It's all in my head

The long-standing notion of why a runner could only run so far and/or so fast was that lactate built up in the muscles and thus, created a physical barrier to how far the runner can go. There were other theories, but they were all about some sort of physical limitation to endurance.

Great theories, but it turns out that these physical limits have been very hard to measure consistently. The researchers in this article think they know why: http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-244--12848-0,00.html

These researchers think that your mind is doing all this stuff to your body, not the other way around. They think that basically, your mind calculates what it thinks it can do and how long it can do it for and then forces that to happen.

I've felt this forced end before in several runs. It's the time that I really just want to stop although I'm not out of breath, I don't feel overheated and nothing is hurting. I just have this overwhelming desire to stop running immediately.

This is good stuff. This means that if I can convince my brain that I'm in no danger of dying if I run 26 miles, then I will be able to do it. I'm not sure it's that easy, but so far it has worked for shorter distances. The first time I ran 18 miles, the 6 miles that I ran THE NEXT DAY seemed like the shortest, easiest miles I've ever done. I'm convinced it's because my brain was all ready for feeling like I did on the 18, but I never got there.

Perhaps this is where good old-fashioned meditation comes in. If I can get the positive and confident thoughts to the front of my brain before I embark on a run, perhaps the calculations made about how long I can go can be affected.

Happy running.