36. 3 Mindset Solutions to Self-Sabotage on Race Day
You’re capable, driven, and no stranger to hard things. But in ultrarunning, the same sharp, analytical mind that helps you succeed in training and in life can quietly sabotage you on race day. Overthinking, negative spirals, and second-guessing can keep you from accessing the fitness you worked so hard to build.
In this episode, I walk you through three common self-sabotage patterns ultra runners fall into and the specific tools you can use to turn each one around. You’ll learn how to stop taking every negative thought as fact, how to trust yourself without needing certainty, and how to move out of research mode and into confident execution when it matters most.
If you’re ready to stop fighting your own mind and start racing to your potential, this episode will help you use your mental strength the way it was meant to be used: for you, not against you.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why smart, high-achieving ultra runners often struggle on race day despite solid training.
The three most common self-sabotage patterns that lead to overthinking, doubt, and DNFs.
How to stop believing every negative thought your brain produces during a race.
What to do when uncertainty hits and you don’t have guarantees things will work out.
How to execute with confidence instead of getting stuck in analysis paralysis on race day.
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Full Episode Transcript:
You're smart. You train hard. You're not afraid of a big challenge, and you've probably succeeded at things harder than running 100 miles. So why does race day feel so impossible? Why do you keep having races that don't match your training? The truth? The very thing that's made you successful everywhere else can become your biggest enemy in an ultra.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to Episode 36. Last week, I taught a masterclass on something I see holding so many of my smart, capable clients back. And I'm sharing it with you today because I know it'll help. Because like them, you're a capable, high achiever who's not afraid of the hard work of training. You run mind-boggling distances and are always trying to improve. I mean, the fact that you're listening to this podcast is proof.
So why don't your races match this potential? Why does race day feel so impossible when you've succeeded at harder things than running 100 miles? There's this frustrating gap between what you know you should be able to do and what actually happens on race day. It should be easier for you, but it's not.
Let me paint you a picture of what this actually looks like. You can't finish races that you're physically capable of completing. You know your fitness is there, and you put in the training, but you keep having disappointing results or outright DNFing for races that don't make logical sense afterwards. Or, when things in the race get hard, you can't stay mentally strong. You fold. You want to be the runner who pushes through adversity, but instead, you end up negotiating with yourself and making excuses, and then you quit when the discomfort level gets too high. And you hate knowing that you gave up.
Or, you can't stop that negative spiral once it starts. Mile 40 hits, something goes wrong, and you can't get out of that negative thought loop. You want to be able to reset and refocus, but instead, you catastrophize endlessly until you just give up and drop. Or, you second-guess everything: pace, nutrition, gear changes, walking breaks, everything. You want to execute with confidence. It seems so clear and obvious to you and easy to do, but instead in the race, you constantly question if you're doing it right.
And the most frustrating part of all of this is that you can't access all that fitness that you worked so hard to build. You trained beautifully and to plan, and you felt strong in long runs, but it all just falls apart on race day. The confidence that you had in training should transfer to the race, but it doesn't.
Here's the good news in all of this: you're not missing anything. What's actually behind all of this is that your biggest strength, your mind, that smart mind, has become your biggest weakness. The very thing that serves you brilliantly at work and in life and in training backfires spectacularly during races when applied incorrectly. And here's what I really want you to get about that: the gap isn't in what you're missing or lacking. It's in how you're using the mental power that you already have. You just happen to be using it against yourself.
There are three specific ways that this happens, and they're really super common. So I'm going to walk you through each of the three along with exactly how to turn each of the three ways this happens into a solution. The first way is that you believe every thought that smart brain produces, like it's a rock-solid piece of truth. Like when mile 40 hits and you think, "I'm behind pace," you spiral instead of fact-checking that thought. Your brain is designed, all our brains are designed to solve problems. They are problem-solving machines. And if your brain doesn't have a real problem to solve, it actually creates a problem to solve.
