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Who's in control? Mind vs. body in determining good vs. bad days (Read 180 times)


Dad, Runner, Programmer

    Skip down to bold part later on if you want to skip the long story/context around this.

     

    Let me put a little context around this. I am in the middle of marathon training, and as often is the case, I fell into a bit of a rut. For about a week I was lacking in motivation and my training runs were horrible, both easy and hard work outs. I was falling way short of my goals and was starting to get worried. I've been running long enough to know that these things happen sometimes. I figured maybe it was over training?

     

    Then, yesterday I had a pace run scheduled of 11 miles with 8 at pace that I was absolutely dreading (I am following Hansons plan). Last week when I tried a similar run, it went horribly and I just turned it into a shorter recovery run. Of course the weather as of late hasn't been helping, and I have factored that into my expectations. I've been running on the treadmill more when it's been especially hot/humid but I've been getting sick of that as well. So here it was around 1 pm and already over 80 degrees and I decided I still wanted to run outside. I just decided I was ready for this run to suck, and just like last week, make it shorter/easier if I felt awful again.

     

    The first mile, I could tell I was feeling awful again. My legs felt tight, I was feeling like I was working too hard for the pace and already thought about how I would make it maybe a 5 mile easy run instead. I started to convince myself about how this was OK and I was just listening to my body and all that jazz. I was just being smart, right? And then a little longer, something changed in my head and I started to get angry at myself. Maybe I was just convincing myself of all this nonsense and my body was following suit. So instead I decided I was going to ignore all this and start doing my pace run as prescribed.

     

    Next thing I know, I'm telling myself this story in my head about how I'm going to write about this when I get back about how this was a big break through run for me and how I got out of my rut just by having a positive mindset and my body would just follow suit. And that is pretty much exactly what happened. I pretty much had an amazing training run and did 10 miles not too far off of my marathon pace which far exceeded my expectations given the weather.

     

    This is where you can skip down to if you don't want read the whole background/context:

    When you have a "good" day vs a "bad" day, what is happening? I'm talking about beyond the obvious physiological reasons when you can pinpoint the problem like you were dehydrated or clearly overtrained. Sometimes we all have these days where everything is just unexpectedly working beyond expectations. How much of that is in your control? I tend to be in the mindset that our minds just react to how are bodies are feeling and then create a story around it to explain it to ourselves.

     

    Similarly, when we have awful days, but have no idea why, do you ever feel that it's sometimes caused by some negative thinking that creeps in? Some self doubt which creates a self fulfilling prophecy? I've always felt like where are minds are in terms of influencing a daily run is minimal. I like to believe its all about the training and where your body is that day in terms of energy reserves, fitness, how recovered your muscles are. Meaning it's mostly physical. Maybe I think this way so that I can take the pressure off myself when it comes to race day. But, when I have these unexplained good or bad days, I definitely have doubts.

     

    So what do you all think about this? What is the break down between physical vs. mental, to oversimplify it a bit? I still feel its 99% physical and 1% mental, and us thinking we can change the course of things is just a trick our brains play into thinking we have more control than we really do.

     

    Of course I realize that the distance of the event may change this answer, so I'm not talking about ultras here, which I am always hearing from everyone are so mental.

     

    Sorry even this part ended up being too long. I'm not good at being concise Smile

    2015 Goal:For now, keep running!


    Just a dude.

      First, as you said, go through the obvious stuff on why a workout is good or bad like weather, nutrition, hydration, etc.

       

      After that, for me the mental stuff is pretty important. Expectations play a huge role. So does mood and outlook.

       

      In my running, I had some medical issues and ballooned up to 280 lbs. Last year, a guy I used to run against in high school challenged me to get into shape. We would both lose weight and run and see who could win in a race the next summer.

       

      I plugged away, lost a lot of weight, and was in ok shape. He started strong, winter hit, and he got lazy. The target 5k came around and I beat him by a couple minutes.

       

      We ran together a couple times while he was in town. Even though I was much stronger than him, he was making me work more than I thought I should on easy runs. I started to process the whole thing. Was he running too darn hard every day, or was I running too easy?

       

      A month later, I was running 30 seconds per mile faster on almost every run. It was just as easy. But I decided that my effort was too easy, and I changed my expectations based on running with my buddy. That mental change made a big deal.

       

      I've had many other examples. I was doing a rough hill workout one day that I was dreading. After the first repeat, I was beat. I was frustrated. I didn't want to finish the workout. On the jog before the second repeat, I just decided that I was going to have a good frame of mind about it. The hills were making me better. It was a nice day. I'm not going to get all bummed about life and how my running sucks. I was going to let the workout do what it was supposed to do and relax about the rest.

       

      The rest of the workout I just killed. Easily the best set of hill repeats that month. Absolutely no change except a different frame of mind.

       

      I've had tons of other aha moments like that. I was having a week where I was kinda just sluggish and sore. One day I realized I was kinda slumping over a bit, being lazy with my posture. Just the thought in my mind that "I am a tall guy. Act like it." Poof. Everything fixed in 5 strides.

