Mind Games
Self-discipline is hard. If it were easy, we wouldn’t worry so much about keeping New Year’s resolutions. We wouldn’t have to enlist workout accountability partners. There would be no such thing as a diet. And “regret” would be as foreign a word as “in shape.”
When it comes to running, it sometimes takes more mental discipline to go not the extra mile, but the distance I’ve planned for the day. It doesn’t matter if I have a training schedule posted on my refrigerator and I’m preparing for a race. It doesn’t matter what distance I ran yesterday, or the week before. Or ever. Some days even the shortest distance feels like a marathon. On those days, I have to trick myself into running.
We’ve all done it. Forced ourselves to stare at the ground a car’s length ahead, to focus on where we are right now and not on the hill in the distance or the looooonnnnng length of road up ahead. Yet we glance up periodically, seeking out the nearest landmark. If we can just make it to that stop sign, we tell ourselves, we can stop running and walk. When we reach the stop sign we reward ourselves, pat ourselves on the back. But we don’t actually stop. Instead, we choose another landmark and promise ourselves that if we make it to that azalea bush, then we’ll stop. Smell the flowers. Tie or retie our shoes. But, of course, we don’t stop even then. We scan the horizon, pick another landmark, and plod on.
Sometimes our mind games are more emphatically played. We must run a little faster, we tell ourselves, around this curve and past these few houses. We have to, you see, because we refuse to vomit on these nice people’s lawns. And so running becomes incredibly mental as we push our bodies to do—or not do—what at the time seems like the impossible.
How do you keep yourself going? Leave a comment and tell us what mental games you play when you run.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 3 so far )Next Entries »
More Than Running... 