Mind Over (my 40-something) Matter
There’s a quote I love and have fully embraced ever since I began long distance running approximately a zillion years ago (or, in 2003): “Your mind will quit long before your body ever will”. It’s proven true time and again when I’ve been on a run. No matter how well trained I am, or how many miles I’ve run, more days than not the first 1 - 2 miles I’m completely convinced that I have no idea what I’m doing and couldn’t possibly go any further. And then 3, 4, 5 miles later, I’m still out there and somehow I’ve managed to keep putting one foot in front of the other and quiet the mind chatter that would have had me quit about 2 minutes in. It seems amazing to me every time how, no matter the evidence I have from my past, my brain almost never ceases in its insistence that this run I’m about to attempt will end in complete failure.
Over the last few years - blame it on increasing responsibilities, increased workloads, increased personal demands, and a global pandemic that caused a lot of things, including running groups and organized races, to come to a screeching halt - my running has dramatically decreased. After 12 marathons in as many years, I haven’t attempted to train for once since 2017. My weekends, once scheduled around my Saturday long runs, now usually include a 3 miler, and no more. As I’ve let life take over where running once was, my fitness has slipped - making getting back out there seem that much more daunting. Now not only do I have the usual “there’s no way I can do this” chatter which was always there, but suddenly that chatter has a new, super annoying friend singing alongside it, “It’s so much harder to get back in shape after 40…..”. Add that with a minor but noticeable ache in my lower back now and then (something that was never there in my 30’s) and suddenly that annoying new voice can start to seem pretty freaking loud.
There’s a special kind of mental drama that comes out when you’re trying to get back to something you were once good at. You have a reference point - a benchmark to strive to hit - and in some cases, like that of me and my running, that benchmark can seem very, very far away. My marathon best is a 3:50 race; currently I’m walk/jogging through my semi-regular 3-milers. I have signed up for a marathon this January to get me off my ass and back out on the road in a serious way, but every time I sit down to write out a training plan, I manage to get distracted by other things which seem so much more important in the moment, like taking the dog out (FYI my dog sleeps 23 hours a day and literally never, ever wants to go out), or refilling my 3/4ths full water bottle, or rewinding an episode of Schitt’s Creek I’ve got running in the background and seen 17 times just to watch David deliver one of my favorite snarky one-liners (of which one is delivered approximately every 60 seconds). These things seem much more important in the moment than, say, developing a plan to prevent myself from crumbling into a ball of flesh and tears over the course of a 26.2 mile self-imposed torture-fest/super fun activity I’ve paid money to participate in…..
What’s happening here of course is that I am letting my mind win. Running a marathon is hard. Getting back into shape when you’re fallen out of it is hard. And training yourself to not believe your primitive brain when it starts whispering at you that “You’ll never run that fast again….you’re too old now…..those days are over” is really, really hard. You’re fighting against the part of your brain which got you here by surviving the wilds of ancestral hardships; that part of your brain knows fear, and survival. It knows pleasure. It knows rest. It knows what is needed to literally keep you above ground. And that’s all it knows.
What it doesn’t know is the joy that comes after putting in the hard work. What it doesn’t know is the confidence that comes from not JUST surviving something hard, but thriving through it. What it doesn’t know is that the pleasure that comes from a plate of french fries and a cold beer post-race is SO MUCH MORE pleasurable than the fries and beer that the spectators get.
“The trick is to be on to your mind.” I say this sentence over and over to clients, and I say it to myself every day. Be on to your mind. When is it right (like when it tells you that signing up for a marathon next month is not a good idea) and when is it just freaking out because you’re pushing the boundaries of what you’re currently comfortable with (like when it tells you that training for a marathon in your 40s after a 4 year hiatus is just failure waiting to happen so don’t bother)? Your job is to notice your thoughts, and decide when you want to believe your brain - and when you want to thank it for it’s time and then ask it to please move the F out the way because you have a 10K to get in before the workday starts. And yes, that 10K may take you a bit longer now than it did 10 years ago but who cares, because you aren’t you 10 years ago. You’re older, you’re wiser, and you know a hell of a lot more now about mindset, and resilience - things that are actually really important to marathoners.
Especially 40-something marathoners who are focused on chasing their future, not their past.