Getting Hooked on High ‘Mind Set’ From Frequent Endurance Events

My first exposure to endurance sports happened when I was 12 and spending the summer at camp in Vermont. Three mornings a week, a group of campers and counselors got up and ran 6 miles around a nearby lake.

I was incredulous. “You actually run for 6 miles? Without stopping?” I asked the runners as they returned, tired but buoyed by their achievement, passing me on my way to breakfast.

“It’s fun, once you get used to it,” they said. “You should come some time. The lake’s beautiful.”

Were they crazy? I wondered. The fact that the camp director made a loop behind these runners in a station wagon to offer stragglers a ride didn’t change my mind. I couldn’t imagine attempting to run 6 miles, and I wasn’t about to try it, either.

Somehow, over the years, the appeal of long-distance sports gradually drew me in. Along with many Americans, I was seduced by their glamour in the 1970s. I watched a few cross-country and road races and thought, “They’re going so slowly I’d hardly call it running. Absolutely anyone can do that.”

I learned differently when I tried my first half-marathon (13.1 miles), never having run more than 8 miles before that. My legs gave out long before the finish, and by mile 11 I could barely walk. It took all the mental effort I had to cover the last 2 miles at a half-jog.

I was humiliated by the failure of my body, but impressed by my mind’s ability to keep me going. As time went on, I came to enjoy my running more and more.

Long-distance athletes, from the recreational to the world-class, agree that training the mind is at least as important as training the body. According to Jerry Lynch Ph.D.--director of the Center for Optimal Performance in Santa Cruz and psychological consultant for the 1980 U.S. Olympic teams--top distance athletes report that 85% to 90% of their performance on a given day can be attributed to mental preparedness.

‘Mind Set’ Is Essential

Lynch and other experts in sports psychology agree that developing an “endurance mind set” is essential for anyone who wants to get maximum potential from distance sports.

Come on, you’re probably saying. Does that mean I can go out and complete a triathlon tomorrow just by thinking about it? Of course not, as my half-marathon experience attests. Practice is as crucial to distance sports as to any athletic feat--a dance routine, a tennis tournament, a softball game. But distance athletes will tell you (and research backs them up) that the participant who’s mentally prepared has a head start even over the equally physically trained competitor.

Such observations are hard to measure in the lab, but a team of sports physiologists and psychologists at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta tried last year. Physical education Prof. Phil Sparling co-directed a study on the physical and psychological differences between moderately trained and elite women distance runners.

To Sparling’s surprise, the women’s bodies were remarkably similar. For example, the average height for both groups was about 5 feet, 3 inches, and the elites weighed just 5 pounds less, on the average, than the controls.

Body fat measurements were also close: 14% for the elite runners, contrasted with 16% for those moderately trained. Even the all-important maximum oxygen uptake, a standard test of cardiovascular fitness that measures milliliters of oxygen used per kilogram of weight per minute, showed an average difference of just about 8%.

Psychological Makeup Is Key

However, there were significant differences in the women’s psychological makeup. “The elite runners showed more determination, patience and stability,” said Sparling, although both groups scored above average in these areas. “These qualities seem to play a role in the success of long-distance athletes, possibly giving them an edge over others with the same physical potential.”

What does this research mean to you, the average physically fit specimen who dreams of running a marathon, competing in a triathlon or trekking through the Himalayas? How can you get your mind ready to run, bike, swim or walk for hours at a time?

Before you start training for a distance event, you should give some thought to understanding why you want to do it. If your goal is simply to improve your fitness, you may have picked the wrong activity.

According to Dr. Kenneth Cooper, director of the Aerobics Center in Dallas and consultant to fitness groups around the country, it takes just 25 minutes of continuous aerobic exercise three times a week to maintain cardiovascular health. “Anyone who does more is doing it for reasons other than fitness,” Cooper said.

In other words, if you bike, swim or run 2 hours a day to prepare for competing in a triathlon, you’ll be able to bike, swim and run farther than your friend who attends just three half-hour aerobics classes a week. But you’ll be only marginally more fit than your friend is: Your blood cholesterol level or body fat percentage won’t be much lower, and you won’t live longer on account of the extra exercise.

“Actually, long-distance activities can be counterproductive to fitness,” said ultramarathoner Marcy Schwam, a partner with Barbano Fitness Enterprises in Boston. “Your injury rate goes way up, you’re tearing down muscle tissue and you can put yourself through real mental torment.”

The High Is the Point

If that doesn’t make you toss out your triathlon application, you’ll be happy to know that there are other reasons besides fitness for pursuing a distance sport. Runners, bikers, hikers and triathlon competitors will tell you--with very little encouragement--of the incredible high of finishing such an event.

“It was the greatest experience of my life!” is a common reaction, whether “it” was finishing the Boston Marathon, reaching Pikes Peak or completing the Tour de France. “I knew I was in shape, but that wasn’t enough,” said Amelia Jones, 26, of her decision to run the New York Marathon. “It was the most difficult thing that I thought I could possibly do, if I put my mind to it.”