       

      I'm not perfect. I've had rough days at work that were very stressful that have translated in to rough runs.

       

      Overall, for me, running is much more than 1% mental.

       

      -Kelly

      Getting back in shape... Just need it to be a skinnier shape... 

      Julia1971


        I don't have concise thoughts either.

         

        I do think the mental aspects of training are often overlooked.  I really do believe what you tell yourself when things go "wrong" in training is what you will tell yourself when things go "wrong" on race day.  For that reason, I really try to keep my thoughts positive.  I don't always succeed.  I'm in a bit of a negative place right now.  It's been super hot lately and I've been reduced to stopping/walking on some runs and it's made me absolutely furious with myself.  Competitive me and positive me don't always like living in the same head space.

         

        Mental training is also why I do like to punish myself a little (okay, a lot) during training.  Every training cycle, I feel like I have at least one epically bad training run where I am just absolutely dejected - I'm hot, I'm tired, I'm off pace, I've had side stitches for 5 miles, and yep, I think I just swallowed a bug.  Remembering the moments in training when I wanted to quit, keep me going on race day.  What was the point of struggling through that run if I'm going to quit now?  That type of self-talk will usually get me through a rough patch.

         

        The cool temps are coming. Just a few more days of slogging and we'll be good.  Smile


        Why is it sideways?

          Great questions:

           

          To train at your best requires that you have some "mental reserve" -- some positive mental energy that you can use towards your running. My mental reserve has been low lately because I have been using it in other areas: young child, work, etc.

           

          I think that as in everything different people have different abilities to access this reserve and greater and lesser amounts that are there to access. The great athletes have a lot of it -- Haile Gebreselassie and Bernard Lagat come to mind. Others struggle to access it, or find it then lose it: Ryan Hall might be one of these.

           

          While I think that moments like the OP describes are possible and happen to all of us, "sucking it up" is not a reliable source of mental energy. More reliable sources are: habit, joy, companionship, good food, and sleep. The most successful runners will find some way of weaving the most reliable sources of mental energy into their daily lives regularly.

          bhearn


            Agreed, great question.  This may not be the kind of answer you're looking for, but here goes.

             

            Physical / mental is a false dichotomy. From a certain perspective, it's 100% "mental": everything you feel, and everything you do, are by definition properties of your central nervous system. This doesn't mean you can will yourself to do anything if you just try hard enough. Actually you can't try hard enough. We have enough failsafes in our neural programming to never push ourselves to actual physiological failure, in the sense of sending muscles commands that they are unable to perform. (Even cramping is a CNS-modulated process.) So when you feel crappy, and you can't go on, and you bag a speed workout and make it a recovery run, this is just your brain saying "screw this". It's made an evaluation, based on conscious and unconscious processes, that the cost / benefit of continuing the workout is not favorable. Not that it's not possible.

             

            The question is, what is the nature of these conscious and unconscious processes, and what can we do about them? And the answer is, often, quite a lot. The unconscious determination of what we're capable of is not purely driven by physiological state. It's driven by perception of physiological state, plus perception of motivation. Both of these things can be manipulated consciously to varying degrees. Having a positive attitude to begin with makes an enormous difference, but we can't always just decide we're going to enjoy it. However, we can trick ourselves in several ways at different mental levels.

             

            A simple example, that probably most of us here are familiar with, is this: when you are really hurting in a tough workout or race, focus on some nearby landmark, a fencepost, a trashcan, whatever, and think of it as your goal, avoiding thinking about whatever's left past that. If done successfully, this changes your unconscious evaluation of the tradeoffs -- you get a kind of finishing kick before you finish. Then, repeat. Even though you consciously know that that's not really going to be the end, part of your brain doing the evaluation is not so smart, and can be fooled. When I am doing this I will often say "easy!" to myself as a mantra. Again, I know it's not easy, but I can trick some part of myself into changing its perception of effort. Sometimes I lament that I have to "lie" to myself like this to get a hard workout done. But other times I realize that no, the lie is what we are thinking that makes us stop -- the belief that we can't do it. We can always do more than we have done when we give up. Focusing on what I have to do now, and ignoring the rest of the race -- that's honesty; that's the only real task.

             

            Tricking yourself at a "higher" level might mean something like mentally inflating the value of this particular workout or race. I certainly do this. In the grand scheme of things one workout doesn't make a huge difference, and even our goal races are meaningful mostly to ourselves. Our perception of importance is warped, to our benefit, if we are good runners, because we have learned that that's how you get your run done well. Have you ever nailed a killer workout, come home, and your spouse was like, whatever? That's not just them not getting it. It's your adaptively warped sense of accomplishment.

             

            Furthermore, and here I am speculating a bit, but from what I know of neuroscience, attitude is important not only for performance, but also for at least some component of training adaptation. Specifically, the neuromuscular control part. Motor learning involves dopamine feedback to the cortex and the basal ganglia. If we don't feel "successful", that learning won't be as effective. And it's not just motor learning per se, but all the higher-level mental processes involved in running that are being trained as well.