This shows up as accepting your negative thoughts as facts instead of examining them. Your mind tells you, "This isn't going well," and you believe it without question. You think, "I'm not strong enough for this," and treat it as reality instead of just one possible interpretation of what is going on. You don't realize that thoughts are just mental events in your head. They're not necessarily true just because you're thinking them.
So when negative thoughts show up during the tough parts of a race, you take them at face value, you let them derail your performance. Picture this: you hit a rough patch at mile 45, and your mind says, "I'm just falling apart." And instead of checking the facts, like how your legs actually feel, how's your hydration, what's your heart rate, are you just tired from the last climb you just did, you accept that thought, "I'm falling apart," as truth and start the mental spiral that leads to dropping or having a terrible race.
The solution here that I'm going to give you is what I call the Fact Check Protocol. Turn that smart mind of yours from saboteur into ally by learning to examine your thoughts instead of just automatically believing them all. Like when that voice says, "My race is falling apart," you fact-check it against reality instead of spiraling into negative assumptions. When you do that, you realize, "Hey, I'm just a little bit off my nutrition schedule. I can correct for that. No big deal."
The second way you're using that smart mind against you is that you need guarantees before you'll risk trusting yourself. You want proof because it seems smart. You want proof that you'll finish before you commit to finishing. When uncertainty hits in a race, and it always does in an ultra, you end up shutting down instead of adapting. This shows up as needing certainty before you'll do something like dig deep in a race when you're behind cutoff. Instead of believing that you can dig deep and make it pay off and get ahead of cutoff, you need to know that the effort is going to pay off. Going off faith, believing you can, having faith in your ability to pull it off, just feels foolish and unrealistic.
Or at mile 60, you're 30 minutes behind your goal pace, and instead of asking yourself, "Okay, how can I fix this? What do I need to do right now?" You pull out your phone and do math and find, "Okay, if I maintain this pace, I'm going to miss the final cutoff by 45 minutes." 45. The math says you don't have a chance, so you slow down, take your time, and you drop at the next aid station, even though your body feels capable. And if you trusted yourself, you could use the next 40 miles to figure things out and get back on pace.
The solution here is to build your evidence bank. Gather evidence that you can handle whatever comes up in a race. Before the race, remind yourself of past challenges you've overcome and things you've done in your life and in ultra running. And during the race, add to that evidence as you solve problems and adapt and get more miles into the race. You build confidence through your track record of figuring things out and actually recognizing your track record of figuring things out, not through getting some guarantee about how the race is going to turn out.
The third way that you're not using the mental strength that you have, the mind power that you have for yourself, is that you research endlessly instead of executing. You spend time trying to find the, quote-unquote, "perfect" or "right" strategy instead of just choosing a good one and making it work. You get stuck in analysis paralysis mode when you should be in action mode. This shows up as looking outside yourself for solutions and overthinking everything instead of just executing. You spend time gathering information, deciding what the right way is, and then how to do it, instead of just making a decision based on what you know right now and acting on it.
You follow this one-size-fits-all training plan that's the most popular one at the moment, instead of looking at what this race course is going to demand of you and what actually derailed your last race. You know your weakness is climbing, let's say, and this race has 20,000 feet of elevation gain and loss, but the plan that you're following emphasizes adding volume and mileage. So that's what you do instead because that's what the plan says. And then you wonder why the hills destroy you again. This is why you analyze everything to death, like pace, nutrition, splits, other runners, the shoes you're going to wear in the race. Believe me, I've been through so many shoe dramas with clients.
When you should just be running your race. You spend the week before the race calculating exactly how many calories per hour you need, researching the perfect electrolyte ratio, and planning your drop bags down to the last exact gel. And then mile 30 hits, and you're slightly off your nutrition schedule, and you panic because you think your perfect plan is falling apart. And meanwhile, the runner who packed enough food and eats on a regular schedule, adjusting when needed and doesn't make it a problem, cruises past you.
