The Psychology of Running

"Running isn't just a physical sport. Mental and psychological training is also needed to run your best. There are many aspects of the psychology of running. Your brain is a powerful organ. It is responsible for controlling all of the functions of your body, including muscle movements. You brain even plays an important role in running fatigue. Psychological training involves improving your brains resistance to fatigue as well as motivational techniques such as visualization, positive thinking and disassociation."

from: http://www.runningplanet.com/training/psychology%20of%20running.html viewed 22/04/13 23:32.

Take your pick. I googled the psychology of running and it came up with 29,300,00 results in 0.21 seconds. This was just the first hit. The wonder of the web! Anyway, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Take someone who has always had an interest in psychology, add running, bound to get complicated! 

Take tonight for example. I left my running buddy as she'd already done her long run in preparation for Sunday's half marathon. I realised I hadn't run outside alone for a while, mainly because I wouldn't run straight out of my house as it's in a built up area. I resolved to make an effort to get down to the sea front more. I hit a nice rhythm, not exhausting but making me breath a little harder. Nice endurance pace. I was really enjoying myself. What interested me about this was that at the same time, I wasn't entirely comfortable. I had some burning type of feeling giving me a little bit of discomfort in my abdomen. My head went "Aha! I know why that is" and immediately blamed the naughty and very fatty lunch I had eaten (Ramsden's homemade quiche and chips!) a few hours earlier. This was something manageable. In my experience, eating at the wrong time, or eating the wrong thing, occasionally gave me a bit of belly jip, and it could impact how fast I could run, possibly leading to a stitch (which it did) but it was get-through-able. Like stitches in fact. My running remained the same and my mood was just as good as it had been before. Happy days.

 I had a lovely little nostalgic lift as I plodded round my old stomping ground. I thought about how much the 4 mile loop had given me so much grief and was such a challenge when I started running, but now I had that "infinite plod" feeling that made me feel like I was bounding round it in comparison! And the 4 miles were just a section of my current run. That was a boost!

So everything is going super, and if I had been able to see my face I would probably have been sporting a little smug grin, when DISASTER STRIKES! 5.8 miles in, 'the toe' starts playing up (I need a nickname for it I make reference to it that much). The impact of this on my head state could not be MORE different from that of the food/stitch situation. My head goes back to the last time I had a problem with my toe (my last proper run before this one) where it ended up causing a limp and stopping play. I do what I can with it (basically stop and prat around with re-arranging my sock) then try to continue. A second attempt at sock shifting and it's still there. I'm proper narked. I'm already seeing me having to bail out of the half marathon without even making halfway. Apart from that, I'm still a minimum of two miles from the car and walking all that way (getting cold from clammy sweat) is not an option. I find myself deliberately trying to overpronate to keep the pressure off it. I imagine that I'm making the whole thing worse, it's blistering up again, it might drop off. My head is NOT being my friend! Then I realise my rhythm has gone, the run has become a struggle, a chore. Where are my whales and dolphins?! Heartbroken, mourning the loss of my awesome run, I struggle on. I do have an internal chuckle at the idea that I am running more now so that I have less to walk later. I end up walking the last half mile back to the car. 

Talk about highs and lows! I just wonder how much each problem was aggravated, or not, by how my head dealt with it. We know there is evidence that a person's experience of pain is aggravated by how they choose to approach it. I guess the associations I had with each issue were different and so I was impacted positively for the first (I can deal with this) and negatively for the second (this is a real problem that could get worse and I am powerless to stop it). It was like CBT in action! Physical, thought, mood, behaviour... that order.

NOW, how about the possibility that if I think really positively about it, and visualise a super-healthy toe, perhaps that will make it happen?! Ok, that's a bit outside 'evidence-based' for me, but it's a nice thought! I'd certainly like to investigate the psychology of running more though. I bet there's loads of tips I could use in training.

Til next time!

Sue