             

            Getting more back to what was probably the sense of your question... running is hugely mental. Attitude makes an enormous difference. Sometimes when you have a bad day you can, practically speaking, blame overtraining, or injury. But just because it feels too hard doesn't mean you're overtraining. Making yourself have a positive outlook on your training is a very subtle and tricky thing, but it is a very consequential thing.

              I read a book last year about psychosomatic pain that changed the way I think about the relationship of my brain to my body; in running and in the rest of life. Briefly, it was about taking a psychotherapeutic approach to chronic pain, on the theory that e.g. chronic back pain can be caused by repressed strong emotion - your mind is trying to distract you with pain to keep you from feeling the even more distressing pain of some lifelong repressed rage, anxiety or other debilitating emotion.

               

              (whoops, total tangent, will get to the running part asap...)

               

              Anyway, one crucial part of this treatment is that the patient has to tell him or herself that the pain is caused by his/her mind, it's a trick and the pain itself is harmless. You're supposed to tell your mind that you know what it is up to and you don't care to be distracted from the real issues anymore. (paraphrasing, obviously...)

               

              It works. I can now self-talk away several things that have plagued me since I was a small child - stomach pain and certain recurring muscle cramps/spasms - and I apply the same approach to running. When it gets painful during a race or workout and I start slowing down, I have a chat with my brain. I thank it for wishing to protect us but reassure it that I/we(???) are stronger than it thinks and can take the pain. I tell myself it's just my brain up to jts usual tricks. It makes the run more bearable and often measurably better.

               

              Then sometimes my brain has a point. If I have not slept well all week and it's 90 degrees and work sucks and I have to go home and clean the whole house later, then yeah, maybe a jog or a rest day are in order. And sometimes a run sucks because you're getting sick or (if female) it's that time of the month or whatever, and I have no idea where the line is there between physical and mental...

              tl;dr

              The book is called The Mind Body Prescription; I can't judge the scientific soundness of it but it seems to work.


              Tiefsa

                I know your mind can handle only so much stress, physical or mental.  Say for instance, work is stressing you out, or you're having problems with a relationship.  Those things wear you down before you even try to run, even though, technically, they haven't worn you down physically. Those factors take away some of the mental energy that you have.

                 

                I saw this often with my high school runners, especially when it came to relationships.  If they were struggling with boy/girl problems, they usually ran pretty awful.

                Joann Y


                  I've been wondering about this false dichotomy. Just in terms of mind/body or body/soul. How it might be useful to seek these separations even if they are false. Maybe as something to aim for as a practice. (sorry if this all sounds familiar b!) I got to thinking about this after reading Phaedo where the dialogue gets into how the true philosopher is not afraid of death because he looks for true knowledge by trying to dissociate from the body (presumably through a life of study). Is the runner trying to dissociate from the soul (mind) as a sort of meditative practice? I think that this may be sort of our everyday run, our everyday practice. But what about those good days and those bad days? Maybe it's easier to think about a good day. A good day (like a really good day) running, to me, is close to a spiritual phenomenon. This is the day when you are not dissociating, but rather having a union, a connection between mind and body. An elevation. Flow. You feel elated. The same could be said about the connection between people. The engagement of two minds is divine, the only thing more so is that elevation one experiences when both the mind and body connect. But we can't create these good days, these spiritual moments. They come to us. But we can create fertile soil for a good day of running through proper diet, rest, and training. And maybe a good day in general through study, curiousity, and openness of mind. So what makes for a bad day? Maybe it has something to do with not dissociating and/or not laying the groundwork. It seems really complex to me and hard to put a finger on. Could be anxieties or stresses from life are butting their head into the run not allowing the separation from the mind. Could be that we ate a big lunch and don't have that light, slightly hungry feeling that allows for a workout that just feels like you are floating. I like this idea of running as a meditative exercise, a practice. That's why we keep going out there every day. And on rare occasions we will have that spiritual moment. In the end, I can't help but think that the mental and physical are so entwined and in such a messy and beautiful way.


                  Dad, Runner, Programmer

                    Thanks for all of the insightful responses. It's great to read other runners' musings on this topic. It's something I find myself thinking about a lot from time to time. In general, I think about the relationship with the conscience part of our brain that we are "in control" of, and how it relates to the other lower level parts that control the rest of the body and the feedback that goes back and forth between them.

                     

                    And something about running, maybe pushing myself really brings these thoughts out even more. Not that I really thought I was alone in having these thoughts, but reading about how other people think about it feels reassuring and has put me in a positive head space. I'm looking to use that in at least today's run. This is a great community.

                    2015 Goal:For now, keep running!

                    Marylander


                      I'll have to come back and read the whole thread later when I have some time but I do have a quick thing to mention: my best days in the gym or while running have come when I felt like crap and made myself go through the motions. Somehow things would just fall in to place as the workouts progressed. This doesn't, of course, happen every time I feel like crap but there have been magical moments where the heaviest weights felt light or where my feet took me down the road effortlessly.