestimate how strong someone actually gets from slow training. I believe that much of what we think of as natural speed in racing is actually more about built up strength. Slow training tends to make me very strong and minimizes my injury rate. That has translated into some faster race times for me (at least at the short distances… like 50k, marathon, and under). I just set a 5k PR as well which was awesome to do on slower training.

I was a middle distance runner in high school, so it only makes sense that I am gravitating toward the middle distances now. In 2013 I hope to keep up the mileage that I ran in 2012 while testing out how I do between 6 hours and 100k. I will save the long distance running for later when I can get my mileage per week average a little closer to the race mileage of the longer stuff. 3455 per year averages out to what seems to be about perfect mileage for 100k races … in my mind, at least.

Shannon McGinn is a running coach based in and around Woodbridge, NJ. Checkout Shannon’s blog, Creating Momentum for more ideas and thoughts that inspired “High Mileage And Low Injury Rate”.

High Mileage And Low Injury Rate – Shannon McGinn Multidays.com - Multiday and Ultrarunning News

Message Body:
A recent TV program on The Discovery Channel featured well known British Olympic Athlete James Cracknell competing it what was billed as The Toughest Race in the World.  The excellent program showed how James trained and prepared his body for a top 50 finish in a field of over 1000, no mean feat with some of the world’s top ultra-runners in attendance.  The program documented how James encountered all of the usual problems during his training, injury set-backs, family commitments as well as food and equipment worries.  Yet James was able to compete at the highest level of any Briton in the history of the race, far exceeding his original goal of a top 50 finish, eventually finishing 12th overall.

What was it that James was able to do to pull himself to this level of performance?  We have already mentioned his training was less than perfect, in fact he ran only once in the 6 weeks leading up to the event itself.  We have acknowledged the fact he must have a high level of underlying fitness, but as anyone that has trained knows, a gap of only three weeks from your last run can see your fitness levels drop markedly, so this cannot account for such a high finish.  Physically James is also far from the ideal, over 6ft tall and weighing in at a muscular 100kg.  There has to be another factor that helped James finish 12th, and indeed helps 1000’s less gifted athletes than James finish these ultra-endurance races.

His mind.  It was his mind that enabled James to consistently compete at the highest level, even when his body was crying out to stop, and it is the same the world over for all ultra-runners.  The one thing all ultra-runners have in common is not their ability to train every day, it’s not the ability to run 100 miles at a 5 min/mile pace.  It is the ability to put one foot in front of the other, to keep going when others give up, to master one’s mind to the point that you can override your body’s desire to quit.  A quick trawl through the internet will throw up a huge number of training plans for completing ultra-marathons; few of these truly address the one thing that will consistently get you across the finish line, the mind!

By training your mind you are giving yourself the best possible chance of completing one of these amazing events.  As the old mantra goes, “fail to prepare, prepare to fail”, and anyone that neglects the mind will indeed find the ultra-marathon that much harder to complete, or indeed will fail all together.  I am not saying to ignore any physical training plan, but to include the training of the mind in that plan.  In fact by including the mind in your schedule you give yourself the opportunity to train in the event of an injury or other commitments.

We are developing several training plans along with our partners that will encompass the mind as well as the body.  By challenging oneself in a particular way you can recreate some of the obstacles and challenges you will overcome on your journey to completing an ultra-marathon.  By building some of these challenges in to your daily and weekly routine you will increase your chance of reaching your goals, be it to complete a race, or to finish in the top 10.

Beyond The Ultimate run the Ultimate Ultra race series.  We are producing a series of Ultra Races taking in 4 different and challenging terrains, Ice, Mountain, Jungle and Desert.  The next race is the Jungle Ultra, Peru.

www.beyondtheultimate.co

Wes Crutcher
Race Director

wes@beyondtheultimate.co

Why anyone can complete an Ultra-Marathon & dispelling The Ultra-Marathon myth Multidays.com - Multiday and Ultrarunning News

1. The goal is important because you will tailor your preparation toward that event
2. That target will give you your window of preparation, not just physically but mentally and logistically
3. That goal will give an idea of the level of fitness necessary to complete the race which you can compare to where you are currently.

