Week 10 Marathon Training Thoughts

Happy Sunday! It’s currently 9 weeks until Rome marathon, how many until yours?

Hope everyone’s training this week has gone well. Mine (despite still not running) has been good, fairly productive on the whole! So my thoughts this week:

 The importance of self-talk

Here I will give a brief explanation of self-talk. I have given a couple of talks on this topic, and it is something I wholeheartedly believe in. The way you talk to yourself matters and can and does have an effect on whatever you’re doing. If you go into a run, or a training session saying things like “I’m not very good at running” or “this is going to be a terrible session”, you are more likely to have a bad session. There are different types of self-talk you can use: positive, motivational and instructional. Instructional might be a physical cue to remind yourself of a technique pointer, such as lean forward when running. Motivational might be something like “you’ve got this”. Positive could be something reassuring such as “you are doing great”. Which type of self-talk is best to use depends on what activity you are doing, as sometimes instructional self-talk may overload the brain and cause overthinking to happen, which can, in turn cause a breakdown of skill in certain sports such as Olympic weightlifting. But as a general rule of thumb, I don’t think you can go wrong with motivational self-talk. Having specific, personal self-talk phrases that you regularly use can not only increase the chances of having a good session/race/competition, but can help with focus and eliminating distraction, as well as having anxiety reducing effects. So if you don’t already, try writing up to three self-talk phrases you can practice and use in your training sessions that become your mantras for a good performance. You can then utilise these on race days or competition days and at the start line and anytime you are finding things difficult, your mantra can ground you and remind you of your capabilities. If you can make them personal to you this strengthens the meaning and effect. An example of this would be something like “I got through a 36 hour labour, so I can get through this 10km”. Finally, it is totally normal to have negative self-talk. Sometimes we can’t help it when a negative thought pops into our brain. However, what is important is to acknowledge the thought, and then replace it with a more positive version. An example I give in weightlifting is when you look at a barbell and think “that looks heavy, I am not sure I can lift this”, you can replace that thought with “I am strong enough to lift that”. In running it might be “I am tired, I don’t think I can do this”, and replacing that with “I have gotten through hard runs before, so I can get through this one”. 

Achilles felt a little better!

Stay in your lane

As we all know, humans have a tendency to compare ourselves to others, and although there are times where this can be good, such as looking at someone faster than you and thinking “they’re proof that it’s possible to run that fast, so why shouldn’t i?”, i.e. motivating you to better yourself, there are other times where it has a negative effect. Such as looking at someone faster than you and thinking “I’m rubbish, what’s the point in even trying?”. Social media makes it very difficult to not compare, with the amount of highlight reels there are out there. There are increasing numbers of accounts “outing” fake achievements too, such as one I heard about recently where someone posted that they completed a half marathon and knocked 20 minutes off their best time. When it turns out they joined in halfway through and only ran the second half of the event, but still posted a picture of them with their medal afterwards. Clearly this is evidence that the person who did that has self-esteem issues, which is sad, but what they don’t realise is that there will be other people looking at their posts and comparing themselves and not realising that they are comparing to a fake result.

This week I had to remind myself to stay in my lane. Normally I am pretty good at not comparing to others. I take Instagram with a pinch of salt and I know better than to compare myself to what others are doing, usually I only care about comparing myself to myself. However, being injured can make it tough to maintain positivity and I had a moment this week where it dropped. My best friend and I are both entered into Rome marathon. I am her running coach so I write her programmes and therefore I know what she is running each session. This week on one of my short interval runs, I completed a total of 1.3km in my run-walks. My brain then reminded me that Em is running 13km today (literally 10 x more than my session) and I realised how far away I am from that currently. For a split second I felt envious that I am not currently running the volume I would like to be running, and sorry for myself that it’s not going to plan. I also felt sad at the realisation that my marathon, IF I do it, is not going to be the way I would have liked when I first entered it, i.e. if I do manage to run it, it is not going to be quick. For a second I felt negative about the session I had just done. I was thinking what’s even the point of running 1.3km, and these negative thoughts stemmed from thinking about the distance Em was going to be running and comparing myself. But then I reminded myself that actually, the session I’d just done was a positive one, my achilles felt marginally better and I completed more intervals than on my previous run. I felt like I could have carried on and yet I didn’t because I didn’t want to push it and I wanted to finish on a positive with my achilles feeling under control. I also reminded myself that immediately before the run I had completed 40 minutes on the bike, which is 10 more minutes than last week, and I felt pretty good fitness wise. So considering it was 4 weeks ago I had pneumonia, I should be pleased with the fact that my fitness feels like it’s building and that my stamina is improving. Even if I am not running far, I am making progress and that’s what matters! So I reminded myself to stay in my lane, everyone is on their own training path and all that matters is that I am doing what I can. This is just an example of how comparing yourself to others can make you forget to appreciate the positives in your own sessions. I know so many people who achieve something great but then when they see someone else got faster or ranked higher, they then feel bad about what they achieved, thinking it’s not good enough. It’s true what they say: Comparison is the thief of joy!

Thumbs up after reminding myself of the session positives

So there are my ramblings for this week. I hope they help in some way!

Have a great week, I am hoping to run a little bit further this week so fingers crossed.