34. How to Run Faster by Managing Your Attention
Want to run faster? There's a mental power tool you're probably not using to its full strength, one that can make you faster but is instead slowing you down.
The power tool we're talking about is your attention. It's one of the most important tools in your mental toolbox, and right now it might be working against you. The issue isn't that you lack focus - it's that you're not aware of what you're spending your attention on during races. When you're lost in ultra math calculations, rehashing past race mistakes, or worrying about cutoffs, you're literally slowing yourself down. Every bit of mental energy spent on these distractions is attention you can't use for executing your race.
You'll discover the three biggest attention traps that cost you time and learn a simple framework called the Big Three - pace, fuel, and navigation - that keeps your focus where it needs to be. You'll also learn three specific skills for managing your attention that will help you run faster without increasing your leg speed.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why you can only truly focus on one thing at a time and how this affects your race performance.
The three biggest distractions that slow you down: past, future, and other runners.
How the Big Three framework (pace, fuel, navigation) keeps your attention on what matters.
Why ultra math and cutoff calculations actually make you slower, not faster.
Three learnable skills to redirect your attention when it wanders.
How to practice attention management during training runs using a simple timer technique.
Why managing your attention eliminates 5-10 minutes of lost time every hour
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Wanna run faster? There's a mental power tool you're probably not using to its full strength, one that can make you faster but is instead slowing you down. Today we're talking about what that tool is and how to use it.
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 34. All right. What we're talking about today, that power tool, it's your attention. Attention is one of the most important tools in your mental toolbox, and it can work for you or against you. And right now, your attention might be slowing you down. Your power, its power is in choosing what you spend it on, how you spend your attention, what you focus it on, and deciding what you give your attention to, and in how you use your attention or don't.
Here's why it's important. If you're not aware of what you're spending your attention on and giving it to, you'll probably spend it on a lot of things that aren't going to help you finish on time. You'll probably spend it on a lot of distractions that will actually cost you speed. So, if you learn to use your attention to its full power, you'll run faster. No speed drills, no extra miles, just smarter attention. This alone can be the difference between a breakthrough race and another disappointing finish where you know you could have run faster and somehow didn't.
So, here's what we're going to cover in this episode: why your attention is probably working against you right now, the three biggest attention traps that slow you down, and simple shifts to use your attention better. Because, here's what I know after 152 100-milers: when you use your attention right, you run faster. It's just that simple.
Here's a picture of how this typically plays out. Let's say you're in the middle of a race. Could be mile 30, mile 80, any mile. And let's say you start worrying about how you're going to do the miles ahead and whether you need to speed up or not, whether you're going to make it to the next aid station. So you start to do ultra math. And you try and do it in your head as you're running. And it sounds something like this. Okay, I got 47 miles to go and it's currently 2:18 in the afternoon and the cutoff is 6:00 a.m. tomorrow. Let's see, that gives me 15 hours and 42 minutes, and you go round and round in your head with those numbers and get confused because if you're like me, you can't do math like that in your head, at least more than one step of math.
So, you stop running and you walk and maybe pull out your phone to get a better answer. And you can't do the math on your phone and walk without falling, especially if you're on technical trail. So you stop for a minute and step off the trail or the track to focus on the math. And you're standing there, you crunch the numbers, you try to predict whether you're going to make it to the next aid station and the finish on time. And you look at numbers and what they mean and let's just say the answer isn't as good as you want it to be, which it usually isn't as good as we want it to be. We want it to be ideal.
So the answer is usually not as good as we want it to be. But your mind doesn't stop there. As you put your phone away and maybe start walking, your mind flashes back to past races. And this sounds something like, "Oh, remember that race where I was in this exact position and I crashed so hard at mile 35 or 85? It was awful. What if that happens again? What mistakes did I make earlier in this race that put me in that position? Maybe I went out too fast. Maybe I didn't eat enough. Maybe I didn't hydrate. Maybe I'm dehydrated." Or was it that I didn't eat enough at that one aid station? Maybe I didn't get the right things out of my drop bag. And on and on and on.
And suddenly, you realize with a jolt that you've lost track of how long you were standing there or just barely walking while you were lost in thought. You have no idea how long you've been standing there. And you realize, "I have no idea when I last ate. I can't remember the last time I drank anything. I haven't seen another runner for ages." Ooh, that's unsettling. "Am I still on course? When did I last see a trail marker?" The problem here though, isn't the ultra math, as much as we like to laugh about it, or the phone. The problem is not the phone either.
