Understanding Our Barriers: Separating
the Mental, the Physical and the Excuses
By: PCG Associate Coach Patricia Brownell
I spent the better part of my morning today, writing a block
periodization plan for one of my athletes, who is doing her first Ironman in
the fall. When an athlete’s “A race” is
an Ironman, well really in general, but
especially for an Ironman “A race,” a coach will start at the date of said race
and work backwards to the beginning of the season when formulating a long-term
plan. As such, one of the first workouts
I scheduled for my athlete was a taper ride of 50 miles @ 70-75% FTP. As I wrote those numbers, I had to chuckle at
the relativity of everything. These days,
riding 50 miles would be a pretty respectable day for myself, but I remember being
that Ironman athlete PRAYING for that easy taper week where my long ride was
“only” 50 miles, and my long run was “only” 13 miles. This led to a whole lot of reflection on my
first Ironman experience, etc. But I digress.
Not too long after vicariously reliving my Ironman days
through my athlete’s plan, I decided I needed to take a mental break from my
coaching work to go for a run. I started
running again a few weeks ago, after a long “I only want to ride my bike” hiatus. The running comeback has been surprisingly
difficult for me, but I’m making some decent progress, and forcing myself to
not let running fall off my radar again.
So, I laced up my running shoes, put on my snowmobile suit (joke…kind of
– it’s pretty cold here in Massachusetts today,) and headed out the door.
Around a mile into my run, out of breath and starting to
“feel it,” I found myself fixating on my running watch. It was too tight. It was hurting my wrist. I needed to stop and loosen it. So, I did that, and started running
again. Not ten seconds later, I realized
that I hadn’t actually loosened my watch, and I nearly stopped to loosen it
again. That’s when it hit me, that my
watch wasn’t actually tight. My mind was
making that up in order to give my body an excuse to stop. My body isn’t used to feeling the pain that
running can inflict yet, and my brain wanted to help it out. I’ve been at this place thousands of times before,
and my experience knows that the uncomfortable feeling would be coming, but my
body doesn’t want to push through it yet.
So, I forced my brain to ignore the silly watch thoughts and tell my body
to slow down and keep running -- the pain will pass…and it did. I survived without stopping again. Good job brain.
Which leads me to elaborate on my brain telling my body to
slow down. I started my athletic journey
as a runner. At one point, I was a
pretty fast runner. I am not as fast as
I once was, nor should I be – I haven’t run for two years and I’ve only started
back up a few weeks ago. However, my
body remembers my old pacing scale, and the stubborn athlete in me wants to
stick to it, but my brain is sometimes not smart enough to override muscle
memory and stubbornness, “But I used to run 13 miles at a pace much
faster than this after biking 56 miles!”. When the brain fails at realistic pacing, one
may find themselves at mile one of a run, fake-loosening a watch.
Which leads me to the title of the Strava workout I posted
after the run: “Too much coffee, not enough food.” This is just dumb and nothing but an
excuse. Let me elaborate, again. While it’s true I had too much coffee and
didn’t eat enough food, those aren’t the real reasons I suffered on my
run. I suffered on my run because my
brain didn’t plan well to eat enough and not drink too much coffee prior to
heading out the door. It was a prime
example of poor planning. Brain fail.
As I resumed writing my athlete’s Ironman plan, after failing
so many times during such a short athletic endeavor, I reminded myself to make
sure to emphasize the mental aspect of training as her season progresses. Teaching our brains to make the right
decisions, and to realize the difference between our mental and physical
breakdowns, is every bit as important as training our bodies to handle a
progressive workload. A well-trained body
can only succeed and make gains with a well-trained brain supporting it!
