Sports psychiatrist Dr. Josephine Perry writes about the courage and mental prowess it takes to chase a big goal.
You need a lot of courage and some valuable mental skills to run a two-hour marathon. The brain’s threat system is constantly scanning for things that could harm you or your identity. The main “buckets” of threats that can emerge and trigger the threat system will be physical, physiological, psychological and social threats.
A marathon, even at 2:50km/km, is physically quite safe. Unlike Pheidippides, who was considered the first marathon runner in BC. In the 5th century, who delivered his message to Athens and died immediately, the risk of death is now very low. Physiologically, however, running at two-marathon pace puts a lot of discomfort inside the body, and most of us would slow down long before we reach this level of discomfort, if we could even get there in the first place.
To increase the ability to cope with the threat system triggered by that level of physiological distress, the athlete must be able to notice the discomfort but still choose to try. This is courage.
They often do this along the lines of Professor Sam Marcora’s psychobiological theory of sports performance. It suggests that in order to push ourselves to this level and overcome the extreme fatigue that Soi would likely experience, he must first maximize his motivation and then reduce his perception of effort.
The fame, fame and money that comes with winning the London Marathon will absolutely provide motivation. And not only his motivation, but also the motivation of others. He said he would use the money to build a house for his parents and build a church for his community.
Once you’ve maximized your motivation, the next step is to reduce your perception of effort. There are many tools for this. We all do many of these beforehand. training hard at varying intensities, fueling and hydrating well, making our bodies feel bulletproof with strength and conditioning, mobility and pre-workout, adequate sleep and good recovery. Mentally, we could do some training during adversity, reduce mental fatigue, and read our training journal to remind ourselves of all the effort we put in.
Some of the physical elements in a race, like knowing you have super shoes or caffeinated gels, help, but then it’s all about the mental skills. visualizing those difficult moments, being able to scan and check that you are maintaining your form, breaking the distance into small chunks and having goals or focus for each chunk, knowing what your coach will remind you of, and whenever the brain worries about something out of your control, pulling it back to what can be controlled.
And when someone, or in this case two runners, shows what is possible, then the safety can seep in for others, where they can visually see that the barrier has been broken and that it is possible. This knowledge means we should expect to see others hack the two very soon.
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