The solution here is the three-step decision method. Make decisions quickly based on what you know now, currently, and what's good enough. And then commit to executing them fully. Instead of endless research for the perfect approach, you choose a good strategy and make it work through committed execution. And if you do get new information later that says you're off track, you're following the wrong solutions or wrong strategy, don't waste time thinking that first decision was wrong. Just make another new decision and move on.
All right, those are three common ways I see clients and runners using their minds against themselves. And notice the progression here. You get stuck in negative thinking. You believe your negative thoughts, so you get stuck in negative thinking, and you can't make that leap to self-trust because it seems so risky. So you look outward to everyone else and everything else for answers instead of developing that internal confidence that you really want. And each problem has a specific solution here that can turn that mind of yours, that powerful mind of yours, from a liability back into an asset. It's worth it to fix these three self-sabotage patterns and use your mind for you, because left unchecked, these three things lead to exactly what you don't want: bad races and DNFs that haunt you because you dropped from races before your body could have finished.
Knowing that you tied yourself in mental knots until you surrendered in frustration. You end up racing below your potential, training for months, showing up fit and ready, then leaving your best race in your head because you couldn't get out of your own way. Or you spend 100 miles fighting your own thoughts instead of just enjoying the challenge that you trained so hard for. And perhaps most frustrating of all, you repeat these three patterns race after race, wondering why the intelligence in your mind, the mental power you have, isn't translating into better results.
And here's what changes when you start using the three tools, the three solutions I gave you. Instead of fighting your mind the whole race, it becomes your ally. Instead of questioning every decision endlessly, you execute with confidence. Instead of needing perfect conditions, you adapt and overcome and trust yourself to handle whatever the race throws at you. You stop worrying that your mind is going to defeat you somewhere along the way because you know it's your strongest asset, that no matter what shape your fitness is in, you can rely on your mind to make the most of it. You go from thinking your way through races to flowing organically through them, trusting yourself. You stop leaving your best performances in your head and start using your head to run your best.
Just imagine walking to the starting line of a race, knowing that your mind is working for you instead of against you, that you can trust it and you can trust yourself. Picture hitting mile 60 of a 100-mile race with problems cropping up here and there. And instead of thinking, "I can't do this," you relish the challenge because you know, "I've got this."
Imagine crossing that finish line knowing that you raced to your potential instead of wondering what might have been if you'd gotten your mind out of the way. This is what's possible when you stop fighting your greatest asset and start using it properly. You don't need more training, more willpower, or to become a different person, a different runner. You just need to unlock what you already have. The gap between your training and your racing, you can close it. Those DNFs that haunt you, you can make them distant memories. That confidence that you feel in training, you can transfer it to race day. Your smart, powerful mind isn't the problem. It's been the solution all along. You just needed to know how to use it.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. And if you know somebody who could use this, please share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to Episode 36. Last week, I taught a masterclass on something I see holding so many of my smart, capable clients back. And I'm sharing it with you today because I know it'll help. Because like them, you're a capable, high achiever who's not afraid of the hard work of training. You run mind-boggling distances and are always trying to improve. I mean, the fact that you're listening to this podcast is proof.
So why don't your races match this potential? Why does race day feel so impossible when you've succeeded at harder things than running 100 miles? There's this frustrating gap between what you know you should be able to do and what actually happens on race day. It should be easier for you, but it's not.
Let me paint you a picture of what this actually looks like. You can't finish races that you're physically capable of completing. You know your fitness is there, and you put in the training, but you keep having disappointing results or outright DNFing for races that don't make logical sense afterwards. Or, when things in the race get hard, you can't stay mentally strong. You fold. You want to be the runner who pushes through adversity, but instead, you end up negotiating with yourself and making excuses, and then you quit when the discomfort level gets too high. And you hate knowing that you gave up.
Or, you can't stop that negative spiral once it starts. Mile 40 hits, something goes wrong, and you can't get out of that negative thought loop. You want to be able to reset and refocus, but instead, you catastrophize endlessly until you just give up and drop. Or, you second-guess everything: pace, nutrition, gear changes, walking breaks, everything. You want to execute with confidence. It seems so clear and obvious to you and easy to do, but instead in the race, you constantly question if you're doing it right.