The problem is that you aren't actively managing how you spent your attention, which is one of your biggest assets in any race. Distractions like this can happen all throughout the race, and they can cost you little bits of time here and there that add up. The result is a slower race, not as good as you could have done, not as fast as you wanted to. And if you're lucky to finish, you might be lucky to finish at all.
So, here's what's happening. You can only focus, truly focus on one thing at a time. And you're always paying attention to something. And that something is either going to be essential to what you want to accomplish, which is finishing the race on target, or it's going to be a distraction to that, one or the other. You decide what you spend your attention on, something essential to getting to that finish or something that's going to be a distraction from that. And when you pay attention to distractions, you can't be focused on pace and what you need to do to maintain your pace. So you do end up running slower. The distractions don't slow you down. You deciding to pay attention to them does. Your use of attention is what matters here.
So the solution is to be aware and to decide what you're going to pay attention to. Intentionally decide that. Think about driving to a destination. You need to pay attention to navigation, speed, and traffic. And everything else, what your boss said, vacation plans, what music to play, the races you're going to sign up, they're all distractions that can make you miss a turn, or you might find yourself having cars passing you because you just drifted into driving slower than you want because you weren't paying attention to your speed.
Again, you can only truly focus on one thing at a time, either something essential to your goal or a distraction. And everything that is not essential to your goal is a distraction. So in a race, every bit of mental energy that you spend on distractions is attention that you can't use for executing your race. This is why your pace literally slows down when you're lost in thought. Your brain can only do one thing well at a time. And if it's thinking about something else, it's not thinking about the race and what you're doing.
So what's the fix? It's actually simpler than you think, but it does require practice. The solution is to keep your attention focused on the few things, and it is very few things, that you absolutely need to pay attention to in order to finish or hit your goal. That's it. Not the things that feel important or urgent or interesting, and not the things that your mind just wanders to on its own. The handful of things that are actually necessary to reach your goal.
Now I know you're probably thinking that this sounds obvious. I mean, it's just attention. It's not something magic. And you think you already know how to do this, but stick with me here because most runners I talk to have never clearly identified what's essential and what's a distraction.
Let me give you three of the biggest, most common distractions in a race, examples. The first distraction is the past. This is your history of mistakes and failures, or past successes you're worried that you won't be able to live up to. When you start rehashing this stuff that went wrong or you're at your last race or comparing this race to your PR performance race from two years ago, or what somebody said to you or what you wish you had said to somebody else, you're spending mental energy on things that literally cannot be changed. They're done. They're past. You can't change them. And it doesn't necessarily predict how you're going to do today either. This can extend into other non-running past failures and mistakes, like I said, like mistakes at work. And none of this past thinking stuff helps you finish this race. And it's just consuming attention that's better spent on your pace and what you actually need to be doing right now.
All right, that's the first one. The second distraction is the future. And this is all that calculating, trying to figure out if you're going to make cutoffs, imagining yourself dropping out, rehearsing what you're going to tell people about why you DNF'd, worrying about how this race will affect your goals for next year, and on and on and on. None of it helps you finish this race on target. Even focusing on cutoffs becomes a distraction. I know you might fight me on this, but if you're running your best pace right now, all that predicting and worrying isn't going to help you make cutoff. And as a matter of fact, all that predicting and worrying is just pulling attention away from actually doing the running that's going to help you get there to cut off and make cut off.
So, that's the second one. The third one is other runners. And this is a huge one. I'm talking about what other runners are doing as they're passing you. It is a huge distraction. Like are they slowing down? So you need to pass them. What are they talking about to each other? Are you going to continue leapfrogging this one runner? How far ahead or behind are they? Do they know what they're doing? Are they making smart decisions? Maybe you should do what they're doing. How do you compare with them? What do you think they're thinking of you? All of that.
And I'm not saying completely ignore others or suggesting that you pretend that they're not there. I mean, I cherish time with friends on the trail. But what I am saying is that you need to decide how much time and attention to give to whom and to cut it off at a certain point so you can refocus on what you're doing, what you're there to do. We're talking about speed here and from that perspective, the attention you give to others actually serves no purpose in getting you to the finish line.
Here's the point. None of these three distractions, past, future, or other runners, are necessary for you getting to the finish line on time. None of them help you do that. And they all actually take attention away from what you need to be doing to finish.