The experience didn’t let her down. “It was more of a mental than a physical victory,” she recalled. “During the race my body was telling me that I couldn’t do it. But I found the strength of mind to push myself to the limit. I’ll never forget that feeling.”

It appears that pushing the body’s physical limits can have surprising mental consequences. Jones recalls “being totally spaced out. I knew the crowds were cheering, but I couldn’t really hear anything.”

Dog sledder Libby Riddles, winner of the 1,100-mile (Anchorage to Nome) Iditarod Trail Dog Sled race in 1985, said she hallucinated frequently in the late stages of the 12-day event.

Champion runner Grete Waitz writes of the final miles of her first marathon: “I was almost crying. Odd feelings overtook me: anger, frustration, depression, then anger again.”

‘Death Grip’ Sets In

Veteran fitness coach Bob Glover mentions the “death grip” that sets in during a 50-mile ultramarathon and recalled spending 10 miles of one race mentally writing his will and obituary.

Partly as a result of such reports, distance athletes often find themselves answering the question: “Why do you do it?” If a couple of aerobics sessions a week do the same thing, why bother?

“I get asked that question all the time,” admitted Schwam, 34, who is the only woman in the world ever to run 50 miles in less than 6 hours. “I tell people you really have to start with a love for the activity. I ran for years before I tried an ultra and found myself gradually drawn to longer, slower distances.”

No matter what your level or goal in an endurance sport, you must work up to it gradually, enjoying the steps along the way as part of your ultimate goal.

Legendary marathon runner Bill Rodgers recalled that in college he found 15 miles “an incredible distance” that he worked up to gradually by doing many shorter runs.

Andrew Lesh, 26--a recreational athlete who has run a marathon, biked from New York City to Montreal in a span of four days and trekked in the difficult terrain of Nepal--remembers the importance of “starting small” in preparing for each of his athletic feats. “I only hiked two hours a day for my first few days in the Himalayas,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine hiking all day, but several weeks later, I was doing it.”

Just as preparing for an endurance event requires building up stamina to the distance, doing it entails breaking the activity into psychologically manageable sections and working on them one at at time. “After 50 miles of a 100-mile race you don’t say, ‘I’m half way,’ ” Schwam said. “If you did you’d want to lay down and quit.”

According to Lesh, the secret of making it through is that “you learn not to think about running 26 miles or biking all day or walking all the way up this huge mountain.” Instead, “You break the event into pieces, plan rests or mental rewards, and then before you know it, you’re on to the next manageable section.”

Although the media sometimes like to play up the pain of participating in endurance sports, most distance athletes point out that a big part of the event is actually holding the body back from all-out effort in order to have the stamina to make it to the finish. “Most American sports put you in a constant flight-or-fight situation,” said Stu Mittleman, 36, an ultramarathoner who holds the world record for the 1,000-mile run and is also completing his doctoral dissertation in exercise physiology when he’s not competing or training.

“We’re trained to push as intensely as possible for the duration of the event. As an endurance athlete you discipline yourself to not always go as hard as you can.”

Psychological surveys of distance athletes have found that on the whole, they tend to be patient and independent types of people who have a positive outlook on life. “You have to be,” the Boston-based Schwam said. “You spend a lot of time alone, so if you don’t have positive thoughts, it gets depressing.”

Mittleman describes distance sports as a process of “peeling away layers and coming face to face with whether you want to be there. If the feeling you end up with is negative, you won’t stick with the sport.”

In addition, Schwam said that in her opinion, endurance athletes are also very much free spirits. “That surprises people, because long-distance athletes look so controlled. But to be successful, sometimes you have to change plans, adapt to a situation and just let your plans go.”

If distance athletes don’t have that flexibility to begin with, their sport teaches it in time. “If you have a flat tire, or take a wrong turn on the trail and have to backtrack or get a cramp and have to slow down, you just do it,” Lesh said.

Another key ingredient to success and enjoyment in endurance sports is relaxation. Rob de Castella, who is generally considered to be one of the finest marathon runners in the world, said his ability to physically and mentally “settle down” in training and competition is one of his greatest strengths. While relaxation is important in any kind of physical activity, it is most crucial in those in which energy wasted as tension can rob the reserves needed to finish an event.

Marathoners tell Jerry Lynch that they have discovered the real secret to smoother, faster running isn’t putting out more power, but concentrating on becoming more relaxed throughout the whole race.

Marcy Schwam said the greatest lesson she has learned from participating in distance sports is “being able to feel comfortable with yourself, even when you’re not feeling that great.

“It’s the same for everyone, whether you’re running your first marathon or trying to set a record--at some point your body feels lousy, but your mind tells you it won’t last forever, and somehow you manage to find the strength to get through it.”

With that kind of inspiration, somehow running around a lake in Vermont early in the morning doesn’t sound so bad after all.