75. Why a Bad Stretch Doesn't Mean Your Race Is Over
You’re 60 miles into a 100-miler and you feel terrible. Suddenly, the 40 miles ahead seem impossible because if you feel this bad now, you’re only going to feel worse as the race goes on, right? It’s an assumption that can make a DNF feel like the only logical choice, even when you’re still capable of finishing.
In this episode, I’m breaking down the belief that once your race starts going downhill, it will keep getting worse. I explain why a few difficult miles aren’t enough to predict the rest of your race, why the lows you experience aren’t necessarily the start of a steady decline, and how this assumption can convince you that your race is over before it actually is.
You’ll learn how to recognize this thinking when it shows up and replace “How am I going to do 40 more miles?” with a much more useful question: “What haven’t I tried yet?” I show you how to keep looking for solutions instead of assuming the worst, so you can give yourself the chance to climb out of a low, keep moving forward, and discover what you’re actually capable of as an ultra runner.
My 1:1 Mental Mastery Coaching for Ultrarunners is a six-month coaching program where we build the mental skills experienced ultrarunners use to handle difficult races well. Schedule a consult call to learn more here.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why feeling bad now doesn’t mean you’ll keep feeling worse for the rest of your race.
How assuming things will only get worse can make a DNF feel like your only option.
Why the idea of a steady, linear decline doesn’t reflect how races actually unfold.
The question to ask yourself when you’re convinced you’ve tried everything in a race.
How getting through a low can expand what you believe you’re capable of as an ultra runner.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
The Ultrarunner’s Mastery Debrief Template helps you evaluate your races like experienced ultrarunners do - identifying what worked, what didn’t work, and what to do differently next time. Download yours for free here.
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Full Episode Transcript:
You knew mile 60 was going to be brutal. So you trained for it, you planned for it, you expected it, and you still dropped. If you've ever done that and later wondered what in the world you were thinking, I'm about to tell you exactly what was going on in your head.
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 75. Wow, 75 episodes. If this podcast was a 100-miler, we'd be in my favorite miles right now. I love 60 to 80 miles, where it's really tough and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, and you really have to call on everything you have. What a fun way to think about this episode.
And on another note, I have a little bit of a sore throat today, so my voice might sound a little different. Today, we are talking about a common assumption that causes you to drop when you don't have to, to quit before anybody pulls you, the type of DNF where you realize with regret that you could have continued on and you had a real chance at finishing, and you're kicking yourself because you didn't.
This one assumption I'm going to talk about today costs you that kind of race that you could have finished. And today, I'm exposing it, so you know what it is and you can plan for it. One of the most common reasons I hear for DNFing is this: if I feel this way at mile 60, how am I going to do 40 more? I'm using 100-mile numbers in this episode since that's what I mostly hear from clients, but swap in your own mile markers for whatever distance you're doing, because the exact same trap catches you at mile 14 of a 50k or mile 20 of a marathon.
This isn't about the distance; it's about the moment you decide that the rest of your race is only going to get worse. Because here's what that question is really saying, that question, how am I going to do 40 more? Here's what it's really saying: I can't do 40 more like this, because it's not just going to be like this for 40 miles, it's going to get worse. And it's not going to just get worse, it's going to keep getting worse every mile.
As bad as this feels, going on is going to feel continually worse and worse. Every mile, every step. It's just a fact. The situation is hopeless, so dropping seems like the only logical thing left for me to do. But once you drop, you never get to find out if you were wrong, if that thinking was correct. When your race ends, the question no longer matters, so you don't pursue the answer, and you really don't have a reason to question the logic behind it.
But the next day, maybe even just a few hours later, you realized you could have made it. And you wonder why. Why did I make such a huge mistake? I mean, it makes no sense. You promised yourself you were going to get past the hard parts. You expected them, you planned for them, and then you just caved. You're left feeling confused and awful, awful about yourself. And you want to just move on and put it behind you as fast as you can.
And here's why it makes no sense: you never actually go back and look at what made you drop in the first place, the belief that you were doomed to keep declining. Things were going to keep getting worse. That's still sitting there, unexamined. You never connect, "I could have finished," to, "That means my thinking about the miles ahead when I was standing there in the race, that means my thinking about the miles ahead was wrong."
You're just left after the race feeling bad without knowing exactly why. But let's go back to the moment in the race where you decided that dropping was the only logical course of action. It was the only option open to you. Here's where you were. It's late in the race, you're under time pressure, you're tired, you're feeling rough, maybe not thinking clearly.