So, what do you do instead? It's actually pretty simple. If you're aware that your attention is a tool. When you catch yourself dwelling on any of these distractions, simply redirect your attention to one of the very few things necessary to hit your goal. And I like to use a group that I call the Big Three, which is pace, fuel, and navigation.
First off, there's pace. This is like, what's your current pace? Are you on plan? Are you on pace? Are you on target for the next aid station? Does this feel sustainable? Are you slowing down? Do you need to adjust your effort level for this section of terrain or this climb or something like that? So, that's pace. The next one is fuel. And really, it's fuel/hydration. I put the two together to make it a Big Three. So this is like, when did you last eat? When did you last drink? What does your body need right now to maintain this pace for the next hour, the next several hours? How is it doing? Are you budgeting your hydration to last this whole section? How are you doing on food and fuel? All of that.
And the third of the Big Three is navigation. Are you on course? What's the next landmark you're looking for? How far to the next aid station? Where was the last marker that you saw? Focusing your attention on these three essentials instead of the main three distractions will help you keep your speed up and result in a faster race.
The challenge here is that your attention though will drift. I mean, you're human, we all are. So, let's talk about how to redirect it. Managing your attention this way really takes three learnable skills to redirect your attention and manage it. And the first skill is to simply decide what is essential to hitting your goal. And I mean essential, like brutal with this. Ask yourself, what are the few things you need to be paying attention to? What are the absolute necessities? If everything you could give your attention to cost you time, what are the few things that are actually worth the cost? Or if you could only pay attention to five things the whole race or seven or something like that, what would they be?
My list, for example, is very short. The shorter, the better. My Big Three are my go-tos, of course, pace, fuel, and navigation. That and any developing injury. That's pretty much it. Everything else is literally a distraction. They might be nice distractions. I might want to talk to friends, but I know that talking to a friend is putting my attention on the conversation with them instead of what I'm doing. And often, you've probably found yourself doing this too, you're talking to another runner, you either fall into their pace or you slow down because you're focused on the conversation, the person, and the conversation with that person is what matters most in that moment, not your race.
So what I'm talking about here is deciding what is essential to you. And it doesn't mean that you're not going to give your attention to any distractions like friends on the trail. It just means you need to decide the absolute few things that you really need to be paying attention to actually hit your goal and finish the race.
The second skill is learning to pay attention to what you're paying attention to. This is awareness. And awareness of where your mind is, building the habit of awareness, it's a habit, is a mental strength that is completely worth developing for so many reasons, including this one. You need to catch yourself in the moment when your mind starts wandering into those distraction zones. And the more aware of where your attention is, the faster you can redirect it back to where it needs to be and the less time that distraction costs you.
Most runners never develop this skill because they think awareness just kind of happens naturally. And it doesn't. Think about how often you get lost scrolling on your phone. It's the same exact thing. It takes practice to notice when you've drifted into ultra math mode or started replaying past race disasters.
Skill number three, the last of the three here, is to learn to purposefully redirect your attention back where it belongs. Yes, this is actually a step of its own. It's not enough to notice you're distracted, you need to have a clear, specific place to put your focus instead. This is why the Big Three framework is so powerful. It gives you a place to put your attention and it's easy to remember those three. When you catch your mind wandering whether you'll make the next cutoff, you actually have somewhere better to put your attention. You don't just tell yourself, "Ugh, stop thinking about that." You actively redirect it where you want it to go. What's my pace right now? When did I last eat? Am I still on course?
This also seems like it ought to be automatic, redirecting your attention, but it's not. This takes practice outside races too. Again, if you think about scrolling on the phone, once you know you're doing it, it still takes effort to pull yourself away to something more important. Same thing. The ability to catch yourself mid-distraction like this and redirect is like a muscle. And you can't expect it to work perfectly at mile 75 of 100-miler all of a sudden if you've never exercised it during training runs.
So, start practicing redirecting your attention on your long runs. Maybe set a timer to go off every 30 minutes and ask yourself, "What am I paying attention to right now?" If it's not pace or fuel, hydration, or navigation, practice redirecting your attention there. The more you do this in training, the easier it becomes in races.
And here's what happens when you get good at it. This is so cool. You stay present more of the time. And when you're present, you make better decisions. And when you make better decisions, you run more efficiently. And when you run more efficiently, you go faster. When you consistently manage your attention this way, you get faster without increasing your leg speed. It's beautiful, because you eliminate the inefficiencies that come from mental distraction. When your attention is focused on execution instead of scattered here, there, and everywhere like a BB in a can across a dozen different things during the race, every step then becomes powerful. You actually get more speed out of the same level of fitness. Isn't that great?
