76. “I Don't Want to Be Here”: How to Stay in the Race When You Want Out
There comes a point in some races when you’re not injured, you’re not exhausted beyond what you can handle, and nothing is particularly wrong, you just don’t want to be there anymore. The miles feel monotonous, you desperately want them to be over, and suddenly being anywhere but where you are feels like the only thing you want.
In this episode, I share how this showed up for me during the Minnesota Superior Marathon and why the urge to escape can become a real problem in an ultra. I explain why wanting out isn’t actually the problem, what the problem really is, and why trying to distract yourself, or escape it doesn’t solve what’s really going on.
Learning to tolerate those uncomfortable feelings can help you stay in your race, be present even when you’re not having fun, and build the mental strength to keep going when your goal is still miles away. This episode will show you how to stop fighting the urge to be somewhere else and make peace with the miles you’re actually in.
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:
How believing you can’t stand the monotony can turn an uncomfortable stretch of your race into a reason to drop.
Two steps you can use as an ultra runner when you just want the miles to be over.
How to feel the urge to be somewhere else while still appreciating where you are.
Why learning to tolerate uncomfortable emotions helps you respond more rationally during a race.
How the boring, mentally difficult miles can build some of your greatest mental strength.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
I don't want to be here anymore. If you've ever thought that mid-race, not out of pain or exhaustion, but just from the monotony of miles you're not enjoying anymore, this episode's for you.
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 76. The sound in this episode may be a little bit different because I've had laryngitis for the past three days, and I'm traveling in Minnesota and forgot my mic. The one thing I was most worried about forgetting. Just like a race, things don't always go the way you want to; they rarely do. And the skill is to accept that and quickly adapt so you still reach your goal despite that stuff.
I'm in Minnesota because last weekend, I normally would have been lining up for the Superior 100, going for my 23rd finish there. I'm tied with my friend Stewart for the most finishes at that race. It was my first 100 back in 1999, and it is still my favorite 100 in the U.S. for those of you who want to know my fave.
This year, though, was very different because of my hips. I just had a hip replacement in June. And I wanted to do something at the race, but I definitely didn't want to attempt the full 100. I've only had the new hip for three months, I mean, literally three months that week. And my old hip is becoming more and more the thing that's limiting me.
So, I could either start the 100 and drop somewhere, probably at the 32-mile aid station, or I could do one of the two shorter races, the 50-mile or the marathon. And my mileage since hip replacement has been purely hiking. I haven't run yet.
And with my long days, my long hiking days being only in the 10- to 15-mile range on mostly non-technical trail, the super technical marathon at Superior seemed like enough of a challenge and the best fit. I mean, anything more than that just wouldn't have been smart for my new hip. It's still doing some healing. And my old hip is still too undependable at 15 miles.
So, given the choice, I decided to work as a volunteer the first day of the 100 and hike the marathon the second day of the 100. So, you'll be hearing what I learned volunteering and running this race starting with this episode and continuing in episodes to come. But today's episode is from the marathon.
And picture this. I was in the third of four sections. The first exciting section was over. The one where you're just exuberant to be out there. It's a beautiful day and all of that. That one's over. The second, painful and most technical one, there was some scrambling involved with, you know, hands and knees. That one was thankfully behind me because it was painful.
I'm not yet to the last section, the one that's filled with happy landmarks telling me I'm getting closer and closer to the finish. I was in this, like, no longer fresh, but not quite ready to anticipate finishing section, kind of a no man's land mentally. My old hip hurt, but it wasn't a problem. I'd been managing that all day. And to add to this section, it's a monotonous one.
It's easy, and you can make good time in it, but after 13 miles of climbs and descents and river crossings, this one just wanders around in the woods, aimlessly. It looks the same for 5.6 miles. It's beautiful, but it looks the same. And I always get the feeling here that I'm working hard and getting nowhere. Or, I've been working hard and I get here and just kind of stall out, like I'm caught in some kind of time warp where I'm repeating the same mile over and over forever.
