I have to say – these weeks are really flying by and I can gradually feel my anxiety building… I guess there’s only one solution for that – train harder!

As expected, week 10 was rough given the lingering chest infection/smokers cough/ death rattle that I’ve been fighting since week 8. I did however manage to fit in some running (once in the gym and once outside) just to keep me going. Not ideal for sure but it’s certainly an improvement over the past two weeks.

Instead of my ongoing failure/disappointment, I thought this would be a good time to talk about the classic mantra – “Mind over matter”. Most people are familiar with this statement and it can invoke a variety of emotions from inspiration to exasperation. It’s a slightly cliche statement that can be applied to most situations but I think for running it definitely rings true – as long as you qualify that statement.

Let me elaborate – I don’t believe that “with the right mindset you can achieve anything”. It’s a great thought and very inspirational but it is too generic and much too broad to enable anyone to actually achieve success. Case in point: “the right mindset” doesn’t tell you how to train for a marathon! “Believing that you can” and “trying as hard as you can” could in fact lead to injury… It takes planning, it takes an extraordinary amount of work and it takes an ongoing honest assessment of your ability and performance. Once you have all of the above; that’s when it becomes a simple matter of “mind over matter”, it’s about:

• Committing to the training plan even when you really don’t want to/can’t be bothered
• Learning to run at the speeds in your training plan even when it feels slower and counter intuitive – you set the pace for a reason!
• Learning your limits and how your body works and more importantly – the difference between a perceived limit and a “real” limit.

For me this was driven home just as I hit my 5 k milestone. At the 1.5k mark, my legs felt tired and I thought that there was no way I could continue much further – I’d completed less than a third of the distance! But I recalled what my friend Dharmesh (remember him?) said to me right at the beginning of my journey as we went for a quick run:

“Do you need to stop because you can’t breathe/ you can’t move so you HAVE to stop? Or do you just FEEL like you should stop?”

That’s an extremely important distinction. I did a quick assessment:

• my heart rate was a little high but not uncomfortably so
• my breathing was a little heavier but not ragged
• my legs felt fatigued but not to the point of collapse

and so I continued running just to see how far I could go and until one of the above was no longer true. Lo and behold, I discovered that whilst your body may complain a bit as you warm up and start ramping up the distance – it’s actually quite content to stay at that higher stress level for a much longer period than you think! At 1.5k I was considering stopping but didn’t. At 2k I felt the same – but not worse! It wasn’t until I got to 4km that my heart rate started ramping up and my breathing got much heavier but by then I was so close to 5km that I just pushed straight through to the end.

That’s why I think this phrase is powerful – just misunderstood. It doesn’t suggest that the mind is all you need (if I try and run a marathon today, no amount of “belief” will get me through in a decent time) and it’s not just a general “feel good” inspirational statement. It’s about strengthening your will and learning to truly interpret the signals that your body is sending you rather than making assumptions and giving up early. Maybe this was always obvious to everyone else but for me it’s been a revelation and I’ve really enjoyed reexamining my beliefs.