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Sep

Mentally Managing your Marathon

It’s known as one of the most significant life changing personal challenges you can experience, running a marathon. It’s a challenge that the average person genuinely recognises as achievable because we all know someone just like us that started going for a jog once a week and has now completed a marathon.

It’s no secret running produces many benefits such as reducing anxiety, decreasing depression, and elevating moods. Neurotransmitters such as epinephrine and norepinephrine are greatly increased during and after a marathon resulting in enhancements in emotional responses and further enhancing one’s self-esteem. However, there is another side to running that often gets ignored, that’s the risk of developing an exercise addiction when the highs from running become so addictive you begin moving your social life around your running sessions.

Much research has been done looking at the benefits and reasons behind people choosing to take on the challenge of distance running, with one of the most cited reasons pre-race for doing a marathon is facing physical and mental challenges, along with a sense of accomplishment. As runners get more experienced they still enjoy staying in shape but their motivations move to running faster times and beating other competitors. Ogles anMentally Managing your Marathon 4d Masters (2003) found that older runners were more motivated by general health orientation, weight, life meaning and group affiliation, whereas younger runners were more motivated by personal goal achievement.

When you first make the decision to run it’s natural to get all of your physical programs underway and focus on gaining endurance and fitness in your body. What’s less understood are the psychological components of running marathon’s and managing your mind with all that time on the open road just to think – about your body, how much pain you might be in, how much further to go, what else you could be doing right now, or how warm or cold it is.

Preparation and Training

Leading experts have concluded that marathon running is one of the most stressful activities in which normal, neurologically intact humans engage (Sapolsky, 2004, p.104). So with such a stressful activity to prepare for, it only makes sense to address the mental challenges runner’s experience throughout their preparation and the race.

Fully preparing for a marathon and long distance running can take months and years to perfect and feel like you have properly managed. In fact race day is the easy part of the journey, it’s the countless hours of running in preparation that see so many never even make it to race day.

Havenar and Lochbaum (2007) compared first-time marathon finishers to pre-race dropouts, concluding that 50-70% of runners dropped out within 6 months of starting their running program.
They found that runners were initially motivated by physical benefits such as weight loss and mental benefits such as stress relief – whereas more experienced runners were motivated by meeting personal running distance goals.

Emotions and Stressors

As soon as any runner is confronted with a potentially stressful situation or demand during training or events, the athlete initiates an evaluation process which determines the emotional response and level of perceived stress. The runner will make a primary appraisal of the stress and the impact of the stressor in regard to personal goals, commitments and values – their interpretation of their ability to physically, psychologically, emotionally and practically manage the stress determines the success nature of the situational demand.

Runners tend to pace themselves cognitively by manipulating their attentional focus (Baden, et al. 2004). When athletes were asked to maintain a constant RPE (rate of perceived exertion) during exercise, work output declined over time, reached a plateau, and then increased at the end. It is recognised that subjective feelings of fatigue can be influenced by expectations about task duration, finding that more experienced runners tend to avoid premature exhaustion by regulating their exercise intensity throughout their sessions.

Runners can experience internal, external, and interpersonal stressors throughout their training, impacting their preparation in a variety of ways, each needing specific attention and strategies to successfully manage and stay on track to reaching their goal.

Interpersonal stressors include things such as social relationships, social evaluations, external pressure to perform, conflicts, or lack of social support. While external stressors include environmental factors (heat, cold, rain, wind, altitude, terrain or distance), and organisational factors (poor hydration or nutrition, or sleep deprivation). Internally, cognitive processes experienced during a long endurance run, such as thoughts about pace, distance, pain, discomfort and the environment, can also be potential stressors for runners (Samson, et al. 2015).

Classifying emotions as positive or negative, helpful or unhelpful is inappropriate because emotions are functional in nature, providing valuable information to the runner (Friesen, 2015). Every individual athlete experiences their own range of emotions throughout their training period and during races, including the fear of “hitting the wall”.

Pain & Hitting the Wall

One of the most common phrases you’ll hear from a distance runner is that feeling of “Hitting the Wall” (classified as occurring between 29-34km) when they have gone beyond the boundaries of normal fatigue. At least a third of athletes report a lack of coping strategies in order to deal with the phenomenon of “hitting the wall’ (Samson, et al. 2015). The stress of competition can also produce changes in pain responding, with the pace of the run appearing to impact the use of associative and dissociative strategies. Associative strategies being those which focus on bodily signals, while dissociative thinking distracts from bodily sensations and shifts attention to daydreaming and the environment outside the body.

Johnson et al. (2012) found that marathon runners have a reduced experience of pain compared to with non-runners. This ability appears to be augmented by a high level of pain specific self-efficacy but is unaffected by the influence of general cognitive coping strategies, although high associative coping and lower dissociative coping together were related to reduced pain tolerance independent of running involvement.

Pain related fear is an important determinant of an individual’s preparedness to expose themselves to pain-inducing activities. Marathon runners tend to have greater confidence in their ability to deal with pain than non-marathon runners. They require higher levels of painful stimulation before reporting any sensation of pain as they have pushed their bodies to higher levels of physical self-understanding as they increase their distance.

Personality can also affect the perception and subsequent management of pain, with individuals with depressive traits showing a lower pain tolerance (Samson, et al. 2015). It’s also interesting to note that runners with mental fatigue reach exhaustion significantly faster than runners who do not report mental fatigue. According to Zepp et al. (2016) there are varied dimensions of fatigue ranging from behavioural / cognitive / motivational / and physiological dimensions of fatigue.

