Here’s A Way to Increase Your Physical & Mental Endurance
I love reading any and all fitness and running related magazines. In fact, I have files and files loaded with tons of articles I have collected over the years. I recently went through some of my files and came across an old article from 2005 Runners World Magazine. The article caught my attention because I saw these two words: mental training.
Depending on how long you have been following me and my blog, you know I like to talk about the mental side of training. My years of experience playing soccer at the select, collegiate, and semi-pro level taught me how important the mind is to performance. To this day, I believe I qualified and ran the Boston Marathon because I believed I could do it.
I don’t mention my soccer playing days much even though those are some of the best memories and experiences to date. In fact, my semi-professional experience playing with a team in Chicago was probably the toughest on me mentally. I went through some big up and downs and it was all mental! More on that at another time. I will have to make a blog post of it. ok, coming soon….
Training and running a marathon takes a lot of physical endurance, but what is missed most is the mental endurance! Yeah, endurance training is everything to the distance runner, but lets no forget the other important component to endurance: the mental aspect.
“Endurance is based on life experience.” “Whether you think something is long or not is completely dependent on what you’ve done before. You can boost your endurance by doing things that are mentally and physically challenging“ –Robyn Benincasa, adventure racer
Obviously, running long miles and training for a marathon are both mentally and physically challenging. But, consider thinking outside the box and trying a different endurance activity.
Robyn’s suggests doing something ridiculously long and hard for you and it doesn’t have to be running. “Throw the watch away and go climb a mountain or do something long and hard just to do it.“ She also says, “Ride 100 miles on your bike or go on a day hike—anything, as long as it’s longer than your big race.
Great suggestions and I think it’ll help you learn about such things such as what to eat on long events, how your body recovers, how much fluid you need, etc. But, more than anything its a brain builder and probably helps you build a tougher mental edge which is huge come race day.
“I like breaking up my routine and doing something like this once every three months,” Robin says, “so that when you hit the wall, you have the confidence to keep going. You know you can break through and stick with it when it really sucks because you’ve done something that sucks worse.”
I think I like this advice. Funny how when I feel lousy usually around mile 23 or so, I’m thinking how much it must suck for people who do the Ironman….they have to finish their race with a marathon and I just gotta start and end with it. Somehow it makes me feel a little better but it also makes me feel a little less awesome.
feel free to leave a comment with your own suggestions. thanks and Happy Fourth of July Weekend!
Posted by admin | in Mind Set | 2 Comments
My favorite way train mentally is doing trail runs where I have no idea how far I’ve gone and how far I have left. It lets me push hard the whole time but to really step back and listen to my body and hear what it’s telling me once I start hitting the longer miles. Great post Jill.
There are quite a few articles/studies out there that suggest that our limits are purely mental – there is no physical endurance difficulty we can’t overcome if we are mentally strong enough. I like the idea of that!