And the most frustrating part of all of this is that you can't access all that fitness that you worked so hard to build. You trained beautifully and to plan, and you felt strong in long runs, but it all just falls apart on race day. The confidence that you had in training should transfer to the race, but it doesn't.
Here's the good news in all of this: you're not missing anything. What's actually behind all of this is that your biggest strength, your mind, that smart mind, has become your biggest weakness. The very thing that serves you brilliantly at work and in life and in training backfires spectacularly during races when applied incorrectly. And here's what I really want you to get about that: the gap isn't in what you're missing or lacking. It's in how you're using the mental power that you already have. You just happen to be using it against yourself.
There are three specific ways that this happens, and they're really super common. So I'm going to walk you through each of the three along with exactly how to turn each of the three ways this happens into a solution. The first way is that you believe every thought that smart brain produces, like it's a rock-solid piece of truth. Like when mile 40 hits and you think, "I'm behind pace," you spiral instead of fact-checking that thought. Your brain is designed, all our brains are designed to solve problems. They are problem-solving machines. And if your brain doesn't have a real problem to solve, it actually creates a problem to solve.
This shows up as accepting your negative thoughts as facts instead of examining them. Your mind tells you, "This isn't going well," and you believe it without question. You think, "I'm not strong enough for this," and treat it as reality instead of just one possible interpretation of what is going on. You don't realize that thoughts are just mental events in your head. They're not necessarily true just because you're thinking them.
So when negative thoughts show up during the tough parts of a race, you take them at face value, you let them derail your performance. Picture this: you hit a rough patch at mile 45, and your mind says, "I'm just falling apart." And instead of checking the facts, like how your legs actually feel, how's your hydration, what's your heart rate, are you just tired from the last climb you just did, you accept that thought, "I'm falling apart," as truth and start the mental spiral that leads to dropping or having a terrible race.
The solution here that I'm going to give you is what I call the Fact Check Protocol. Turn that smart mind of yours from saboteur into ally by learning to examine your thoughts instead of just automatically believing them all. Like when that voice says, "My race is falling apart," you fact-check it against reality instead of spiraling into negative assumptions. When you do that, you realize, "Hey, I'm just a little bit off my nutrition schedule. I can correct for that. No big deal."
The second way you're using that smart mind against you is that you need guarantees before you'll risk trusting yourself. You want proof because it seems smart. You want proof that you'll finish before you commit to finishing. When uncertainty hits in a race, and it always does in an ultra, you end up shutting down instead of adapting. This shows up as needing certainty before you'll do something like dig deep in a race when you're behind cutoff. Instead of believing that you can dig deep and make it pay off and get ahead of cutoff, you need to know that the effort is going to pay off. Going off faith, believing you can, having faith in your ability to pull it off, just feels foolish and unrealistic.
Or at mile 60, you're 30 minutes behind your goal pace, and instead of asking yourself, "Okay, how can I fix this? What do I need to do right now?" You pull out your phone and do math and find, "Okay, if I maintain this pace, I'm going to miss the final cutoff by 45 minutes." 45. The math says you don't have a chance, so you slow down, take your time, and you drop at the next aid station, even though your body feels capable. And if you trusted yourself, you could use the next 40 miles to figure things out and get back on pace.
The solution here is to build your evidence bank. Gather evidence that you can handle whatever comes up in a race. Before the race, remind yourself of past challenges you've overcome and things you've done in your life and in ultra running. And during the race, add to that evidence as you solve problems and adapt and get more miles into the race. You build confidence through your track record of figuring things out and actually recognizing your track record of figuring things out, not through getting some guarantee about how the race is going to turn out.
The third way that you're not using the mental strength that you have, the mind power that you have for yourself, is that you research endlessly instead of executing. You spend time trying to find the, quote-unquote, "perfect" or "right" strategy instead of just choosing a good one and making it work. You get stuck in analysis paralysis mode when you should be in action mode. This shows up as looking outside yourself for solutions and overthinking everything instead of just executing. You spend time gathering information, deciding what the right way is, and then how to do it, instead of just making a decision based on what you know right now and acting on it.
