Mental weakness on the run

Triathlon Forum
1

Hi everyone. Long time lurker, infrequent poster here, looking to tap into the collective ST wisdom on a difficult subject for me.

The long and short of it is: I am mentally weak in running training. I have no real problem burying myself on the bike, doing really tough interval sessions etc, and as a childhood swimmer I’m ok doing some pretty nasty swim sets too. But for some reason, when it comes to running, I have zero confidence in my ability to push hard, and will stop more often than I would like to admit.

Funnily enough, I can usually (although not always) pull it out of the bag (relatively speaking) in races, and don’t tend to have the same problem there. But give me a difficult run session in training and not only will I be fretting about it in advance, there’s also a very good chance I will flake on it at some point. I absolutely kick myself every time, but it’s becoming a bad habit now.

So, I am sure that a large dose of HTFU is needed, and as a non-runner I’m sure that more running wouldn’t hurt either. But I wonder if anyone else has gone through the same issue, either with running or whatever their weakest discipline is, and had developed helpful strategies for working through it.

Grateful to hear your experiences.

2

There are a lot of threads on ST that I read and think “Wow, that’s really not in my wheelhouse. CRR? Wind tunnel?” I still stick my hand out of the car window and make it fly up and down, that’s as close as I get to a wind tunnel. Finally, here we have a thread that is solidly in my field.

I feel your pain. I don’t dread hard run workouts, but I do think about quitting when I’m running. Especially indoors (I think about it all the time) but outdoors too.

In the end, I adapted my run training instead of trying to change my mental state about it. It’s easier to change how you train vs. what you think when you’re training. I focused on what I enjoyed about running. What are the criteria I need for a good run that I finish without once thinking about quitting? Find those for yourself, and build your plan around them. My doing that, I’ve sacrificed some run training. If you focus on what you enjoy and not what you need to do to stick to a plan you end up compromising your plan.

But, I would rather have a plan I enjoy vs. trying to nail a bunch of numbers. Life’s too short, and this sport is too hard to not find the joy in it.

Find those criteria for yourself, incorporate them into your plan even if it means sacrificing a little. It’s a fair tradeoff, IMHO.

3

A few clues in there.

You call yourself a non-runner and say you have a swimming background.

Maybe your expectations are too high. You just can’t “bury yourself” in run training the same way you can with swimming or cycling. As is weight bearing and places a lot of strain on the body. Especially if you have the motor (aerobic capacity), but are yet to adequately strengthen the chassis (tendons, ligaments, muscles).

Hard running sessions are easier (and much more fun) with company. Do you have any training partners?

And yes, more mileage does help. Not just weekly volume, but also miles in legs from years of running.

4

I agree with the more volume part (obviously incrementally so you don’t injure yourself) but while you wouldn’t push yourself to your max run HR you would be running on more tired legs and that also works you mental, just in a different way.

5

I’m also going to say that maybe you are being too hard on yourself. My athletic background was rowing, so I had a good aerobic base but when I strated tri, running was pretty miserable. My legs hurt… Felt heavy, etc. It just took a couple years of training before I felt I could just tick off easy miles and feel good. Your joints need to develop the ability to handle this new kind of stress.

But I’ve also had a big turn around in the last couple years in my perception of my own running and I think some of that has come from entering pure running races- particularly 5ks and 10ks. I’ve entered them just for fun, no pressure but still with the intention of really getting after it and I’ve consistently ran faster than I thought I could. That has given me a new attitude when it comes to running in training.

6

5K road running races will provide plenty of opportunity to explore your mental barriers without the injury potential of track intervals.

7

I had the same problem with swimming, and my solution was to just immerse myself in competitive swimming. E.g. masters workouts. I sucked at first - the slowest lane - but it’s great accountability.

Do you have any local track or other running groups you could run with?

8

I have the exact same mental thoughts about swimming i have engrained bad vibes in my head because when i first started triathlon i couldnt swim great and every session was tough and very stressful mind and body. I played soccer all my life so running came easy i was running top 5 splits most races straightaway. The bike was similar to swimming but as i got better and i seen improvement my attitude towards bike sessions changed. You are lucky its running thats your weakness not swimming as its that bit easier to get better at with the right amount of volume and intensity. I’m trying to not say things like I’m an non swimmer or ill never get faster in the water anymore and embrace the process of sorting my stroke out. Good luck

9

Can you find a local run group to run with once a week? Point here is to do a few weeks with them, work out who is slightly faster than you, then make an effort to keep with them the next week. Repeat. That slight incremental approach should give you the confidence to know how hard to push in training. For me this is where the gadgets come in handy, as the gps pacer tells me what I can do, and not let RPE (feel) tell me I need to slow down/walk.

