Head Game

By Deb Bosilevac (aka @dorthybitestoto)

Loving the Run asked me to write a guest post about how I stay motivated to run for an entire 24-hour race.  Honestly, I am still seeking a response.  I am not sure either how one stays motivated to run for an entire 24 hours.  What I do know is that, while I took a four-hour nap in the middle of the night, I did complete such a run a week and a half ago.

There are two kinds of ultramarathons, those that are measured by distance and those that are measured by time.  Races that are measured by distance are pretty easy to understand because they fit into the traditional definition of how we define race.  50km, 50 miles, 100km, or 100 miles are typical distances.  They favor the fast runner, clearly.  However, in a timed race, people run around the same loop for a number of hours.  Runners place by the runners that run the farthest, rather than those who run the fastest.  Many runners don’t run the whole time.  For example, a runner who runs 100km in 24 hours places higher than a runner who runs 50km in 3:30.  This favors faster runners, but only if the stay in it for the long haul.

I spent the weekend at Sacajawea Park in Longview, Wash.,  running a 24-hour race.  This was the first race of this magnitude I had ever attempted, and, after a four-hour midnight nap, I completed 100km.  Honestly, the biggest challenge was mental.

I can’t say I know how an ultra runner stays motivated during such a long race; she just does.  Ultra runners are accustomed to spending a great deal of time in their own heads, meditating. At some point, conversations begin to happen in their heads.  Some of the conversations are joyful.  Others become arguments about why one would even want to run that far in the first place.  Runners get negative sometimes.  They get disoriented.

Runners have different techniques of staying alert and “in the game,” so to speak.  Some runners do math problems or count backwards.  This is a skill that I lose after a couple of miles.  Some runners listen to podcasts or audio books.  I haven’t done this yet, but I foresee some of this during my upcoming 100-miler.  My favorite technique is to sing children’s songs or campfire songs.  Sometimes, I sing them loudly, especially if I am running with a partner.

Truthfully, these techniques don’t always work.  And sometimes, a runner just hits a wall, emotionally and physically.  Thinking of one’s “reason to run” doesn’t always pull him out of a funk.  Sometimes, in fact, it can make a runner feel like he’s letting someone down.  I guess, as in life, a runner has to know these feelings will pass, and the run will become pleasant again.  It’s a familiar part of the process.

Ultimately, I am not sure exactly how I get through a race.  But I can tell you what the experience I felt last weekend was.  Running, for me, is a very cleansing experience.  All of the demons that have followed me around for the week tend to fly away…up to a point.  After a point, maybe 30-35 miles, all of the demons come rushing back to haunt me, to taunt me, and to remind me of all of the reasons I shouldn’t be running.  Then, eventually, I hit a point where I begin to walk alongside those demons, to converse with them, and to allow them to join me in my journey.  I know at some longer distance they will want to fight again.  But that is the ebb and flow of the run, from an ultra runner’s point of view.

Deb Bosilevac lives, works and frolics with her family near Portland, Ore. You can find her on her blog or somewhere on trails in the middle of the woods, running and giggling like a school girl.