One of the intuitive ways I found to survive a long distance race is counting.
It sounds dumb, but to do something big, you often have to break it down.
When you’re in a 56 mile race like Comrades, it gets really hard for your brain to even comprehend what type of distance that is.
So I often found myself just breaking it down into manageable numbers that I know that I’ve done dozens of times before.
For example, if you’re a few miles into the race, I’ll find myself repeating variations of:
Only 5k to go…
…Until you only have a 5k to go…
…Until you only have 10k to go…
And then you just have a half marathon left.
I shared this with a friend and they think it almost makes things worse (ha!). But it works for me.
At first, it started off as a way to keep the brain busy. When you’re on your feet for 8 hours, you have a lot of things to think through (I usually don’t wear headphones when running).
I thought I was a bit crazy to do this, but Michael Malice mentioned that this was something Edith Bone used to do in her book “Seven Years Solitary” to keep her mind at bay.
I think partly this works because of the math (more on that in a second), but I think it also just keeps your brain thinking about something other than quitting.
It’s funny when you get into distances how much running turns into mentally defragging your entire brain. You’re basically spending time solving problems & reviewing things that have been floating around in your brain before putting them neatly away into their compartments.
Often, I’d forget all the things I thought about during a run, but finish the workout more mentally “clear” than ever.
But as the distances stretched out, it also created a way for me to actually comprehend the distances I was undertaking.
After you get past 30 miles, I think it’s hard to think about the distances in bigger single chunks than that.
So you break it up into pieces you can understand.
You can do a 5k.
You can do a 10k.
You can do the marathon.
They have all been done before. Now, you just have to do them.
When you break the unknowable amounts into known quantities, it doesn’t just make it more comprehensible, it makes it possible.
So if you’re working on something that seems too big to do.
Work it out in your head.
Then break it down into amounts you can understand.
Then go do them.
Good luck.
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141 days left until Trial