For these reasons it is necessary to decide which race you will enter.

Marathon des Sables 2009 Photo by Nick House

Choosing A Multiday Race

There are several kinds of multiday races to choose from: timed events, distanced events and staged events.

Stage Races

For example the MdS is a 6 day stage race with each stage varying in length from half a marathon 13 miles to a double marathon 52 miles covering a total of about 150 miles over the six days. The MdS is a particular challenge because not only do you have to be able to cover the daily stage but you have to recover and do it all over again the next day. The stages are different so there is always a freshness about each day’s challenge. And not only that. The MdS takes place under normally very hot dry conditions and one has to carry ones food and kit for the duration of the event. Last year, 2009, unusually there was a lot of rain just before the event started and so conditions were much more humid than they normally are.

So for the MdS one has to:

• train to run between 13-52 miles a day for 6 days
• train to run with kit and water
• train to run under extreme weather conditions
• train to run on challenging terrain

Timed Races

Across the Years is a 24/48/72 hour race on a flat kilometre loop on crushed gravel. This race also takes place under semi desert-like conditions. However the event takes place over the New Year when the temperatures during the day are mild though it does get cold at night. This race format allows the runner to set his own target and pace and to do whatever he or she wants, the go-as-you-please style.

Distance Races

The 2010 Athens Ultrafestival included a 1000 mile and provided a slightly different challenge to the timed events and stage races in as much as the goal is already set and the runner knows what has to be done before the race even begins. To reach 1000 miles in the 16 day time limit required an average of 100.584 km a day so the runner has to create a schedule or plan to help attain that goal both in terms of preparation and also race strategy.

Be Realistic

Setting the goal within reach is important. If the goal is too high then too many doubts or fears may creep in and undermine the project. If it’s too easy then at the end of the race one may feel that one could have done a lot more. Falling short is ok but one of the challenges of these events is to find out what we are capable of, finding our limits, so being as realistic as we can can give us a more accurate idea of where we are and what we are capable of.

Finding Baselines

Photo by Alakananda

This is where running ultras can give us some guidelines for what we can expect during a multiday. A 24 hour race for example, will enable us to have the experience of running for many hours and through the night whilst tired. It will give us the opportunity to see what happens to our feet, legs and knees. Some people have posture weaknesses that only emerge after 12-18 hours of running. There may be certain foods we like or don’t like, favourite drinks, certain items of clothing that work or not, certain pace that works – these things we have to build in to our experience and as we discover what works and what doesn’t so we move gradually forward toward realising our goal, step by step.

Running a 24 hour race will provide us with an idea of the kind of pace we are comfortable with, bearing in mind that the first day of a multiday is not quite the same thing as a 24 hour.

Often we are capable of much more than we normally think we are. Preparing for a multiday race is an experiment in discovering and setting new reference points to take us into the beyond.

Training For A Multiday Race: Setting the Goal Multidays.com - Multiday and Ultrarunning News

Thoughts on Training by Satyajit Saha

(first published in Ez6 vol.3 2006)

With eleven weeks to go before the start of the Self-Transcendence Six Day Race, there is still much to accomplish in your training. Everyday renew and maintain a healthy and sane respect for the challenge of multiday running. Everyday ask yourself how you can prepare yourself. Do not let a day transpire without using it as an opportunity to make yourself a better student of running and self-transcendence.

Consistency

The most important factor in your training is consistency: unswerving dedication to daily, weekly, monthly, injury-free running habits. There are two things that can keep you focused on your training:

1) the awareness that diligent daily training will reduce or even prevent most of the problems that will challenge you in a multiday race.
2) an appreciation of just how special the race can be.

I will share a few of my own experiences to illustrate these two points. My first multiday race was a four-day race, 200 miles. At that time I was a four-hour marathoner training 35 miles a week. This race came unexpectedly and I did it on inspiration. The first day I ran 60 miles. After the first day my muscles were filled with lactic acid and I felt it was impossible to run the second day. So I walked and struggled for the next two days. I somehow managed to remain cheerful using a Walkman to pump good music into my ears and nervous system. I finished the race and completed the distance but everyday was a tremendous struggle.

