Running Mania

Hmmm... obviously it's not just your body you have to train!

http://www.runnersworld.com/race-traini ... cle?page=4

Here's the single page version of the article (as opposed to just the last page):
http://www.runnersworld.com/race-training/how-to-build-mental-muscle?page=single

Neat stuff. While I probably don't care enough about my results to suffer through mind-numbingly tedious brain exercises (unless you count the marking I have to do for work), I am a definite proponent of being lightly distracted for the first 30K of a marathon in order to conserve mental energy for the hard part of the race.

Very interesting, Lisa, thanks for posting this. Although I haven't done any formal "brain training", it makes me wonder if working extra-long hours during January - May, while training for a Spring marathon, helps out on race day. Certainly I had a couple of results this year that amazed me, and the same in Vancouver in 2011. Hmmm...there might be a silver lining to the nightmare aspects of my job.

I heard Alex Hutchinson speak about this topic at our Tri Club's AGM last night. He talked about all the different ways we can "trick" our brain (and our mind) to squeak out just that little bit more performance (more than we thought capable of, or that our body is telling us we are capable of).

One interesting study was with people who were racing (on a CompuTrainer) an avatar of themselves from a previous workout sessions. When they sped the avatar up by 1%, people were able to keep up with their "former self" because they knew this was someone they could race against. But even when they raised the avatar's performance by 2%, the participants weren't able to beat it, but they came close - topping out at about 1.7% increase in their previous top performance.

Obviously, there's a limit to how much you can trick (or train) the brain, but it was an interesting topic.