And here's what hit me this time in this section. I don't want to be here. I want to be in the last section anticipating finishing. The urge to not be there, to be done with that section, to get it over with, have it done, to be somewhere else was incredibly powerful. My mind jumped ahead to the next section and all the landmarks that meant I was finishing, the ones I know very well, the campsite, the descent, the river, the road.
I wanted to be there, getting closer. I could picture those things in my mind. I'd lost the enthusiasm for the race that I'd started with. I stopped having a good time. It became a chore. I hated the sameness of it. I felt trapped by it because there was no escape. The only way out was to do what I was already doing, to get to the next aid station. There was no faster solution. I couldn't just skip ahead to the finish, pass the bad part to the finish.
Now, I can finish the marathon this way. The distance compared to my usual 100 wasn't going to stop me. I could tolerate a section like that, for sure. But it was ruining the few miles I did get to have on the course this year. And if this had been a 100, my usual distance, this thinking doesn't just ruin miles, it ends races. This wanting to be somewhere else, not wanting to be there, hating the section you're in, this makes runners drop.
So whether you're racing a marathon or a 100, this is worth fixing. When you're in this situation, you automatically start searching for ways out of it, something to do to make it stop feeling so awful. And here are three of the most typical solutions you might recognize. You might want to tune it out, like you put on music or you rely on your pacer to keep you entertained.
Or you look for another runner to talk to. Tuning out the monotony so you don't have to feel it or the urge to escape it is taking a "wake me when it's over" approach. Or, you might want to fight it. Try to think of something happier, make it go away, ignore it, fighting against your own thinking. Or, you just quit.
When you get to the next aid station, you are so relieved to be done with that section that you have a hard time getting back out on the next section for more miles, if you even can, because you might just drop out. Here's why none of those solutions work. Tuning it out, fighting it, and quitting, obviously don't solve the problem. All three of those things are forms of escape.
And they only kick the can down the road to later in the race, or to your next race. It'll resurface later, sometime. And you'll try and escape it all over again because that's the only solution you know. You're only going to get true relief, though, by dealing with the problem at the source, not trying to escape it. And the sooner you do deal with the problem at the source, the better you'll race.
So, what's the source? First, it isn't what you might think. It isn't being too much in your head or being mentally weak or the fact that you feel like you don't want to be there. And it's not even having the strong urge to get out of the race and be somewhere else. That isn't the source. It's just what you feel. The urge itself isn't a problem. It's simply a feeling that you can expect to feel when you're going 31 or 50 or 100 or more miles.
That's a lot of miles. And there's a darn good chance in all those miles that some of them won't feel exciting or happy. Some of them might feel utterly monotonous, downright boring, not fun like my section. So, if feeling the urge itself isn't the problem, what is? It's what you think about that overpowering urge not to be there.
The problem is thinking that you can't stand it. You can't stand the monotony, the boringness, the not fun. You can't stand one more minute of it. You don't care how, you just need it to be over. You need out now. That is the problem, not the urge. Thinking you can't stand it is the problem. That is the source.
And here's the better solution than temporarily escaping it. It's two steps, not one. First, stop fighting the urge. Then, once you've done that, appreciate where you are. The first step, you've got to learn to feel uncomfortable emotional feelings without escaping them. You've got to let them be there. You've got to learn that you can stand it. You're stronger than that urge.
And you can't skip this part. I know you'd like to, but you can't. Because uncomfortable emotional feelings like this are going to happen. Think about it. You don't get through a day, a normal day, without feeling some uncomfortable emotions somewhere in that day. And you're not going to do that in a race either.
And the hard things we do aren't always a tough climb or handling the blisters on your feet or a tight cutoff. “We can do hard things” has to include feeling negative feelings without trying to escape them. Learning to feel them so you can decide how to rationally respond to them in a way that's best for your race instead of impulsively react.
