The Psychology of the Long Run
Let me first explain that I am not a great runner, and my long runs are not particularly long. A long run for me is around one hour running very slowly. But I find the thought processes that I go through during a long run very interesting.
Going for a long run is entirely optional. There’s not even really any societal pressure to do it. Some people do it, most don’t. There are physical benefits to doing long runs and afterwards you may well experience a lovely runner’s high. But to me, the way it develops the psyche is the most interesting and beneficial of all.
During a long run I experience many psychological ups and downs. I can go from ‘yeah this is great, I’ve got this’, to ‘oh shit I got a bit carried away there’ in the blink of an eye.
There have been times when I have just quit out of nowhere. It as though my mind has said “we’re not going through the debate of ‘to quit or not to quit’ once again because that debate is in itself painful”, and I just stop running.
I can experience 2nd and 3rd winds where I’ve pushed through a difficult period during which I could only envisage the run getting ever more difficult until it ended, only to find myself in beautiful flow state. I try to apply the idea of the 2nd wind to other areas of my life. The idea that if I keep pushing it will eventually get easier.
At times during a long run I think about upcoming football games, or internally debate the latest nonsense that’s being discussed in the news or on twitter.
Often the most flow state parts of the run are where I focus on my running technique, but after a while my mind will wander to something else out of flow state, like how my quads are hurting or have I turned the oven off.
Then there’s the psychology as you approach the end of a run. Sometimes this give me a lift, sometimes I still just want to quit with a minute left to run. Often I start gurning more as I approach the end. Why that is I don’t know.
I play all sorts of mental games with time and distance. I chop them up into a variety of different sizes in order to make the run seem more palatable. Does 1,800 seconds feel more manageable than 30 minutes? Sometimes I might target the next five minutes or the next half mile. Yeah if I just get to that point I’ve got this run licked. Other times (especially when running on a treadmill) I translate the distance into laps of a running track and mentally see myself making progress round the track. Other times I try not to look at my watch for say at least five minutes, but I almost always fall short and look after a minute or two. The halfway point of a run always seems to have great meaning but I’m not really sure it merits the importance I place on it. It seems to matter to me that the time or distancing remaining is less than what I have already done. There’s the sense that I’ve got to the top of a mountain and now I’m coming down the other side. I wonder if ultramarathon runners experience this when the other side might be 50 miles or more.
What will be interesting to notice is how my being more 3rd-party conscious of my thoughts during a long run, will impact the psychology of my long run. During my next runs I’ll be actively trying to take notes of what I’m thinking in case there’s anything I forgot to cover in this blog. But still, I’m sure there will be times when I forget the presence of the 3rd party, in the way that those on reality tv shows say after a while they forget the cameras.
Update after next long run
A couple of extra points I noticed on my last long run where I consciously analysed my thought processes.
Initial anxiety
I felt a little anxious before my run and in the first minute or so. Often we don’t know how we are going to feel during a run. Sometimes I feel physically ready but then falter early on. Other times I feel achy and think that I’m going to struggle but the run goes well. During the first minute or two of this run I didn’t feel great. I started very slowly and before long I thought, ‘I’ve got this’.
The Last…
The last lap, the last 10 minutes, the last kilometre, the last mile, the last whatever has added significance. I kind of mentally write it off during the meat of the run. So if I’m running 10km, I’m thinking that I only have to worry about getting to 9km. It’s like ‘the last’ doesn’t really matter because I know when I get to there I’ll be close enough to the end to be able to handle it. It’s almost as though I’m anticipating the lift that I will get from being on the last lap.
And then there’s the penultimate lap, kilometre etc. This seems to gain some kudos just from it’s proximity to the last lap, or kilometre. It’s like the kudos you get from being friends with the cool kid. So my mentality on a 10km will be, I just need to get to 8km because 9km is close enough to 10km which in itself I know I’m good for because it’s the last km.
The Check-in
Every now and then I check-in with myself to essentially confirm that I’m not dying. Brain, heart, lungs don’t feel like they are about to explode: check; legs not about to collapse: check
I’m essentially confirming to myself that there is nothing wrong with me other than a little sustained discomfort. Physically I’m fine. It just becomes about what I am prepared to tolerate psychologically.
Blog
Trying to both notice and then remember your thought processes during a run so that you can later put them down in a blog is very distracting from the discomfort of the run.