Mental preparation for trail and ultra running: Conquer challenges with self-talk and self-belief.

It’s May 2019. I’m halfway up Snowdon. I’m halfway through the Ultra Trail Snowdonia 50-mile event. It’s hot, I’m not fuelled correctly, I’m near the back of the race, I’m really struggling. I don’t have an injury. It’s time to have a word with myself!

I’ve done the training; I’ve recced the route; I’ve done the climbing. It’s now time to utilise self-talk motivation and, in a sense, get a grip and finish what I’ve started!

Self-talk is a trained mental psychology tool that we can utilise before and during our events, during training and during our life, but how do we do it, and how do we utilise it? 

Athletes are only just starting to focus on training the mental side of performance, and we still have a lot to learn. But it is now recognised as an important side of preparedness for any event that will challenge us physically and mentally.  Mental resilience can be the difference between pushing through your boundaries when you CAN physically carry on or making the decision whether it’s worth pushing through a niggle or not. The great thing is it can be trained and applied to all endurance sports.

Firstly, we must understand the mental challenges that we, as endurance athletes, put ourselves through. Courtney Dauwalter was quoted in 2021 saying, ‘I broke it into a manageable routine of run, eat, rest, repeat’. Simplifying the demands as much as possible will make it easier to manage.

You have to begin by dispelling a few myths!!  Firstly, Sports Psychology is not just intended for professional athletes. We can all benefit from training our brain.  Secondly, doing work on yourself does NOT mean there is something wrong. What it does mean is that you are training yourself to manage those dark moments that we all go through when we push ourselves out of the comfort zone.  We also have to recognise thirdly that, by training our brain, it won ‘t lead you to breaking through walls and barriers, but it will help us manage and simplify the current task in hand.

Three truths about Sports Psychology are that anyone of us can benefit from performance psychology. It is also meant to be used proactively, and it will also help to optimise your performance to the best of your ability.

Any Ultra event will reveal a unique challenge - whether that be fatigue, self-doubt, sleep deprivation, let alone hills, mud, bog, navigation.  It’s at these times that simplifying the task and remaining calm will allow you to focus on the task in hand.  These will help you to create high performance skills.

Awareness allows you to have a broad and general sense of what’s happening to you at that time, and this can happen at any time.  Once we are aware, we can then focus by dialling into the specifics of the moment.  Then we can concentrate on our awareness and focus, until we have overcome the task and moved on. Mindfulness allows you to pay attention in a particular way that is in the present, the past is in the past, it’s time to remain in the present and crack on.

So, it’s time to discuss self-talk and understand what self-talk actually is.  This is you being your own ‘Inner coach’.   

I will discuss four of these with you; 

Firstly, “organic”. These are natural thoughts in our day. They happen all the time and all day. You basically just “talk to yourself”.

Then we have strategic - where we work to develop the areas of our mind that helps us.  We employ strategic help when we need it. This can be putting ourselves through a specific scenario that we may come across in our event, or practising a resolution to that scenario, so when it does happen, we know how to deal with it.

Next is motivational, and this is how you motivate yourself. We all have our own way of doing this. You know what gets yourself going! So, practise this and learn when you need it. 

Finally, is instructional. This is where we remind ourselves about the mechanics and movement of our bodies. We can tell when we lose focus on our mechanics. We start slouching, or we stop driving the knee, or stop not running tall etc.  So, we have a few self-coaching cues that will enable you to ‘instruct’ yourself as you progress.

However, fundamentally, the central most important factor for success is to continue to have belief in yourself.  If you think you can, you are right.

So how do you become your own champion?  Before entering the UTS 50, I decided that I would have to commit to the event. I had to commit to the training, the kit, learning the route, the terrain, and the hardship I would encounter.  Through commitment you develop your motivation to accomplish your goal. 

Next, I had to look at the barriers between me and the goal.  I work full time and work shifts including nights. Also, I’m married and needed the support of my wife and family. And I live in the West Midlands, which isn’t exactly mountainous, so sorting relevant training could present an issue. 

Then you decide am I racing or eventing?  This is so important in so many respects.  If you are racing, your focus is on the outcome, and performing at your best.  If you are eventing, you are participating for enjoyment. Other than getting timed out, you are not adding any pressure to your goal of finishing. 

Once you have gone through this process, you start to become your own champion, and the end goal will be successful.

Endurance events come with pain and discomfort, so it would be wrong of us not to prepare for that.  Think about your own personal expectations and experience, and mental imagery can help you plan for an anticipated experience, or you can practice it out.  Matching the anticipated experience with skills, will allow you to deal with that experience efficiently.  Remember, pain threshold is the point at which something moves from discomfort to pain, pain tolerance is how long you can endure the pain, which is determined by how motivated you are in that moment.  This can be trained.

The final part of this is race day.  I remember at UTS, I was nervous, anxious, so much so I couldn’t eat, so started under fuelled.  This was a massive learning curve for me.  Remember having anxiety is good as it means you care, so employ your focus and awareness.  Trust your training, if you have done your research on the event, had some good blocks of relevant training, you can trust this, then your inner coach can reinforce what you have done to get where you are on race day.

Remember your motivation; why are you doing this. Be curious as to what this day/days will bring, you are about to be tested but you are prepared.  Remember though, ‘there is a time and place to push through’, don’t get yourself injured for the sake of it.  Recognise the difference between ‘just pain’ and an injury and learn when to listen to your body and stop.  The race/event will be available next year.

To finish, you have your motivation to enter your event or race, set your goal, and make it achievable and realistic, train self-talk, be aware, focus and concentrate, and if you do all this, you will become your own Champion.