Strategies for Mentally Managing your Marathon

Developing strong mental strategies for running is essential for every individual. Nicholls and Polman (2007) classified coping into problem, emotion, or avoidance focused strategies, focusing on controlling thoughts and developing actions to deal with both the physical and psychological situations running presents.

Runners adopt one of two main cognitive strategies: association, which focuses on bodily signals, and dissociation, which distracts from bodily sensations by attention to the environment, daydreams, and everything outside yourself. Baden et al (2004) found a positive relationship between endurance and dissociative strategies, with the RPE being higher all the way through a short run compared to a long run. Runners use dissociative strategies to distract from fatigue and it was noted RPE can be suppressed by dissociative strategies.

Goal Setting – set goals that motivate you and are reasonable given your experience, physical conditioning, ability to complete training programs, and other life commitments. Whilst having goals is a major component of motivation, these goals need to be flexible and monitored. Runners need to be prepared to adjust if their body is not responding in the expected manner and time frame. It’s important to have goals, but it’s even more important to ensure they are realistic, suit your running level and capability, and enable you to enjoy your journey to achieving them. Be mindful not to change your goals as soon as you reach them. Allow yourself to achieve the same goal a number of times before yMentally Managing your Marathon 3ou push harder, it protects your body from overuse injuries, but it also prepares you psychologically better for the next level of achievement. It’s essential that you also reward yourself when you reach each goal. It doesn’t need to be anything big and expensive, just something that represents achievement and acknowledgement for you.

Variety – If you want to maintain interest whilst increasing your distance throughout the entire training program make sure you have variety in your running routes and your types of training. Include some cross training sessions in the gym, at the pool, and different locations. There’s nothing more boring than going to same route, at the same time for every run.

Measurement tools – even the novice athlete has access to personal measurement systems that get more detailed and sophisticated every year. However, with knowledge comes responsibility, and it’s here where many people can find themselves shift from enjoying the benefits of running, to pushing their bodies to seek external measurements rather than listening to what their body is telling them. Understand what you are measuring and why. Is it essential to know exactly how many steps you took, or is it more important to stay in tune with the best measurement system around – your own body.

Fatigue – listen to your body, understand and respond appropriately to your fatigue levels – accept there will be fatigue and work with it rather than trying to ignore it.

Motivation – Look for ways to bring enjoyment to your exercise sessions. Keep a reasonable perspective on your running and be prepared to be adaptable and not become too rigid with your running regimen. If you find you are struggling with motivation the best question to ask yourself is not how to motivate yourself, but rather ‘What is causing me to be de-motivated?’ Once you know the cause of your lack of motivation it’s easier to make changes.

Self-Talk – everything you think is what we classify as self-talk. The key to mentally managing yourself throughout your training is ensuring your internal dialogue puts you in control, not creates a feeling of helplessness. Focus on your breathing, reaching your next checkpoint in your run, maintaining rhythm in your running, or the music you are enjoying listening to and the rhythm that helps you maintain.

Remember, your running is exactly that – YOUR RUNNING! Respect your body, manage your mind and focus on enjoying the challenge you have set yourself. Be prepared to have rest days, change your running route to maintain interest and variety, and be satisfied that regardless of times achieved you have completed something many others can only dream of – finishing a marathon.


Jacqui Louder is a Sport and Performance Psychologist consulting at OPSMC’s Olympic Park Campus.

Patients can book Psychology Appointments with Jacqui Louder by calling our friendly receptionists on 1300859887.


References:

Baden, A.B., Warwick-Evans L, & Lakomy J. (2004). Am I nearly there? The effect of anticipated running distance on perceived exertion and attentional focus. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 2004, 26, pp 215-231.

Friesen, AP (2015) Managing own and other’s emotions in sport. In: Lane AM (Ed.) Sport and Exercise Psychology. 2nd Ed. Routledge, New York, pp 154-177.

Hanin, YL (2010) Coping with anxiety in sport. In: Nicholls AR, Hauppauge NY (Eds.) Coping in sport. Theory, methods, and related constructs. Nova Science, New York, 159-175.

Havenar, J & Lochbaum, M. (2007). Differences in participation motives of first-time marathon finishers and pre-race dropouts. J of Sport Behaviour, Sept. 2007; 30, 3. pp 270-279.

Johnson, M.H., Stewart, J.,Humphries, S.A., & Chamove, A.S. (2012). Marathon runners’ reaction to pastassium iontophoretic experimental pain: Pain tolerance, pain threshold, coping and self-efficacy. European Journal of Pain, 2012, 16, pp 767-774.

Lazarus, R.S (1999) Stress and emotions; A new synthesis. Springer. New York.

Nicholls, AR & Polman, RCJ. (2007). Coping in sport: A systematic review. J of Sports Science 25(1): 11-31 doi.10.1080/02640410600630654

Ogles, B.M. & Masters, K.S. (2003). A typology of marathon runners based on cluster analysis of motivations. Journal of Sport Behaviour, 26, 69-85.

Samson A. Simpson D, Kamphoff C, Langlier A (2015) Think aloud: an examination of distance runners’ thought processes. Int J Sport Exercise Psychology. Doi:10.1080/1612197X.2015.1069877

Sapolsky, R.M. (2004). Why zebras don’t get ulcers: An updated guide to stress, tress-related diseases, and coping (3rd ed). New York: Holt.

Zinner, C & Sperlich, B (eds.) (2016). ‘Marathon running: Physiology, Psychology, Nutrition and Training Aspects’. Springer International Publishing, Switzerland