That's why Reframe 101, my process for turning around negative thinking, is one of the first things I teach clients. It is one of the most basic things we need. You need to be mentally strong to do this sport well and have a chance at finding what you're really capable of beyond the false limits you see right now. And once you stop fighting the urge, it loses its grip on you.
All right, that's the first step. The second step is to add an "and" to it. The word and. You can feel the urge to be somewhere else and appreciate where you are at the same time. Here's how I did that at Superior. I thought, "Okay, yes, this is boring. It's not my favorite section, but it's still gorgeous. I'd still rather be here than anywhere else. I can feel bored for a little while.
That's actually, now that I think about it, a relief between sections of hard climbs. I got a hard climb section behind me. I got a hard climb section ahead of me. So this is kind of a relief. Maybe I'll start thinking of this as my rest section before the last section's tough climbs.” I noticed the leaves changing color early this year. Some of the maples were already this brilliant scarlet red and had scattered their leaves across the trail like rose petals.
I counted all the types of mushrooms I could see, six, in case you're wondering. It became a fun little hunt. I watched the sun through the leaves, glad we weren't in the thunderstorms the 100-milers had the day before. I felt the breeze on my skin and heard it rustle the birch and aspen leaves above me. That's a sound I don't get at home. I thought about the length of this section. It's only 5.6 miles.
That isn't forever. I mean, it's really just what would normally be a short daily run. So it can only last so long at my hiking pace. It would soon be over. And I knew that it might not seem like it, but I actually was getting somewhere. I mean, you take a step, you are getting somewhere. I knew this section and the race would soon be over.
And then I'd be doing laundry, going to the grocery store, living daily life, wishing I was out here, even in this boring section. I built this feeling that I wanted to be present while I actually was there. Wanting to not be there and being at peace with being there at the same time, and, both of those two things. You can do this, just like I just did it. And once you learn how, it becomes one of the hard things that's just natural to you now.
There are a couple of payoffs here. The obvious one is that those miles get more tolerable when you stop wrestling with your mind. But the biggest payoff, these are the miles you'll be proudest of, because this is how mental strength actually gets built. Not on the climbs, not at the finish line while everybody's cheering, right here.
In the boring, mentally tough miles you think you can't stand, the ones that you desperately want to escape and fast forward through. Every time you make peace with that urge and you stay in the race anyway, you get stronger. I watch it happen in my clients all the time. And once you've built that strength, it doesn't leave you.
You don't dread feeling this way in your next race because you know you're stronger than that urge. You're not scared of the monotony anymore. You're not scared of needing it to be over. You don't react to it the way you used to. You can stand it. You're certain of it, and you will finish because your goal is on the other side.
All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. Before you head off, if you're listening on Spotify, I've got a quick poll waiting for you just below the player. 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 episode, 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 76. The sound in this episode may be a little bit different because I've had laryngitis for the past three days, and I'm traveling in Minnesota and forgot my mic. The one thing I was most worried about forgetting. Just like a race, things don't always go the way you want to; they rarely do. And the skill is to accept that and quickly adapt so you still reach your goal despite that stuff.
I'm in Minnesota because last weekend, I normally would have been lining up for the Superior 100, going for my 23rd finish there. I'm tied with my friend Stewart for the most finishes at that race. It was my first 100 back in 1999, and it is still my favorite 100 in the U.S. for those of you who want to know my fave.
This year, though, was very different because of my hips. I just had a hip replacement in June. And I wanted to do something at the race, but I definitely didn't want to attempt the full 100. I've only had the new hip for three months, I mean, literally three months that week. And my old hip is becoming more and more the thing that's limiting me.
So, I could either start the 100 and drop somewhere, probably at the 32-mile aid station, or I could do one of the two shorter races, the 50-mile or the marathon. And my mileage since hip replacement has been purely hiking. I haven't run yet.
And with my long days, my long hiking days being only in the 10- to 15-mile range on mostly non-technical trail, the super technical marathon at Superior seemed like enough of a challenge and the best fit. I mean, anything more than that just wouldn't have been smart for my new hip. It's still doing some healing. And my old hip is still too undependable at 15 miles.