Here's what that looks like in a race. You spend more time focused on what actually keeps you on pace instead of losing maybe, let's say, 5 to 10 minutes every hour to mental wandering. You stay engaged with executing your race instead. Like 5 to 10 minutes every hour, that's a lot of time. You make better real-time decisions that keep your speed up because you're working with current information instead of past anxieties or future projections. You notice when your pace slips before it becomes a big problem. You consistently fuel before you crash. You stay on course because you're paying attention to navigation markers, not off in la-la land.
So you finish races feeling like you gave your best effort regardless of the outcome. There's none of that lingering regret about mental mistakes or wishing you'd run faster or wondering what could have been if you'd just stayed focused.
And here is a cool bonus. This skill transfers to everything else in your life. Think about it. The ability to direct your attention consciously to what is most important to you is one of the most valuable capabilities you can develop in life, whether you're at work or managing a family crisis or chasing down a PR in a race. That is a cool bonus.
So, here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Your attention is a tool, but it isn't just another nice-to-have tool in your run ultra running tool kit. It's the tool that determines how effectively you use every other tool. You can have the perfect pacing strategy, but if your attention is scattered, you won't execute it right. You can have the best fueling plan with the best fuel in the world, but if you're not present enough to implement it and actually eat, it's useless.
You can know every trail marker and cutoff time and all of that and have it written down on cards or your arm or however you do that, but if you're lost in mental chatter about past races or future fears or what others are doing, that knowledge won't serve you. It can't help you.
The runners who break through and run their best, the ones who finally put together the race that they know they're capable of, they're not necessarily stronger or faster or better trained than they were before, but they are definitely the ones who learned how to harness their attention so that even in fatigue, they point it to what matters. Your mind is powerful and your attention is valuable. And right now, you have everything you need to use both of them more effectively to run faster. The question isn't whether you have the physical capability to reach your goals. The question is, are you willing to take control of where you spend your attention? Because when you do, you unlock the speed that you already have.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thank you for listening. If you know somebody who could use this, please share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you all 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 34. All right. What we're talking about today, that power tool, it's your attention. Attention is one of the most important tools in your mental toolbox, and it can work for you or against you. And right now, your attention might be slowing you down. Your power, its power is in choosing what you spend it on, how you spend your attention, what you focus it on, and deciding what you give your attention to, and in how you use your attention or don't.
Here's why it's important. If you're not aware of what you're spending your attention on and giving it to, you'll probably spend it on a lot of things that aren't going to help you finish on time. You'll probably spend it on a lot of distractions that will actually cost you speed. So, if you learn to use your attention to its full power, you'll run faster. No speed drills, no extra miles, just smarter attention. This alone can be the difference between a breakthrough race and another disappointing finish where you know you could have run faster and somehow didn't.
So, here's what we're going to cover in this episode: why your attention is probably working against you right now, the three biggest attention traps that slow you down, and simple shifts to use your attention better. Because, here's what I know after 152 100-milers: when you use your attention right, you run faster. It's just that simple.
Here's a picture of how this typically plays out. Let's say you're in the middle of a race. Could be mile 30, mile 80, any mile. And let's say you start worrying about how you're going to do the miles ahead and whether you need to speed up or not, whether you're going to make it to the next aid station. So you start to do ultra math. And you try and do it in your head as you're running. And it sounds something like this. Okay, I got 47 miles to go and it's currently 2:18 in the afternoon and the cutoff is 6:00 a.m. tomorrow. Let's see, that gives me 15 hours and 42 minutes, and you go round and round in your head with those numbers and get confused because if you're like me, you can't do math like that in your head, at least more than one step of math.
So, you stop running and you walk and maybe pull out your phone to get a better answer. And you can't do the math on your phone and walk without falling, especially if you're on technical trail. So you stop for a minute and step off the trail or the track to focus on the math. And you're standing there, you crunch the numbers, you try to predict whether you're going to make it to the next aid station and the finish on time. And you look at numbers and what they mean and let's just say the answer isn't as good as you want it to be, which it usually isn't as good as we want it to be. We want it to be ideal.
So the answer is usually not as good as we want it to be. But your mind doesn't stop there. As you put your phone away and maybe start walking, your mind flashes back to past races. And this sounds something like, "Oh, remember that race where I was in this exact position and I crashed so hard at mile 35 or 85? It was awful. What if that happens again? What mistakes did I make earlier in this race that put me in that position? Maybe I went out too fast. Maybe I didn't eat enough. Maybe I didn't hydrate. Maybe I'm dehydrated." Or was it that I didn't eat enough at that one aid station? Maybe I didn't get the right things out of my drop bag. And on and on and on.