You're either in an aid station or you're headed to one. And you're preoccupied with trying to decide whether to keep going on after that. Here is the assumption I'm talking about that sneaks into your thinking: if I feel bad and keep going, I'm going to keep feeling worse. There's no highs, there's no bouncing back, no recovering. You're just going to end up trying harder but going slower and feeling worse every mile.
In your mind, it's this linear decline, this straight-line decline into end of the race. And once you're on that trajectory, you assume there's no stopping it. Here's what's actually happening in your head. Think of how you feel in a race on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being wonderful, running strong, and zero is crashed, done, can't take another step. You started the race up near that 10, feeling great, wonderful, excited, great.
And you expected it to stay close to there. Realistically, you're going to get a little worn out and slow over the miles, maybe have a tough time in the afternoon when it's hot or when it's cold at night. So maybe you'll dip down to a nine, but that's really as low as you're going to get. But somewhere in the last chunk of miles, that number drops to a level you didn't expect. Maybe you're now an eight or seven, and you can feel the difference.
And here's the leap in logic that you make without even noticing it. You take that drop from 10 to an unexpected eight or even seven, and you assume that your race is going to keep declining that same way, that same rate, that same direction, all the way to zero.
Your race is going to just grind to a halt before you finish, and you're powerless to stop it. Your race and how you feel are going to decay in a linear way, and it's just a fact. Even now, probably not in a race, that probably sounds logical. I mean, if you're feeling bad at mile 60 and you go on, you're just going to feel worse. Those 40 miles are not going to be easy. They're going to be harder every mile.
When you assume this steady decline is inevitable, you also assume that you're helpless to do anything about it. You've tried everything and nothing works. So you're going to fight it, maybe, but your race is over. But before charging down that logic path, let's rethink that rule of linear decline, because it's really a myth, a myth of logic. Remember, the assumption is, if I feel bad and I keep going, I'm going to keep feeling worse every mile.
This is the kind of thinking that I help clients take apart. And this thinking, this myth, this assumption, falls apart in three important ways. I want you to see it now, so when you get in the race, you know it's not true, okay? First, notice the amount of data that you're working with. You got a few rough miles, even a rough section or two in a long race like 100. That is a small sample, a relatively small sample.
And it's the most recent, loudest, and most emotionally convincing sample in your tired mind. That combination, tired, loud, recent, is exactly what makes for bad predictions. You're building a 40-mile forecast ahead off the worst-feeling data point that you have. Think about it this way: recent and painful does not make it a reliable trend. I mean, I just felt this way in my last 50k this past weekend.
My old hip was hurting for the first nine miles, but it wasn't yet a third of the race. So I just decided, okay, my hip's hurting, but it's only nine miles, and that's too small a sample size to predict the remaining 22 miles. And it wasn't. My hip turned around right after that.
The second place that this assumption falls apart, that if it is actually a downward trend, it might not be a linear decline. Trends come in all shapes and directions. And how you feel in a race is more likely to be a sine wave, a wave that has troughs and peaks, ups and downs, not just down. Picture a road with dips and rises, or even better, like the way your heartbeat looks on a monitor. You know, it goes up and it goes down.
You have lows in a race, but you also have highs. In the middle of a low, it's easy to believe that getting out of the low, much less reaching a high, is impossible. But I just met with a client yesterday to help her evaluate her recent race, and she used this thinking to finish the last 13 miles of her ultra. She was nauseous, feeling bad, frustrated with it, but didn't give up because she knew it wasn't going to get worse every mile, that she might have some ups.
And she did manage to get to neutral enough to finish the race. So, the third way this thinking falls apart, this assumption falls apart is that even setting that wave shape, that up and down wave shape aside, look at what the assumption is actually claiming. Not, "you'll probably feel worse," not, "you'll often feel worse," or, "you might feel worse." It's claiming that you will inevitably feel worse, every time, no exceptions, like it's some law of racing.
At mile 60 when you are tired and frustrated, that feels airtight, feels like a law. But a real law has to hold every single time in every single race. It has to be true 100% of the time. And you know this one isn't. You've had races, maybe even this one, where you've climbed out of a low, you've felt better afterwards, where the finish felt better than the middle did.
If it has ever once been false, it's not a law, and this one has been false. So it's just a scary thought that shows up sometimes, trying to pretend that it's a law that you can't break out of. Another client, a fairly new ultra runner recently learned that as much of a law as this feels in the moment, like when you're feeling this bad and you have that many miles to go, you're just going to keep feeling worse, that it's not a law.
He learned that when you feel bad, it's not an inevitable death march to a DNF. And he used that knowledge to pull out of multiple lows and finish his first 100. So, that's the myth taken apart. It's a small, loud sample. It's not the linear shape it claims to be. It goes up and down. You can hit highs. And it can't be the immutable law that it seems if it has exceptions, and it does.