So, given the choice, I decided to work as a volunteer the first day of the 100 and hike the marathon the second day of the 100. So, you'll be hearing what I learned volunteering and running this race starting with this episode and continuing in episodes to come. But today's episode is from the marathon.
And picture this. I was in the third of four sections. The first exciting section was over. The one where you're just exuberant to be out there. It's a beautiful day and all of that. That one's over. The second, painful and most technical one, there was some scrambling involved with, you know, hands and knees. That one was thankfully behind me because it was painful.
I'm not yet to the last section, the one that's filled with happy landmarks telling me I'm getting closer and closer to the finish. I was in this, like, no longer fresh, but not quite ready to anticipate finishing section, kind of a no man's land mentally. My old hip hurt, but it wasn't a problem. I'd been managing that all day. And to add to this section, it's a monotonous one.
It's easy, and you can make good time in it, but after 13 miles of climbs and descents and river crossings, this one just wanders around in the woods, aimlessly. It looks the same for 5.6 miles. It's beautiful, but it looks the same. And I always get the feeling here that I'm working hard and getting nowhere. Or, I've been working hard and I get here and just kind of stall out, like I'm caught in some kind of time warp where I'm repeating the same mile over and over forever.
And here's what hit me this time in this section. I don't want to be here. I want to be in the last section anticipating finishing. The urge to not be there, to be done with that section, to get it over with, have it done, to be somewhere else was incredibly powerful. My mind jumped ahead to the next section and all the landmarks that meant I was finishing, the ones I know very well, the campsite, the descent, the river, the road.
I wanted to be there, getting closer. I could picture those things in my mind. I'd lost the enthusiasm for the race that I'd started with. I stopped having a good time. It became a chore. I hated the sameness of it. I felt trapped by it because there was no escape. The only way out was to do what I was already doing, to get to the next aid station. There was no faster solution. I couldn't just skip ahead to the finish, pass the bad part to the finish.
Now, I can finish the marathon this way. The distance compared to my usual 100 wasn't going to stop me. I could tolerate a section like that, for sure. But it was ruining the few miles I did get to have on the course this year. And if this had been a 100, my usual distance, this thinking doesn't just ruin miles, it ends races. This wanting to be somewhere else, not wanting to be there, hating the section you're in, this makes runners drop.
So whether you're racing a marathon or a 100, this is worth fixing. When you're in this situation, you automatically start searching for ways out of it, something to do to make it stop feeling so awful. And here are three of the most typical solutions you might recognize. You might want to tune it out, like you put on music or you rely on your pacer to keep you entertained.
Or you look for another runner to talk to. Tuning out the monotony so you don't have to feel it or the urge to escape it is taking a "wake me when it's over" approach. Or, you might want to fight it. Try to think of something happier, make it go away, ignore it, fighting against your own thinking. Or, you just quit.
When you get to the next aid station, you are so relieved to be done with that section that you have a hard time getting back out on the next section for more miles, if you even can, because you might just drop out. Here's why none of those solutions work. Tuning it out, fighting it, and quitting, obviously don't solve the problem. All three of those things are forms of escape.
And they only kick the can down the road to later in the race, or to your next race. It'll resurface later, sometime. And you'll try and escape it all over again because that's the only solution you know. You're only going to get true relief, though, by dealing with the problem at the source, not trying to escape it. And the sooner you do deal with the problem at the source, the better you'll race.
So, what's the source? First, it isn't what you might think. It isn't being too much in your head or being mentally weak or the fact that you feel like you don't want to be there. And it's not even having the strong urge to get out of the race and be somewhere else. That isn't the source. It's just what you feel. The urge itself isn't a problem. It's simply a feeling that you can expect to feel when you're going 31 or 50 or 100 or more miles.
That's a lot of miles. And there's a darn good chance in all those miles that some of them won't feel exciting or happy. Some of them might feel utterly monotonous, downright boring, not fun like my section. So, if feeling the urge itself isn't the problem, what is? It's what you think about that overpowering urge not to be there.