And of course a good coach will also help, by working with you to hit slight stretch targets, albeit things that are realistic for you.

10

So great to see this post here as this is something I’ve been struggling with as well. I’m an adult onset runner, grew up swimming competitively, and love the bike. I had/have (?) the same issues with run workouts as you do, even to the point of just bailing out mentally in races. Things would get really hard and uncomfortable and it wouldn’t be long before I was beginning to question my motivations, abilities, etc. Once you hit that downward spiral it’s tough to turn it around. This past year, however, I made great strides in turning things around and attribute the improvement to a few things: I set proper goals with my coach, entered some 5k run races, and figured out my hydration. Goal setting with my coach was simple: no walking on the run was my top goal after not getting injured. We built slowly into workouts that were painful but short enough that I could make it through without the crash. Once I learned I could make it through shorter, very hard and painful workouts things got longer from there and I had the confidence I could do it. Entering 5k races was also key in learning I could do it. Those are the most painful things I’ve ever done, running-wise, and they taught me I wasn’t going to explode if I could just hang on. Learning that even though it hurts and you feel like you want to barf doesn’t mean your body is going to fall apart was key. The 5k races also provided some perspective on what real pain was in running and I found workouts rarely got that tough allowing me to tell myself “this isn’t as hard as that 5k so I know I can make it through.” The last piece of the puzzle was getting my electrolyte balance right. I discovered I was losing a lot of salt while sweating and not replacing it adequately. Once I started doing that my mood improved, I could think more clearly, and that allowed me to deal with the hard work in a more constructive way.

Good luck!

11

I’ve been in a similar boat. 300 watts forever on the bike but I’d start negotiations with myself trying to break 20 min in a 5k.

Up your annual mileage. Once I started consistently running for long blocks it made it more comfortable.

Long, low-tempo intervals. Run training is often hard short intervals, for good reason, but inexperienced runners are bad at 15, 20, 30 minute stretches of slightly uncomfortable pace. Don’t go so hard that it’s untenable or an injury risk, but just hard enough that you’re feeling the effort.

12

Thanks very much to everyone who has taken the time to reply. Really appreciate all the input, and the understanding attitude too. I think we are all probably quite hard on ourselves, and we operate in a sport where toughness is so important. Good to see I’m not the only one who has experienced this!

The consensus seems to be:

  • training with others. Makes perfect sense that having some (gentle) peer pressure, and a little accountability, would help push through on occasions when I might have given up on my own. At the moment I do all my training solo so will look into finding some company for run sessions.
  • doing some standalone running races. As you can imagine, I have on occasion thought “I would rather stick a fork in my eye than do a stand-alone running race”. No more! I will get over this post-haste.
  • more running. The answer to pretty much all running-related woes, it seems.

Thanks again everyone. Thinking about this issue did make me wonder whether I should also be asking the question “does this sport encourage us to be critical of ourselves to the point where we forget what is fun / our mental well-being is impacted”. But maybe that’s another thread for another day…

13

I have a trick that I use for big sets of any discipline that I’m worried I won’t be able to finish. I break it down into smaller, less intimidating sets. It helps me mentally throughout the workout and I find I can push farther this way. An easy example would be say my coach put up a run workout with a main set of 30 mins at goal 70.3 run pace. If I’m thinking I won’t be able to finish that set, I tell myself “Do at least 20 mins and see how you feel.” Usually at 20 mins, I say “I feel ok, lets try another 5 mins and see then.” And at 25 mins I say what the hell is 5 more minutes. If I have 5 x 8 min bike repeats, and after the first one I feel like I won’t be able to finish all 5, I say, “Let’s try for 3-4.” 9 times out of 10, I finish the whole workout and that 1 time I don’t, I find I’m usually over-trained or greatly fatigued and shouldn’t be doing the workout anyways.

Looking at a huge workout as a whole can be intimidating but breaking it down helps move through it mentally.

14

What others said (volume, a training partner, 5K races, etc) PLUS some shoes you are truly excited about. For me it’s Nike Vaporfly. I bet you sometimes visualize yourself as a specific pro in the swim or on the bike. Do the same for the run.

