Marathon Mettle - The Psychology of Running

Marathon Mettle
Your Footnotes to Success
Dr Shane Moon
perform@innertruthsport.com.au
1

Introduction
2© 2014 Inner Truth Sport
For any athlete who trains and competes there are multiple
factors to consider. What is important to remember is that
these factors should be a focus in training as you are preparing
to compete. Waiting until the days or week before competition
is putting you on the back foot.
The key areas to work on in training that are pivotal to
competition include:
1) Physical;
2) Psychological and
3) Emotional.
These three are the holy trio of performance equally however,
athletes tend to focus primarily on the physical leaving the other
two to take of themselves.
The following pages outline these factors and some high level
recommendations.
perform@innertruthsport.com.au

Physical
The physical seems pretty obvious BUT it is not simply just
getting the kilometres in the legs.
What is meant by physical is everything from the pre –
competition warm up; the taper; the race day warm up; and
the physical changes that your body goes through during the
performance.
If it is your first competition you are preparing for, that is
irrelevant because all of these components NEED to be part of
your training. Your training coach can provide you with the
fundamentals of a good physical taper, warm up exercises etc
From there, it is always recommended you have your pre-
competition plan well and truly sorted way in advance of the
actual competition. Don’t leave anything to chance with the
physical pre-competition plan rehearse it, test it – if you fail
physically on too many factors no way your psychology will be
able to carry you through.
3© 2014 Inner Truth Sport perform@innertruthsport.com.au

Physical – GT
Gut Threshold (GT) Training – you probably know of threshold
training from a Heart Rate perspective but you NEED to know
your gut threshold.
Exercise Physiologist, Damien Angus and medical doctor Mitch
Anderson, both elite athletes developed the concept of GT – at
least that’s what Mitch told me when he was my coach back in
2002.
GT is that point where you can push yourself and still absorb
food appropriately. Everyone is different and everyone’s food
absorption is different. Don’t leave it to chance – it needs to be
trialled and worked out.
Identify your caloric need, how you can minimise your pre-
competition loading (who needs the extra kg’s on competition
day) & ensure your gut can manage whatever it is you are
putting into it at various stages of the competition.

Physical – Pain
Performance Pain vs Injury Pain
Pain is often misrepresented in sporting activities and often
athletes are not informed or trained to recognise the difference
between performance pain and injury pain.
Pain is inevitable in competition (particularly running) the
difference being what is ‘normal’ vs what is ‘abnormal’.
Only your long duration training will provide you with exposure
to ‘normal’ pain. Being ‘in touch’ with your body is critical to
know what is ‘normal’ vs ‘abnormal’. How your feet, legs, hips,
knees, shoulders, back, neck etc all respond to the long
duration.
Listening to music the whole time you train is NOT
recommended. Know your ‘performance pain profile’ and
practice strategies to overcome those ‘moments of ‘truth’!

Psychological
The psychological is the true reveal of capability in an athlete
and highly predictive of their performance outcomes.
There are some out there that believe psychological capabilities
(PsyCaP) is innate while others believe it is a completely
trainable outcome. From my perspective it is a little bit of both.
You are already training and competing so you definitely have
some innate PsyCap otherwise you wouldn’t even have got off
the couch!
The key components to PsyCap that will contribute to your
success are :
i) ZOP – zone of outstanding performance;
ii) Mettle
iii) Mental Toughness and
iv) Expectations.

ZOP
ZOP – is really another term for concentration ability.
Your ZOP profile reveals your ability for:
a) awareness (internal & external),
b) your strategy (your training and competing plans), and
c) your focus (closely tied to awareness).
Linked back to the physical ZOP helps you manage many of the
physical let downs that occur in sub optimal performances.
For many working out your ZOP is overlooked because it is an
exercise in paper & pen as well as in real life practice.
Nonetheless, if you have your Zone it will be a foundation for
an outstanding performance. See what distracts you, have a
plan to bring it back around. Have you got your strategy well
tested? Ensure you have practiced your focusing and
dissociating strategies.

Mettle
So what is Mettle? Mettle is about specific characteristics of
individuals that are often not easy to put under the microscope.
Mettle traits refer to your level of:
i. Confidence (how much/ little – drivers of etc),
ii. Competitiveness (how much/ little – drivers of etc)
iii. Will (how much/little drive – what drives it etc)
iv. Discipline (how much/ little – benefits, barriers etc).
Each of these factors will impact your ability to perform on the
day and also relate to how you get through the preparation
leading up to competition.
Getting through training to the performance you need to
understand how much or how little you have of each and how
to optimise your ‘mettle’! Confidence comes with training &
success go out and get it!