But knowing all of this doesn't stop it from working on you in the moment. I know that, because in the moment it seems true, and you still believe it, and believing a faulty assumption will get you a faulty result, because here's what happens. When you believe that this is how it's going to be, this is how the next 40 miles is going to be, going on feels pointless.
Who wants to keep pushing forward if you're going to only feel worse and run worse? So, you give whatever problems you're facing a half-hearted effort, maybe try a couple of known fixes, and then throw up your hands and declare it impossible, like the only option left to you is to drop. But once you know that this assumption isn't true, you're not stuck expecting the miles ahead to get worse, and you're free to ask a better question than the original one, "How am I going to make it 40 more miles?"
Here's the better question I want you to ask: "What haven't I tried yet?" That's the next step once you know that assumption is a myth. Not a mental pep talk or summoning up the willpower to push through the rest of the race against yourself. Not, "What have I tried and what has failed and what's not working?" What haven't you tried?
And be honest with yourself here, because most of what feels like, "I've tried everything," is really, "I glanced at a few options and assumed none of them would work," or, "This hasn't worked before, so it won't work now," or, "It didn't work immediately, so I'm sure it's just not going to." Eating something different, backing off the pace, stretching, waiting for dawn, pick whichever one you haven't generally given a real shot and give that one a real shot.
Not everything all at once, one thing actually tried for real. And if that doesn't finally turn it around, don't abandon it. Stack another solution on top of it. One thing I learned working as a causal analysis expert for decades is that even simple-looking problems often have multiple causes that take multiple solutions to fix. So, eating and slowing the pace for a while together is often what works when neither one alone would have been enough.
You're not trying to find the single fix here. You're looking for the next thing that moves the needle forward, gets you down the trail, and then the thing after that. That's what makes this question useful. “What haven't I tried yet?” turns a wall of just vague options that you're sure are going to fail into one decision you can make in the next 60 seconds.
And that one decision can be the whole game. It can be the difference between managing your exit from the race and staying in it. So, the next time that question shows up, "If I feel like this at mile 60, how am I going to do 40 more?" you'll know that there's a myth behind it.
That idea that things are going to keep getting worse, that's not a fact. It's a myth, trying to look like a fact or a law. And once you see that's a myth, you're not stuck to reacting to a decline that you assume is inevitable. You're free to actually solve the problem in front of you and keep moving forward instead of helplessly watching your race fall apart.
When you call that myth out, the race you get actually ends up feeling better than you thought it would and better than dropping. I mean, to finish a race where at one point you were sure you couldn't do it, you were certain that this was going to be a failure. You didn't think it was possible to keep going. Finishing a race like that extends the limits of what you see yourself as capable of.
Suddenly, you have undeniable proof that you are capable of more than you thought. That's one reason these are my favorite miles in a race, where you have the opportunity to do something that shouldn't be possible. And it's not a fluke. You took something that seemed like an absolute fact, "I can't do 40 more miles," and you went beyond it.
That's the definition of doing the impossible. And if you can do it once, you can do it again. All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. Before you head off, if you're listening to Spotify, I've got a quick poll waiting on you just below the player, and I'd love to know your answer. So take a second to vote before you go. And if you know someone who could use this, 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 75. Wow, 75 episodes. If this podcast was a 100-miler, we'd be in my favorite miles right now. I love 60 to 80 miles, where it's really tough and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, and you really have to call on everything you have. What a fun way to think about this episode.
And on another note, I have a little bit of a sore throat today, so my voice might sound a little different. Today, we are talking about a common assumption that causes you to drop when you don't have to, to quit before anybody pulls you, the type of DNF where you realize with regret that you could have continued on and you had a real chance at finishing, and you're kicking yourself because you didn't.
This one assumption I'm going to talk about today costs you that kind of race that you could have finished. And today, I'm exposing it, so you know what it is and you can plan for it. One of the most common reasons I hear for DNFing is this: if I feel this way at mile 60, how am I going to do 40 more? I'm using 100-mile numbers in this episode since that's what I mostly hear from clients, but swap in your own mile markers for whatever distance you're doing, because the exact same trap catches you at mile 14 of a 50k or mile 20 of a marathon.
This isn't about the distance; it's about the moment you decide that the rest of your race is only going to get worse. Because here's what that question is really saying, that question, how am I going to do 40 more? Here's what it's really saying: I can't do 40 more like this, because it's not just going to be like this for 40 miles, it's going to get worse. And it's not going to just get worse, it's going to keep getting worse every mile.