15

The other bit that was mentioned was that running isn’t like cycling or swimming. In that you can’t just push and push. The risk of injury is too big. You have to aim for consistency. Once you’ve got that you have to trust that gradual increases will pay off in the long term.

It may simply be that the session you struggle with is too ambitious. We all have limits above which we’d struggle. If a cyclist overestimates their FTP then a session based on a proportion of that might be simply too much. They aren’t mentally weak they are just trying a session that is too much for their current ability.

16

If you’re doing run training for triathlons, you will not need hard workouts. You will need many years of consistent 30-35 mpw, mostly done in zone 1. With endurance running, quantity is more important than quality. With triathlons, you will need to learn how to run on tired legs with low or depleted glycogen stores - that’s basically the key.

17

I’ve been in a love/hate relationship with running the past few months. I committed to a BarryP plan in March where I’ve really only run miles in Z2 (135-145BPM) 5-6 days a week. My pace has dropped from roughly 10:30/mile to 9/mile, which I’m thrilled about, but I’m still so uncomfortable throughout every run. I’m training towards a 70.3 end of August and my long runs are my least favorite workout of the week, being roughly 8 miles right now. I did a track workout last weekend with 4x1 mile repeats with half mile recovery pace and that was much better for my mental state. I honestly think I’m just bored of where I run as well. It’s always out my front door through a few neighborhoods. It’s just too predictable. It’s fine for the shorter midweek workouts, but I might start exploring more for the long runs.

18

I had so many injuries just being able to run initially. And when going, it was a painful quads-screaming-all-out-body assault.
After swim-bike, OMG I was questioning whether I’d collapse or complete. That was for a 5K in a sprint :).

Kept the faith, lots of rehabbing and currently am able to run comfortably standalone. Did the 100/100 and set a 5K (old guy) PB this year @ 23. Then I tweaked a hamstring, took me out for a few weeks.

So just did two back-back races and this past weekend’s event/ run fitness test didn’t fly. I had a great swim-bike, mindful to manage my effort. Came off the bike in 5 or 6th overall. In the run I got mowed down trampled by a herd. I could analyze cadence, breathing, pace of the oncoming runners. Wondering why I couldn’t do that.

I was in a painful hamstrings-screaming-all-out body assault. Trail run with steep inclines that I walked. Trail runs are tough for me because of vision issues too.

I am going to gym-it twice a week and also implement my SBR commute 2x per week. Next event is a sprint w/ 5K.

19

Hi everyone. Long time lurker, infrequent poster here, looking to tap into the collective ST wisdom on a difficult subject for me.

The long and short of it is: I am mentally weak in running training. I have no real problem burying myself on the bike, doing really tough interval sessions etc, and as a childhood swimmer I’m ok doing some pretty nasty swim sets too. But for some reason, when it comes to running, I have zero confidence in my ability to push hard, and will stop more often than I would like to admit.

Funnily enough, I can usually (although not always) pull it out of the bag (relatively speaking) in races, and don’t tend to have the same problem there. But give me a difficult run session in training and not only will I be fretting about it in advance, there’s also a very good chance I will flake on it at some point. I absolutely kick myself every time, but it’s becoming a bad habit now.

So, I am sure that a large dose of HTFU is needed, and as a non-runner I’m sure that more running wouldn’t hurt either. But I wonder if anyone else has gone through the same issue, either with running or whatever their weakest discipline is, and had developed helpful strategies for working through it.

Grateful to hear your experiences.

Reverse the words “swim” and “run” in your post and it would describe me well. I really struggle to push hard in the water. I hate the feeling of being really out of breath and in water- it’s too close to drowning. The result is that I sometimes walk away from a workout disappointed in myself for not going as hard as I should have, especially if there are sprints involved. My only advice is to not be too hard on yourself. It’s okay to do easier workouts, especially if it means don’t avoid running entirely. That’s what I’ve done with swimming. When I’m getting down, I just tell myself I’ll do 75-85% of the planned workout volume or intensity until my motivation comes back. That’s still good exercise and it’s better than nothing.

Also, I should mention that as a long-time runner who switched to triathlons a few years ago, I’m surprised at my ability to maintain my running speed even though I run half as frequently as I used to. On the occasion that I do a road race (5k, 10k), my times are not that far off versus the days when I was strictly a runner. All the biking and swimming does make you a good runner, so it’s possible you don’t need the hard sessions as much as you might think.

20

Try doing your speed work on the treadmill. Just like doing your bike workouts in erg mode.