Reflections on the wall (and how to get over it!).

 

This one goes out to all those of you who are training for, or even contemplating a marathon at the moment.

Marathons are tough (no surprise there, I know!), but one thing people don’t always tell you is, while the physical training is super important, it maybe accounts for 40% of the work you need to do. The remaining 60% is all about mental strength! As a yoga student, I know all too well how powerful the mind is, and how good it is at telling us stories! It will tell you that you’re not strong enough, not disciplined enough, not slim enough, not this, that or the other enough, to complete the challenge, and as it repeats these stories on a loop, they sometimes take route!

Its important to challenge these stories before they take hold of you. The best way I find to do that, is challenge them head-on, and with a pro-active approach.

 

When I began my marathon training, I started to have pain in my left leg. Some of you will remember, I got an injury just before the Great North Run in 2022. In my mind, this pain was the re-activation of that injury, and I wouldn’t be able to run at all! Thankfully though, while rehabilitating that injury, I had the support of Heather over at @next_level_performancegla

While Heather still offers physio, her focus is much more on preventative techniques. When looking at the pain in my left leg, she helped me realise it was less about stimulating an old injury, and more about building strength on the left side, following a movement pattern that had contributed to weakness there.

 

Over the subsequent weeks, we began undertaking strength and conditioning work. Its been tough, and the pain hasn’t fully gone, but it has reduced, and strength has grown. I’ve learned how to manage my energy, and balance different forms of cross-training in order to maximise my runs, and overall well-being. I think its easy to watch social media, and think that, if you adapt your approach to mirror another person’s running technique, or follow the same training programme as someone you admire etc, that you’ll have the magic bullet. The truth is, we’re all different, and we bring our physical and emotional histories to the challenges we undertake. We can either see them as obstacles we need to ditch or change, or we can view them as assets, or at least, core parts of our complete being to work with. It is certainly possible that my lack of sight has lead me to over-compensate for a physical weakness I sense, on one side of my body. I can either get hung up on that, or see It for what it is, and gently challenge the movement pattern to build strength, and alternative muscle memory. I can also be hugely grateful to the body I have, that intuitively works to keep me safe in every situation; how cool is that!

 

Heather is keen to support any readers of @vision2run who would like to explore physio or movement challenges of their own! So, if this feels like something that might serve you, do connect with her, and don’t let the great wall of marathon take over your mindset. Any obstacle along the way is just a challenge, waiting to be overcome.