And suddenly, you realize with a jolt that you've lost track of how long you were standing there or just barely walking while you were lost in thought. You have no idea how long you've been standing there. And you realize, "I have no idea when I last ate. I can't remember the last time I drank anything. I haven't seen another runner for ages." Ooh, that's unsettling. "Am I still on course? When did I last see a trail marker?" The problem here though, isn't the ultra math, as much as we like to laugh about it, or the phone. The problem is not the phone either.
The problem is that you aren't actively managing how you spent your attention, which is one of your biggest assets in any race. Distractions like this can happen all throughout the race, and they can cost you little bits of time here and there that add up. The result is a slower race, not as good as you could have done, not as fast as you wanted to. And if you're lucky to finish, you might be lucky to finish at all.
So, here's what's happening. You can only focus, truly focus on one thing at a time. And you're always paying attention to something. And that something is either going to be essential to what you want to accomplish, which is finishing the race on target, or it's going to be a distraction to that, one or the other. You decide what you spend your attention on, something essential to getting to that finish or something that's going to be a distraction from that. And when you pay attention to distractions, you can't be focused on pace and what you need to do to maintain your pace. So you do end up running slower. The distractions don't slow you down. You deciding to pay attention to them does. Your use of attention is what matters here.
So the solution is to be aware and to decide what you're going to pay attention to. Intentionally decide that. Think about driving to a destination. You need to pay attention to navigation, speed, and traffic. And everything else, what your boss said, vacation plans, what music to play, the races you're going to sign up, they're all distractions that can make you miss a turn, or you might find yourself having cars passing you because you just drifted into driving slower than you want because you weren't paying attention to your speed.
Again, you can only truly focus on one thing at a time, either something essential to your goal or a distraction. And everything that is not essential to your goal is a distraction. So in a race, every bit of mental energy that you spend on distractions is attention that you can't use for executing your race. This is why your pace literally slows down when you're lost in thought. Your brain can only do one thing well at a time. And if it's thinking about something else, it's not thinking about the race and what you're doing.
So what's the fix? It's actually simpler than you think, but it does require practice. The solution is to keep your attention focused on the few things, and it is very few things, that you absolutely need to pay attention to in order to finish or hit your goal. That's it. Not the things that feel important or urgent or interesting, and not the things that your mind just wanders to on its own. The handful of things that are actually necessary to reach your goal.
Now I know you're probably thinking that this sounds obvious. I mean, it's just attention. It's not something magic. And you think you already know how to do this, but stick with me here because most runners I talk to have never clearly identified what's essential and what's a distraction.
Let me give you three of the biggest, most common distractions in a race, examples. The first distraction is the past. This is your history of mistakes and failures, or past successes you're worried that you won't be able to live up to. When you start rehashing this stuff that went wrong or you're at your last race or comparing this race to your PR performance race from two years ago, or what somebody said to you or what you wish you had said to somebody else, you're spending mental energy on things that literally cannot be changed. They're done. They're past. You can't change them. And it doesn't necessarily predict how you're going to do today either. This can extend into other non-running past failures and mistakes, like I said, like mistakes at work. And none of this past thinking stuff helps you finish this race. And it's just consuming attention that's better spent on your pace and what you actually need to be doing right now.
All right, that's the first one. The second distraction is the future. And this is all that calculating, trying to figure out if you're going to make cutoffs, imagining yourself dropping out, rehearsing what you're going to tell people about why you DNF'd, worrying about how this race will affect your goals for next year, and on and on and on. None of it helps you finish this race on target. Even focusing on cutoffs becomes a distraction. I know you might fight me on this, but if you're running your best pace right now, all that predicting and worrying isn't going to help you make cutoff. And as a matter of fact, all that predicting and worrying is just pulling attention away from actually doing the running that's going to help you get there to cut off and make cut off.
So, that's the second one. The third one is other runners. And this is a huge one. I'm talking about what other runners are doing as they're passing you. It is a huge distraction. Like are they slowing down? So you need to pass them. What are they talking about to each other? Are you going to continue leapfrogging this one runner? How far ahead or behind are they? Do they know what they're doing? Are they making smart decisions? Maybe you should do what they're doing. How do you compare with them? What do you think they're thinking of you? All of that.
