Ultrarunning races: Mental strategies

Standing on the starting line of an ultra race without having a mental strategy can be extremely risky. To think that you can easily run an ultra without a strategy - other than taking one step at a time - is not the best idea. Before you know it, your head will be as exhausted as your body. You might "just" have been running for 6 hours - and now you need to find a way to keep going for another 18 hours.

But what strategy should you use? Should you ponder about life and death? Think positive thoughts? Use a whip? What works as a mental strategy to help yourself out of a low point is extremely individual. Moreover, what works and what doesn’t depends on the specific moment and on how deep you have already fallen into the black hole once you even discover that you are there…

In this article, we’d like to share with you some of our best tricks, but for them to be helpful you need to practice them before a race, and before you enter the deep pit of doubt and darkness. It may also be beneficial to have decided in advance which strategy or plan you intend to use on this particular day.

When you’ve hit a low point, it can be difficult to just stand up and start running without a mental strategy in mind.

Mindfulness

Sensing a total presence with every step. Allowing the emotions and thoughts to come and go, observing them as birds flying by but not putting any value to or wasting energy on them. The feeling you want to have is one of curiosity about what the next step will mean, whether it means feelings and thoughts of hopelessness, pain, stomach pain, pain in your feet - or even joy. For example, if you have a knee injury, you can try to describe the pain to yourself - how painful t is, what color it has, if it's stingy or soft, etc.

This may sound very simple, but using mindfulness as a strategy is about as difficult as not having any strategy at all. Mindfulness is not as easy as it sounds, and especially not if you are a beginner. However, if you have been exercising for years at somewhat easier levels - then it can work. For some. Mindfulness works especially well if you just feel a little unwell - if it’s just starting to get dark and you are only at the beginning of your darkness. If it has been longer, you usually need to use other methods than just pure mindfulness.

Think about death

Thinking about death, both one's own mortality as well as the impermanence and vulnerability of everything, can be effective. As a natural consequence of this kind of thinking, during a race one usually slips into the attitude of "it could have been worse", which is almost always true. And even though it doesn't feel so uplifting, it can be nice to get some perspective on your situation.

A whole villiage under water — gives you some perspective on life and death.

Think about life

Think of love, children, friends and all that is good in life! There is a lot of power in the positive energy we get from love. However, our experience is also that it can be difficult to channel this energy when you are already in a dark place mentally. One way to fool the brain can be to force yourself to smile or laugh out loud. If you’re running around on a track you can try to catch the eye of your support or someone else sitting next to you and try to experience the great thing about being there together. And don't forget that you can always ask someone for a hug!

But beware! This method may work great at times, but it can also be risky. It's easy to arrive at the conclusion that there are more important things in life than running, which might have you quitting a race in the middle of a hug with your loved one…

Try to think about something really beautiful and lovely — like for example a child hugging a lamb.

Carrot or stick approach

Perhaps not as philosophical a strategy as those we have mentioned above, but all the more effective for those who have trained properly. Some manage to continue running by yelling at themselves, slapping themselves (either literally or mentally) and working up an anger that could very well give a proper adrenaline rush. However, most people do best with rewards. For example: If I run for another 15 minutes, I can walk for a minute. If I run another hour, I get to listen to music later. After ten miles, I will reward myself with an ice cream/beer/whatever.

Of course, you don’t always necessarily have to give yourself the reward after 15 minutes - sometimes it may be enough to trick yourself to continue for just a little while. And then a little while longer. And then just a little more…

Sweets might be a treat to look forward to!

Divide the race into smaller parts

This is almost a must, no matter if you’re running a marathon, 100 miles or a 24 hour race. How you choose to divide the race depends on both the nature of the race and who you are, but in order to make good use of this method, it can be a good idea to create detailed descriptions of each part of the race in your head in advance.

You can also have really great rewards ready for yourself at the end of each “section”. This way you have something important to focus on and look forward to. The idea is that the brain only needs to grasp a small part at a time - and in order for it to work well you need something to hang onto.

But beware! To think that you can divide the race into e.g. 10 mile sessions that do not differ in any way from one another - that’s probably not a very good idea. The different parts must have a unique meaning to you. A trick to help you along the way here is to create colorful and detailed descriptions for each section. If you’re running a 100-mile race, you may want to split the race into four approximate marathon distances: The warm-up, Now the race starts for real, the Struggle and the Final Run. And if you run a 24-hour race on track you can first run a 6-hour race, then maybe the NYC Marathon, then a 30k-race and then maybe a half marathon at the end. For example, if you have previously run the NYC Marathon while listening to a particular playlist, it can be smart to use the same music when you come to the “NYC Marathon”-part of the 24-hour race.