As bad as this feels, going on is going to feel continually worse and worse. Every mile, every step. It's just a fact. The situation is hopeless, so dropping seems like the only logical thing left for me to do. But once you drop, you never get to find out if you were wrong, if that thinking was correct. When your race ends, the question no longer matters, so you don't pursue the answer, and you really don't have a reason to question the logic behind it.
But the next day, maybe even just a few hours later, you realized you could have made it. And you wonder why. Why did I make such a huge mistake? I mean, it makes no sense. You promised yourself you were going to get past the hard parts. You expected them, you planned for them, and then you just caved. You're left feeling confused and awful, awful about yourself. And you want to just move on and put it behind you as fast as you can.
And here's why it makes no sense: you never actually go back and look at what made you drop in the first place, the belief that you were doomed to keep declining. Things were going to keep getting worse. That's still sitting there, unexamined. You never connect, "I could have finished," to, "That means my thinking about the miles ahead when I was standing there in the race, that means my thinking about the miles ahead was wrong."
You're just left after the race feeling bad without knowing exactly why. But let's go back to the moment in the race where you decided that dropping was the only logical course of action. It was the only option open to you. Here's where you were. It's late in the race, you're under time pressure, you're tired, you're feeling rough, maybe not thinking clearly.
You're either in an aid station or you're headed to one. And you're preoccupied with trying to decide whether to keep going on after that. Here is the assumption I'm talking about that sneaks into your thinking: if I feel bad and keep going, I'm going to keep feeling worse. There's no highs, there's no bouncing back, no recovering. You're just going to end up trying harder but going slower and feeling worse every mile.
In your mind, it's this linear decline, this straight-line decline into end of the race. And once you're on that trajectory, you assume there's no stopping it. Here's what's actually happening in your head. Think of how you feel in a race on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being wonderful, running strong, and zero is crashed, done, can't take another step. You started the race up near that 10, feeling great, wonderful, excited, great.
And you expected it to stay close to there. Realistically, you're going to get a little worn out and slow over the miles, maybe have a tough time in the afternoon when it's hot or when it's cold at night. So maybe you'll dip down to a nine, but that's really as low as you're going to get. But somewhere in the last chunk of miles, that number drops to a level you didn't expect. Maybe you're now an eight or seven, and you can feel the difference.
And here's the leap in logic that you make without even noticing it. You take that drop from 10 to an unexpected eight or even seven, and you assume that your race is going to keep declining that same way, that same rate, that same direction, all the way to zero.
Your race is going to just grind to a halt before you finish, and you're powerless to stop it. Your race and how you feel are going to decay in a linear way, and it's just a fact. Even now, probably not in a race, that probably sounds logical. I mean, if you're feeling bad at mile 60 and you go on, you're just going to feel worse. Those 40 miles are not going to be easy. They're going to be harder every mile.
When you assume this steady decline is inevitable, you also assume that you're helpless to do anything about it. You've tried everything and nothing works. So you're going to fight it, maybe, but your race is over. But before charging down that logic path, let's rethink that rule of linear decline, because it's really a myth, a myth of logic. Remember, the assumption is, if I feel bad and I keep going, I'm going to keep feeling worse every mile.
This is the kind of thinking that I help clients take apart. And this thinking, this myth, this assumption, falls apart in three important ways. I want you to see it now, so when you get in the race, you know it's not true, okay? First, notice the amount of data that you're working with. You got a few rough miles, even a rough section or two in a long race like 100. That is a small sample, a relatively small sample.
And it's the most recent, loudest, and most emotionally convincing sample in your tired mind. That combination, tired, loud, recent, is exactly what makes for bad predictions. You're building a 40-mile forecast ahead off the worst-feeling data point that you have. Think about it this way: recent and painful does not make it a reliable trend. I mean, I just felt this way in my last 50k this past weekend.
My old hip was hurting for the first nine miles, but it wasn't yet a third of the race. So I just decided, okay, my hip's hurting, but it's only nine miles, and that's too small a sample size to predict the remaining 22 miles. And it wasn't. My hip turned around right after that.
The second place that this assumption falls apart, that if it is actually a downward trend, it might not be a linear decline. Trends come in all shapes and directions. And how you feel in a race is more likely to be a sine wave, a wave that has troughs and peaks, ups and downs, not just down. Picture a road with dips and rises, or even better, like the way your heartbeat looks on a monitor. You know, it goes up and it goes down.
You have lows in a race, but you also have highs. In the middle of a low, it's easy to believe that getting out of the low, much less reaching a high, is impossible. But I just met with a client yesterday to help her evaluate her recent race, and she used this thinking to finish the last 13 miles of her ultra. She was nauseous, feeling bad, frustrated with it, but didn't give up because she knew it wasn't going to get worse every mile, that she might have some ups.