You follow this one-size-fits-all training plan that's the most popular one at the moment, instead of looking at what this race course is going to demand of you and what actually derailed your last race. You know your weakness is climbing, let's say, and this race has 20,000 feet of elevation gain and loss, but the plan that you're following emphasizes adding volume and mileage. So that's what you do instead because that's what the plan says. And then you wonder why the hills destroy you again. This is why you analyze everything to death, like pace, nutrition, splits, other runners, the shoes you're going to wear in the race. Believe me, I've been through so many shoe dramas with clients.
When you should just be running your race. You spend the week before the race calculating exactly how many calories per hour you need, researching the perfect electrolyte ratio, and planning your drop bags down to the last exact gel. And then mile 30 hits, and you're slightly off your nutrition schedule, and you panic because you think your perfect plan is falling apart. And meanwhile, the runner who packed enough food and eats on a regular schedule, adjusting when needed and doesn't make it a problem, cruises past you.
The solution here is the three-step decision method. Make decisions quickly based on what you know now, currently, and what's good enough. And then commit to executing them fully. Instead of endless research for the perfect approach, you choose a good strategy and make it work through committed execution. And if you do get new information later that says you're off track, you're following the wrong solutions or wrong strategy, don't waste time thinking that first decision was wrong. Just make another new decision and move on.
All right, those are three common ways I see clients and runners using their minds against themselves. And notice the progression here. You get stuck in negative thinking. You believe your negative thoughts, so you get stuck in negative thinking, and you can't make that leap to self-trust because it seems so risky. So you look outward to everyone else and everything else for answers instead of developing that internal confidence that you really want. And each problem has a specific solution here that can turn that mind of yours, that powerful mind of yours, from a liability back into an asset. It's worth it to fix these three self-sabotage patterns and use your mind for you, because left unchecked, these three things lead to exactly what you don't want: bad races and DNFs that haunt you because you dropped from races before your body could have finished.
Knowing that you tied yourself in mental knots until you surrendered in frustration. You end up racing below your potential, training for months, showing up fit and ready, then leaving your best race in your head because you couldn't get out of your own way. Or you spend 100 miles fighting your own thoughts instead of just enjoying the challenge that you trained so hard for. And perhaps most frustrating of all, you repeat these three patterns race after race, wondering why the intelligence in your mind, the mental power you have, isn't translating into better results.
And here's what changes when you start using the three tools, the three solutions I gave you. Instead of fighting your mind the whole race, it becomes your ally. Instead of questioning every decision endlessly, you execute with confidence. Instead of needing perfect conditions, you adapt and overcome and trust yourself to handle whatever the race throws at you. You stop worrying that your mind is going to defeat you somewhere along the way because you know it's your strongest asset, that no matter what shape your fitness is in, you can rely on your mind to make the most of it. You go from thinking your way through races to flowing organically through them, trusting yourself. You stop leaving your best performances in your head and start using your head to run your best.
Just imagine walking to the starting line of a race, knowing that your mind is working for you instead of against you, that you can trust it and you can trust yourself. Picture hitting mile 60 of a 100-mile race with problems cropping up here and there. And instead of thinking, "I can't do this," you relish the challenge because you know, "I've got this."
Imagine crossing that finish line knowing that you raced to your potential instead of wondering what might have been if you'd gotten your mind out of the way. This is what's possible when you stop fighting your greatest asset and start using it properly. You don't need more training, more willpower, or to become a different person, a different runner. You just need to unlock what you already have. The gap between your training and your racing, you can close it. Those DNFs that haunt you, you can make them distant memories. That confidence that you feel in training, you can transfer it to race day. Your smart, powerful mind isn't the problem. It's been the solution all along. You just needed to know how to use it.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. And if you know somebody who could use this, please share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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