Another variant of this mental strategy is that, when you feel really low and can’t understand how you will cope for countless more hours, you can pretend that you’re just going out on a familiar training session that you often run at home. You know that you can handle that 10 k run at home, you have done this many times before and in different mental states. You have run it even though you’ve been tired, have had muscle pains, when you’ve felt depressed, when the sun has been shining, when it is late at night and maybe even with a hangover - so clearly you can run it this time as well!

Try to visualise that you’re running one of your daily runs. This is a good way to break down the race into smaller parts.

Decide later

One of the simplest and most effective strategies is to decide later. It's never too late to give up, right? So you might as well postpone it a little longer. Decide to let the decision wait. Set a time frame and tell yourself that you should think about quitting in exactly 20 minutes again. Or even better in an hour. And drop it until then. You will think about it again a little later.

Never allow yourself to act on the first impulse without having this strategy in your back pocket. When you come up with the brilliant idea of quitting the race, give yourself at least 20 minutes extra where you do nothing but continue forward. You can rest assured that you will make the decision later. Once 20 minutes have passed, you can either decide a new time when you can make a new decision or you can decide to quit. But very often, the first strong impulse of wanting to quit eventually passes and you have already started thinking about other things.

Backup plans

To have a certain amount of backup plans if things don’t work out the way you plan is probably a smart idea. Plan A can be a desirable scenario and, even though it is a high goal, the road to it should be well planned. Plan B might be more likely to happen, and Plan C may be important to be able to make use of if everything goes wrong. Thinking about how you should act if Plan C becomes necessary may be the most important thing you can do to make you feel satisfied after the race - no matter how it goes. For example, a plan C could be to run the race at any cost (as long as you can stay on your feet), or it may be to try to have fun as long as possible.

Mantras

For some, the mantra strategy may seem a little ridiculous, but it is a method that is not to be underestimated. When your brain is really tired, it usually can’t cope with complicated strategies and beautiful goals, but maybe, maybe it can repeat just a simple mantra. There is a particularly good chance to succeed if you have been practicing it before. For example, you can try repeating to yourself: "I have strong and fast legs”, or the classic "I want, I can, I want, I can". Mantras such as "Never again second place” or "I'm going to finish" can be powerful, but it can also be risky to use such a specific mantra as there is a great risk that the brain then directly goes against it by saying "But now I am getting second place. . ".

The important thing is to make your brain think of something else than giving up. You might as well think of a banana or a dog, or anything that is running-related. The important thing is that you find a mantra that works for you personally, no matter how silly it may seem to others.

Music

Music is said to be able to have the same effect as painkillers, and to avoid feeling pain at times may be needed. In addition, music is also a way to help the brain not to become too negative. Before your race, maybe you want to create a playlist with all of your favourite songs on it? And then you can just hit the play button when you’re really in need of some motivation and new energy. Keep in mind, though, that those crazy happy songs that usually work on shorter sessions may not feel as uplifting in the middle of a long ultra race. What kind of songs would you choose for your 100-miler?

World star Núria Picas, winner of the Ultra World Trail Tour several times, listenes to opera while racing! — World star **Núria Picas**, winner of the Ultra World Trail Tour several times, listenes to opera while racing!

Talk with your competitors

This is a hands-on approach that, although it involves other people, is still only about forcing the brain to a different place from where it is right now. In the long run, it may even be worth waiting for a competitor to catch up so that you can talk to him or ger for a while. This method is one of the safest ones, and it is also probably the safest to use. Being able to talk away an hour or two with someone you've never met before can be an amazing experience. In addition to making friends for life, you can hear exciting life stories and what’s more, time goes much faster when you can run in good company.

In order to increase the positive effect, you can also use a variant of this method where you give compliments. Everyone you run past (or who run past you) is worth a compliment. Although everyone who has run through a whole night knows that they probably look like crap, most of us appreciate it when we are told that we’re looking good or really strong. And this good feeling is contagious. Hand out small compliments here and there and, before you know it, you’ll be running with a smile on your lips.

Stop fighting against yourself

When you set a goal for yourself and notice after a while that you will not be able to reach it, it is common to start fighting. You think that you have to struggle to catch up and get on schedule again. But in reality you have already given up, and the realization that then starts to form is that you should accept that your dream goal is unattainable. As long as you continue to maintain this inner struggle, it will drain a lot of energy from you.