And she did manage to get to neutral enough to finish the race. So, the third way this thinking falls apart, this assumption falls apart is that even setting that wave shape, that up and down wave shape aside, look at what the assumption is actually claiming. Not, "you'll probably feel worse," not, "you'll often feel worse," or, "you might feel worse." It's claiming that you will inevitably feel worse, every time, no exceptions, like it's some law of racing.
At mile 60 when you are tired and frustrated, that feels airtight, feels like a law. But a real law has to hold every single time in every single race. It has to be true 100% of the time. And you know this one isn't. You've had races, maybe even this one, where you've climbed out of a low, you've felt better afterwards, where the finish felt better than the middle did.
If it has ever once been false, it's not a law, and this one has been false. So it's just a scary thought that shows up sometimes, trying to pretend that it's a law that you can't break out of. Another client, a fairly new ultra runner recently learned that as much of a law as this feels in the moment, like when you're feeling this bad and you have that many miles to go, you're just going to keep feeling worse, that it's not a law.
He learned that when you feel bad, it's not an inevitable death march to a DNF. And he used that knowledge to pull out of multiple lows and finish his first 100. So, that's the myth taken apart. It's a small, loud sample. It's not the linear shape it claims to be. It goes up and down. You can hit highs. And it can't be the immutable law that it seems if it has exceptions, and it does.
But knowing all of this doesn't stop it from working on you in the moment. I know that, because in the moment it seems true, and you still believe it, and believing a faulty assumption will get you a faulty result, because here's what happens. When you believe that this is how it's going to be, this is how the next 40 miles is going to be, going on feels pointless.
Who wants to keep pushing forward if you're going to only feel worse and run worse? So, you give whatever problems you're facing a half-hearted effort, maybe try a couple of known fixes, and then throw up your hands and declare it impossible, like the only option left to you is to drop. But once you know that this assumption isn't true, you're not stuck expecting the miles ahead to get worse, and you're free to ask a better question than the original one, "How am I going to make it 40 more miles?"
Here's the better question I want you to ask: "What haven't I tried yet?" That's the next step once you know that assumption is a myth. Not a mental pep talk or summoning up the willpower to push through the rest of the race against yourself. Not, "What have I tried and what has failed and what's not working?" What haven't you tried?
And be honest with yourself here, because most of what feels like, "I've tried everything," is really, "I glanced at a few options and assumed none of them would work," or, "This hasn't worked before, so it won't work now," or, "It didn't work immediately, so I'm sure it's just not going to." Eating something different, backing off the pace, stretching, waiting for dawn, pick whichever one you haven't generally given a real shot and give that one a real shot.
Not everything all at once, one thing actually tried for real. And if that doesn't finally turn it around, don't abandon it. Stack another solution on top of it. One thing I learned working as a causal analysis expert for decades is that even simple-looking problems often have multiple causes that take multiple solutions to fix. So, eating and slowing the pace for a while together is often what works when neither one alone would have been enough.
You're not trying to find the single fix here. You're looking for the next thing that moves the needle forward, gets you down the trail, and then the thing after that. That's what makes this question useful. “What haven't I tried yet?” turns a wall of just vague options that you're sure are going to fail into one decision you can make in the next 60 seconds.
And that one decision can be the whole game. It can be the difference between managing your exit from the race and staying in it. So, the next time that question shows up, "If I feel like this at mile 60, how am I going to do 40 more?" you'll know that there's a myth behind it.
That idea that things are going to keep getting worse, that's not a fact. It's a myth, trying to look like a fact or a law. And once you see that's a myth, you're not stuck to reacting to a decline that you assume is inevitable. You're free to actually solve the problem in front of you and keep moving forward instead of helplessly watching your race fall apart.
When you call that myth out, the race you get actually ends up feeling better than you thought it would and better than dropping. I mean, to finish a race where at one point you were sure you couldn't do it, you were certain that this was going to be a failure. You didn't think it was possible to keep going. Finishing a race like that extends the limits of what you see yourself as capable of.
Suddenly, you have undeniable proof that you are capable of more than you thought. That's one reason these are my favorite miles in a race, where you have the opportunity to do something that shouldn't be possible. And it's not a fluke. You took something that seemed like an absolute fact, "I can't do 40 more miles," and you went beyond it.
That's the definition of doing the impossible. And if you can do it once, you can do it again. All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. Before you head off, if you're listening to Spotify, I've got a quick poll waiting on you just below the player, and I'd love to know your answer. So take a second to vote before you go. And if you know someone who could use this, 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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