Toughness
Mental Toughness – there are a lot of thoughts about what
mental toughness is because every athlete wants to have it.
However, to give the concept some substance MT is about:
i. Resiliency (ability to bounce back);
ii. Consistency (training outcomes & any performance
tests during training);
iii. Decisiveness (how you make decisions);
iv. Performance under pressure (how you manage your
anxiety & stress).
The key is a balanced approach. Be hard on yourself and not
hard on yourself, keep it realistic. Accept good days and bad
days. Identify what made up a good day and a bad day.
Remember negative experience serves an adaptive function,
that is, you need to have negative experiences in order to get
better! If you don’t know what made a good day good or a
bad day bad you cannot replicate the good and negate the bad

Expectations
Very little is talked about in sport about expectations, however,
much is riding on our performance when it comes to what you
‘expect’ will happen.
It’s not exactly like the old saying ‘expect the worse and it then it
won’t be so bad’ rather it is more like ‘prepare for the good, the
bad and the unexpected’. The truth is Expectations Shape our
Reality.
So be truthful with your expectations across everything in your
training, your performance goals and ensure you have a firm
grasp on what you are expecting to achieve, what you are
expecting to happen and how you expect to manage with all
that go into competing.
Very importantly, know what your expectations are for your
ability to regulate your negative mood. Research shows those
that have higher positive negative mood regulation
expectancies perform better!

Emotional
Every sporting event has a ‘roller coaster of emotions’. It is this
roller coaster of emotions that makes them attractive to some
and avoided by others. Their loss, I say because they are losing
out on value skills that assist with the daily hassles of life.
However, it is important to understand there is two sides to
emotion:
i. Conscious side or what you know as FEELINGS and
ii. Subconscious which you may know as INSTINCT.
The conscious side of emotion is easily distracted and fooled so
it is with this part of emotion that you need to develop
strategies for to deal with. It is the conscious side of emotion
that determines what your actions will be – do I stop, do I go
slower, faster; do I eat now or later; do I drink now or later etc.

Feelings
Feelings are what we describe our experience to be (i.e. good,
bad, happy, sad, angry, excited etc). There are over 300 words
in the English language to describe feelings but we typically only
use a handful of ‘feelings’ words up to 10 for the average
person.
From a sporting context it is important to keep it even more
simple when trying to capture the experience. It is
recommended you stick to a scale (or some variant) of:
The key is to keep it simple and determine all the factors that
coincide with those descriptions. Now train with it in mind and
understand how it changes over the duration of training
sessions (long and short) & between different sessions.
Compete with it too if you can before your big race!
Very good – good – fairly good – neutral – fairly bad – bad – very bad

Instinct
Instinct is the deep part of the brain that we do not have access
to but in life and in particular in sport drip feeds information to
the conscious brain or force feeds it very quickly. This part of
the brain is constantly monitoring our body for signs and signals
that something is not quite right and then initiates signals to
conscious brain to take corrective action. As an athlete you
need to understand how your subconscious operates.
Learn to monitor the outcome of your subconscious by noticing
the very subtle changes in your attention and thinking during
longer durations or short harder durations. The little blips on
the radar are a sure sign that the subconscious is trying to
influence you to stop, slow down, do something different.
Everyone is slightly different but often it is little self-doubt
messages; focusing on other runners too much; analyse
training rather than doing training; little physical ‘niggles’
creep up from nowhere, little things start to become annoying
& distracting etc. Notice and re-focus!

Conclusion
Having an outstanding performance is a balance between
science and practice (i.e. training). No matter the level of the
athlete there is always room for improvement if the desire to
find it is there. My belief is unless there is some medical reason,
anyone can complete a marathon.
If you cover off each of the sections in line with your mileage
training there is no reason you cannot have a successful
marathon.
Of course there is always the risk something goes wrong on the
day but preparation is all about getting that risk to as close to 0
as you can.
Completing a marathon is both a journey and a destination and
all successful athletes focus on both and relish in experiencing
both! Good luck, good training and keep it real!
Dr Shane Moon

About ITS
Inner Truth Sport is a performance practice that has a focus on
the neuro – physiological – psychology factors of sport. In other
words ITS focuses on the brain, the mind, the body interaction
when it comes to performance consulting.
While we do a lot of work in a office with athletes we also work
in the athletes realm.
So, if you are a runner and need help with emotional profiling
during a long run – we are there for the long run beside you. If
you are a swimmer, we are at the pool; a football or soccer
player we are on the grounds maybe capturing your eye
movements with our eye tracking technology. Where you are
we are because we are passionate about sport and
performance! Contact us today on:
Email: perform@innertruthsport.com.au
Web: Innertruthsport.com.au
Mob: 0419 727 505

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