Something that might be worth testing in this situation is to simply stop fighting. Accept the situation and try to understand that this time you will not reach your goal. If you succeed in letting go of the goal as well as the frustration that now "everything is screwed”, you will suddenly find it much easier to run. The sky becomes bluer, the colors become more beautiful and your breathing works better. Stopping to fight can be a way to start over. You may not reach your dream goal, but you may be able to complete the race and have a much more enjoyable experience.

Remind yourself about how much you have invested

If your partner would remind you of how much you paid for the registration fee and how many late evenings you’ve neglected your family to go out and train, you would certainly be annoyed. Especially if you hear it when you feel your worst and really just want to quit. But as a tactic to get yourself back on track when you spend too much time thinking about quitting, this approach can be quite effective.

Next time you want to quit, try to figure out for yourself how much you have invested in this painful adventure. You may have taken time off from work, traveled a long way and paid expensive money for both hotels and a pair of brand new running shoes with extra cushioning. In addition, if you have paid even more expensive money for a coach who has made you think that you are actually up to the challenge, that’s even better! Use all of these points and try to put them in relation to that blister on your big toe that is currently threatening to ruin your dreams. Sure, the little blister might decide the course of your life - but not today (the blister can make completely other decisions, for instance that tomorrow you will walk to work in your partner’s comfy sneakers instead of in your usual high heels). Today, you are the decision-maker - and when you are too tired to know what you really want is the time when you should think about everything that you have invested in this particular race. What and how much you have invested can be helpful in remembering how much it would really mean to you to finish the race.

Before the start of any 100-miler, people are always very tense…

Visualize your goals?

In our experience, working with visualizing your goals works better when you try to motivate yourself to training, than it does when it comes to crossing the finish line of a long ultra race. The reason for this is that however clear and desirable your goal seems before the race, there’s a very high chance that this goal seems ridiculously small and insignificant in comparison with your current situation (that is, trying to fight your way forward, maybe just one step at a time toward the next aid station).

Working with goals in the traditional way works well when it comes to shorter races, when your mind is still fresh. But if you do decide to use goal visualization as a strategy in the context of ultrarunning, make sure to involve as many senses as possible when you think about that goal — how does it smell, what do you hear, what do you see, what do you feel? Using your senses when thinking about a certain goal makes the strategy more tangible, and therefore also more effective.

Another good idea is to make your visualization a very dramatic one. For example, the Swedish legendary ultrarunner Rune Larsson set out to win the Spartathlon in Greece in 1987. The race is 240 kilometers long and Rune Larsson had already tried to win the race several times. Not until he decided to run in a way where he’d need to be picked up by an amulance at the finish line, was he able to win. In order to push himself to his limits, he needed a really strong goal image to motivate him! And after 1987, he won the race several times more…

Shower ice cold

Taking an ice-cold shower in the middle of an ultra race may sound more like a physical strategy than a mental one. But showering cold is so painful and shocking that it affects your entire body, including the brain. Your whole being ends up in a state of shock, which also forces the brain to re-set and restart. And no, you don’t need to stay under the cold water for so long that you faint, vomit or scream out of pain - the only thing needed is that you stay long enough to force the blood circulation to get going again (about 30 sec-2 minutes).

The cold shower also gives you an opportunity to experience a different kind of state than the one you were in before jumping into the shower. For instance, if you - before you jumped into the ice cold shower - felt a strong, persistent pain in the muscles and joints, nausea or headaches as a result of running for so long, then the sharp cold will be a welcome change. Try it, the magic of the cold shower will surely affect you in one way or another!

Eat something sweet

This is also a technique that one would think doesn’t fit into the category of mental strategies, but believe it or not, often your mood has a correlation with your level of sugar intake… If you have a lack of energy (that you may not even be aware of yourself), it often shows by being low mentally. Eating something really sweet can bring positive energy and focus back so you have the power to continue running - and working with the other mental strategies.

So, which method should I use?

In this article we have brought up a lot of mental strategies that can be useful during ultras. Of course, there are many more clever tricks to make use of whenever you feel like lying down in a ditch to die. But if there’s one thing we want you to remember, it’s this: the most important thing is that you find a mental strategy that works good for you. One that you can easily pull out of your pocket and make use of when you need it the most during an ultra race. It’s all about figuring out a way to continue forward, one step at a time, until you finally cross that finish line.

Written by Ellen Westfelt, Ultrarunning Academy