Preparing for Failure Part 2 - Mental Training

Preparing for failure Part 2 - Mental Training


Preparing for Barkley requires more than just physical preparations, which I dove into in my prior blog post. In this blog, I dive into my approach for the other facets such as mental training. The final blog in this series is on all the gear I used for the Barkley.

Gratitude

Countless hours in the woods brought some incredible discoveries in nature.

Surprisingly, none of the training was a grind, but rather a complete joy.  The purpose of training for something so rare, left me razor focused.  I even looked forward to the days that I’d spend hours repeating the same 1/4, 1/3, or 1/2 mile hill.  The gratitude to routinely complete workouts lasted the entire leadup.

I didn’t get to spot the bobcat, but it was cool to spot its tracks!

As much as I like to compete, I discovered over the past year I also love to train.  What I learned is this second stint in ultra running (I stepped away from ultras for eight years to have three children.) is that I really enjoyed each workout.  Although I did most of my training on familiar training grounds with numerous repeats or looping for hours on the same trails, I looked forward to each workout during the leadup to Barkley.  Even the days with 15,000 and even 20,000 feet of elevation gain over dozens of hill repeats over the same hill solo.  I think it was a combination of the opportunity I never thought I’d have, the invincibility I’d feel following some of these workouts, and the beauty of God’s creation I immersed myself into.  I intentionally did my longest workouts solo.  I would have never imagined 47 hill repeats over 11.5 hours with just my cooler wouldn’t result in a single moment of boredom.  So much so I repeated the workout!

Limited RAM

Racing Barkley Fall Classis (BFC), having never stepped foot within the park, versus returning with a couple of additional scouting trips to run each trail in the park was a night and day difference.  Read more about this experience here.  I found that I had limited RAM to take in new information on the trail, so whatever I could free up by running park trails would increase my capacity to remember new landmarks during the event.

I also found that doing simple math became a challenge after ten hours of mindless repeats, which worried me when I’d need to remain sharp to remain fueled & hydrated while navigating the unmarked course through dark and possibly fog.  To minimize decision fatigue on race day, I attempted to consider various scenarios during training sessions, full well knowing there were plenty of challenges unforeseen to come.

Lone training

Sometimes, I wasn’t the only one in the woods after all!

Often I will take my kids to the bus stop in my workout gear and start a long workout the second the bus rolls away.  I frequently time to end workouts to greet my son off the bus in time for lunch.  Occasionally when my husband has the flexibility to get our son off the bus from pre-K and keep an eye on him in the afternoon, I continue my effort until my daughters get home at the end of the school day, spending the entire day literally getting lost in the woods practicing navigating or getting in high volumes of vert.  With so many voluminous workouts, the cleanliness of our home shows it.  Usually I’d raid my kids’ Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s junk food that we typically reserve for long outings.  Sometimes I’d plan enough to make a sandwich before heading out the door.

I have spent my fair share of hours performing hill repeats for hours on end through the winter, often going hours between seeing another person.  Although I rarely run with music or podcasts to disassociate, I intentionally choose to go solo, only looking at my phone to give my husband on my ETA home. 

Inner battle

Throughout training, I constantly had two voices battling between my ears of was I training too much, risking ever arriving at the start line.  Additionally, my feeling of my fitness ebbed and flowed each week.  Numerous times, I felt fat and out of shape during a workout that I killed 5, 6, 7, 8 days before.  What saved me was the knowledge that it takes two weeks to lose fitness (if in fact I wasn’t continuing to train.)  A huge difference from my prior big training pre-kids was this volume wasn’t nearly as fatiguing, since I have another ten years of training under my belt.  In fact there were times I put in 20, 30, and even 40 hours of training and didn’t feel fatigued.  At times, I felt invincible!

Other times, I had kinks in my armor.  When I caught a cold during a key training cycle, I opted to take a day completely off and pull the plug on another hard workout once I realized I would not achieve a quality workout.  Ironically, just days earlier, I evaluated my training log and determined there was more to lose by training more than less at this point in the game.  Although I enjoyed training much more than researching gear, I channeled my time into that task.  Other times, snow hindered my plans for workouts and I needed to adapt.  I would not lull myself into mediocrity, allowing my bar to be set lower as a woman.

Next up

Check out the final piece of this series on gear I used in the Barkley Marathons here. Be sure to follow my blog to read my race report and follow along for my other adventures!

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