The problem is thinking that you can't stand it. You can't stand the monotony, the boringness, the not fun. You can't stand one more minute of it. You don't care how, you just need it to be over. You need out now. That is the problem, not the urge. Thinking you can't stand it is the problem. That is the source.
And here's the better solution than temporarily escaping it. It's two steps, not one. First, stop fighting the urge. Then, once you've done that, appreciate where you are. The first step, you've got to learn to feel uncomfortable emotional feelings without escaping them. You've got to let them be there. You've got to learn that you can stand it. You're stronger than that urge.
And you can't skip this part. I know you'd like to, but you can't. Because uncomfortable emotional feelings like this are going to happen. Think about it. You don't get through a day, a normal day, without feeling some uncomfortable emotions somewhere in that day. And you're not going to do that in a race either.
And the hard things we do aren't always a tough climb or handling the blisters on your feet or a tight cutoff. “We can do hard things” has to include feeling negative feelings without trying to escape them. Learning to feel them so you can decide how to rationally respond to them in a way that's best for your race instead of impulsively react.
That's why Reframe 101, my process for turning around negative thinking, is one of the first things I teach clients. It is one of the most basic things we need. You need to be mentally strong to do this sport well and have a chance at finding what you're really capable of beyond the false limits you see right now. And once you stop fighting the urge, it loses its grip on you.
All right, that's the first step. The second step is to add an "and" to it. The word and. You can feel the urge to be somewhere else and appreciate where you are at the same time. Here's how I did that at Superior. I thought, "Okay, yes, this is boring. It's not my favorite section, but it's still gorgeous. I'd still rather be here than anywhere else. I can feel bored for a little while.
That's actually, now that I think about it, a relief between sections of hard climbs. I got a hard climb section behind me. I got a hard climb section ahead of me. So this is kind of a relief. Maybe I'll start thinking of this as my rest section before the last section's tough climbs.” I noticed the leaves changing color early this year. Some of the maples were already this brilliant scarlet red and had scattered their leaves across the trail like rose petals.
I counted all the types of mushrooms I could see, six, in case you're wondering. It became a fun little hunt. I watched the sun through the leaves, glad we weren't in the thunderstorms the 100-milers had the day before. I felt the breeze on my skin and heard it rustle the birch and aspen leaves above me. That's a sound I don't get at home. I thought about the length of this section. It's only 5.6 miles.
That isn't forever. I mean, it's really just what would normally be a short daily run. So it can only last so long at my hiking pace. It would soon be over. And I knew that it might not seem like it, but I actually was getting somewhere. I mean, you take a step, you are getting somewhere. I knew this section and the race would soon be over.
And then I'd be doing laundry, going to the grocery store, living daily life, wishing I was out here, even in this boring section. I built this feeling that I wanted to be present while I actually was there. Wanting to not be there and being at peace with being there at the same time, and, both of those two things. You can do this, just like I just did it. And once you learn how, it becomes one of the hard things that's just natural to you now.
There are a couple of payoffs here. The obvious one is that those miles get more tolerable when you stop wrestling with your mind. But the biggest payoff, these are the miles you'll be proudest of, because this is how mental strength actually gets built. Not on the climbs, not at the finish line while everybody's cheering, right here.
In the boring, mentally tough miles you think you can't stand, the ones that you desperately want to escape and fast forward through. Every time you make peace with that urge and you stay in the race anyway, you get stronger. I watch it happen in my clients all the time. And once you've built that strength, it doesn't leave you.
You don't dread feeling this way in your next race because you know you're stronger than that urge. You're not scared of the monotony anymore. You're not scared of needing it to be over. You don't react to it the way you used to. You can stand it. You're certain of it, and you will finish because your goal is on the other side.
All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. Before you head off, if you're listening on Spotify, I've got a quick poll waiting for you just below the player. 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 episode, 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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