The third day of the race I completed 26 miles, which gave me a total of 140 miles. With 24 hours left in the race I had 60 miles to go to reach the goal of 200. I decided to surrender any expectations of reaching the goal and to simply concentrate on being happy. From 7 o’clock in the morning until 10 p.m. I just tried to enjoy being on the racecourse with the other runners. We walked and talked and sang and hobbled and ran together with the camaraderie of ‘survivors’ on a great adventure. At 10 p.m. I was within 26 miles of the goal. A light went on within me. I was suddenly inspired to run. It was as if I had found water at the end of a long desert. I knew I could run a marathon and I took off. I ran as if my life depended upon it. The exhilaration of finishing this race made a permanent impression on my heart, my soul, my psyche.

Two years went by before I had the courage to try another multiday, – a 5-day race. This time my training was about 50 miles a week. Once again I was not strong enough to avoid a serious energy crisis on days 2 and 3. For 48 hours I walked without running a step. Feeling nervous and insecure from the beginning, I ran too fast on day one. On the third day I was so discouraged I left the race and came back six hours later. This kind of energy swing from day 1 to day 2 and 3 can subjectively feel like a total collapse and can be very, very discouraging, yet it is very common. How to avoid it?

In my third race, a 7-day race two years later, I was determined to have a better race experience. For four and a half months I ran over 100 miles per week. My goal in training was to run 10 miles twice a day, 7 days a week.
I came remarkably close to fulfilling this goal. This time of my life I had as much fun with my running as any time in my life. Training was not just training, it was an ongoing challenge that completely invigorated and consumed me. As difficult as it was, it was a pure joy.

By doubling my mileage in training I avoided the collapse and depression that had plagued me on the second and third days of my first two races. For the first four days I was running 65 miles a day. I was actually running too hard, putting too much pressure on myself. My running was too aggressive and I had to pay for it. Serious blisters plagued me the last three days of the race. It would take yet another race to learn the art of steady pacing. So the race was not a complete success from beginning to end, but the increase in my training definitely paid off.

For the next few years I enjoyed training 90 to 100 miles a week. In 1996 I had my best race experience in the Sri Chinmoy 10-day race. My running, my pacing, my focus, my emotional demeanor and spiritual outlook were consistent throughout the race. I was on an even keel and ran 30 miles every morning and 30 miles every afternoon. Totaling 603 miles at the end of ten days, Grace descended and it was a very special once in a lifetime experience.

This brings up the second point. What makes the race so special?
Transcendence! Self-transcendence is the essence; the quintessential core of what multiday running is about. During a multiday transcendence event all the trivial nagging minute forces of human frustration and sorrow that dog mundane, habitual living melt away and dissolve in the one-pointed focus and mission of covering at least one more mile before taking pause, or giving in. The struggle of running becomes the sole mission, the all-consuming purpose of the runners’ consciousness. The runners’ consciousness becomes clear, uncluttered and untrammeled in its singleness of purpose. Just run one more lap. One more lap. One more lap. Nothing else matters. The body aches, the nervous system is taxed to its limit. But the mind is clear. The heart is clear. There is nothing to prove to anyone. No place else to be. No bonds, no cares, no worries. Just run, or walk, and be free. The rest of the world takes care of itself. Just run one more lap.

It seems to me that the other runners feel this and commune with this Spirit which percolates through the struggles of each. It is unspoken, but the runners know, and they know the other runners know. In certain ways they feel connected to each other more than they can possibly express. The only expression of this unexplainable oneness is to push for another lap-run another mile, and another mile. And when it is all over, even before the body and mind have fully recovered, the hints come up from the subconscious; images, memories of something very, very special – the hunger to run another race, the call from inside to return to the Source, to run another mile, one more mile. That’s multiday running. And the training becomes a daily celebration of what it truly means to be alive.

Multiday Races – Thoughts on Training by Satyajit Saha Multidays.com - Multiday and Ultrarunning News