What is one of the most important lessons I have learned from the races I have done in my lifetime?
You will never know what you can do until you push your mind to do what it thinks it cannot.
Conditioning your body and following a training plan is the easy part of race preparation. Conditioning your mind,I would argue, is where the real work is done. We all know that there is a mental component to training, but do we really think it is all that important?
“What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve. . .”
We say and hear things like that all of the time, but do we really believe it? Or is it just some abstract lofty idea that inspires us but never really changes us?
This is something that I grapple with all of the time as an endurance athlete. Anyone who has any kind of experience with endurance sports knows what I’m talking about. For many of us it starts with the 5k run. . . We have each at some point asked ourselves the deep soul searching question: “Can I really push my body to run all 3.1 miles without stopping?” To prepare for the challenge we strictly follow training schedules to ensure that we will be ready to cover the distance. And then several 5k’s later we realize that running one is really “no big deal.” Before long we find ourselves training for our next big challenge: a half marathon. With our only experience being the 5k distance we realize that 13.1 miles is definitely not going to be a walk in the park. . . again we go back into strict training mode and we find ourselves asking once again, “Do I have what it takes?” And the cycle starts over. . . we conquer the distance and it too becomes “no big deal.” Once this happens we start getting the urge to take a stab at the full marathon (even though we told ourselves we never would). Wow! How did we go from thinking 3.1 miles was an insurmountable challenge to even pondering the idea of running 26.2 miles?
This is the cycle of the endurance athlete.
I see it happen over and over again.
We are presented with a challenge, we conquer the challenge, then we look for a bigger challenge.
This holds true for competing in race distances we’ve never completed before and in trying to reach personal bests we’ve never set before. Is there something to this? Yes, our overall fitness is improved. Yes, our muscles are stronger and more efficient with distance running. Yes, our heart and lungs get better at delivering oxygen where it needs to go. Yes, our body is in better shape. But what about our mind?
Does our mind work more efficiently and is it stronger?
The photo above is a shot of me at the end of my second marathon at Joplin’s inaugural Mother Road Marathon. My first marathon was in Little Rock, AR about 3 years earlier. It was all I could do to finish the race in just over 4 hours and 43 minutes. My body hurt so bad after Little Rock that I told myself there was no way I would ever do that again. Three years later I somehow changed my mind (typical endurance athlete). At Mother Road my goal was to finish the race in 4 hours. My crazy friend Ruth was there at the end of the race to cheer me along and encourage me stay mentally strong through to the finish. With about 3 miles remaining my body was done, I had pushed it to the max. This was the point in the race where my mind had to take over. I was definitely hurting at this point in the run but nowhere near as bad as I did at the end of my Little Rock race. Yes I was in better shape and had more training under my belt this time around, but there was something else that made the end of this race seem a lot easier than Little Rock. I ended up finishing the race in 4 hours and 9 minutes. I ran faster but didn’t hurt anywhere near as bad? How does that work? I am convinced it was because my mind knew what to expect. My body had been to this point of exhaustion before and I knew I could push through it.
Is there something to the “mental” aspect of training?
Most people have a good understanding about what goes on physiologically with muscles when we train them. We understand that we have to break our muscles down so that our bodies can build them back stronger. We don’t really think about this but the same concept actually holds true for the brain and the mind. When we exercise we are not only physically breaking down muscles but we are also physically breaking down “brain tissue” as well. This break down occurs to build existing neurons (i.e. nerve cells) back stronger and to improve their connections to other neurons (which is very important for creating memories, learning and adapting to new challenges). Exercise not only breaks down existing neurons but it also promotes “neurogenesis” (the formation of new neurons) in certain areas of the brain. What does this mean? Every time you stress your body, (in a healthy way and in the right amount) whether it be through exercise or experiencing things your body has never experienced before, you are sparking new brain growth (the last 10 years of research in this area have shown that we can do this even as adults).
The brain has an amazing capacity to adapt to the challenges we place upon it.
And the really cool thing about the brain is that it “remembers” very well. Even if you let yourself get out of shape and fall out of the routine of running you can come back years later and the 5k will still be “no big deal.” It is this way because your brain knows and remembers that you can cover that distance. I think of this as a very similar phenomenon that happens when you go to play a sport that you haven’t played in years but can still do relatively well because your body remembers. As a child I played basketball for years (before I got into all this endurance stuff). To this day I am still able to pick up a ball and have relatively skilled ball handling and shooting techniques despite not having played basketball for years. When you push and train your body to do new things your brain will remember, even if it’s years down the road. I say all this to say. . .
THERE IS POWER IN KNOWING THAT YOU HAVE BEEN THERE BEFORE!
And there is also power in knowing what exactly goes on inside of our brains when we exercise.
That is the purpose of my next series of blog posts, to educate you about the health benefits of exercise that we sometimes overlook or maybe don’t know all that much about. We know about the cardiovascular benefits of exercise. We know about the neuromuscular benefits. But what about exercise and the brain? My inspiration behind the series comes from a book I recently finished called “Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.” The book is authored by Dr. John J. Ratey a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. I must say that reading Dr. Ratey’s book has helped “spark” my passion even more for exercise and endurance sports. It has made me realize that our mainstream view of exercise, and all of the benefits that it brings, is very simplistic. After reading this book I am in awe of how our minds and bodies were created to be so dynamically interconnected. You cannot separate the mind from the body, nor the body from the mind. What we do to make our bodies healthy will also make our mind and brain healthy as well. The neuroscience of the brain and the nervous system has always fascinated me. Learning about the physiological impact of exercise on the brain has made me very excited. I want to share with you all that I have learned. Stay tuned for more posts on topics about how exercise impacts the health of our brain.
Move with a Purpose 