And I'm not saying completely ignore others or suggesting that you pretend that they're not there. I mean, I cherish time with friends on the trail. But what I am saying is that you need to decide how much time and attention to give to whom and to cut it off at a certain point so you can refocus on what you're doing, what you're there to do. We're talking about speed here and from that perspective, the attention you give to others actually serves no purpose in getting you to the finish line.
Here's the point. None of these three distractions, past, future, or other runners, are necessary for you getting to the finish line on time. None of them help you do that. And they all actually take attention away from what you need to be doing to finish.
So, what do you do instead? It's actually pretty simple. If you're aware that your attention is a tool. When you catch yourself dwelling on any of these distractions, simply redirect your attention to one of the very few things necessary to hit your goal. And I like to use a group that I call the Big Three, which is pace, fuel, and navigation.
First off, there's pace. This is like, what's your current pace? Are you on plan? Are you on pace? Are you on target for the next aid station? Does this feel sustainable? Are you slowing down? Do you need to adjust your effort level for this section of terrain or this climb or something like that? So, that's pace. The next one is fuel. And really, it's fuel/hydration. I put the two together to make it a Big Three. So this is like, when did you last eat? When did you last drink? What does your body need right now to maintain this pace for the next hour, the next several hours? How is it doing? Are you budgeting your hydration to last this whole section? How are you doing on food and fuel? All of that.
And the third of the Big Three is navigation. Are you on course? What's the next landmark you're looking for? How far to the next aid station? Where was the last marker that you saw? Focusing your attention on these three essentials instead of the main three distractions will help you keep your speed up and result in a faster race.
The challenge here is that your attention though will drift. I mean, you're human, we all are. So, let's talk about how to redirect it. Managing your attention this way really takes three learnable skills to redirect your attention and manage it. And the first skill is to simply decide what is essential to hitting your goal. And I mean essential, like brutal with this. Ask yourself, what are the few things you need to be paying attention to? What are the absolute necessities? If everything you could give your attention to cost you time, what are the few things that are actually worth the cost? Or if you could only pay attention to five things the whole race or seven or something like that, what would they be?
My list, for example, is very short. The shorter, the better. My Big Three are my go-tos, of course, pace, fuel, and navigation. That and any developing injury. That's pretty much it. Everything else is literally a distraction. They might be nice distractions. I might want to talk to friends, but I know that talking to a friend is putting my attention on the conversation with them instead of what I'm doing. And often, you've probably found yourself doing this too, you're talking to another runner, you either fall into their pace or you slow down because you're focused on the conversation, the person, and the conversation with that person is what matters most in that moment, not your race.
So what I'm talking about here is deciding what is essential to you. And it doesn't mean that you're not going to give your attention to any distractions like friends on the trail. It just means you need to decide the absolute few things that you really need to be paying attention to actually hit your goal and finish the race.
The second skill is learning to pay attention to what you're paying attention to. This is awareness. And awareness of where your mind is, building the habit of awareness, it's a habit, is a mental strength that is completely worth developing for so many reasons, including this one. You need to catch yourself in the moment when your mind starts wandering into those distraction zones. And the more aware of where your attention is, the faster you can redirect it back to where it needs to be and the less time that distraction costs you.
Most runners never develop this skill because they think awareness just kind of happens naturally. And it doesn't. Think about how often you get lost scrolling on your phone. It's the same exact thing. It takes practice to notice when you've drifted into ultra math mode or started replaying past race disasters.
Skill number three, the last of the three here, is to learn to purposefully redirect your attention back where it belongs. Yes, this is actually a step of its own. It's not enough to notice you're distracted, you need to have a clear, specific place to put your focus instead. This is why the Big Three framework is so powerful. It gives you a place to put your attention and it's easy to remember those three. When you catch your mind wandering whether you'll make the next cutoff, you actually have somewhere better to put your attention. You don't just tell yourself, "Ugh, stop thinking about that." You actively redirect it where you want it to go. What's my pace right now? When did I last eat? Am I still on course?
This also seems like it ought to be automatic, redirecting your attention, but it's not. This takes practice outside races too. Again, if you think about scrolling on the phone, once you know you're doing it, it still takes effort to pull yourself away to something more important. Same thing. The ability to catch yourself mid-distraction like this and redirect is like a muscle. And you can't expect it to work perfectly at mile 75 of 100-miler all of a sudden if you've never exercised it during training runs.
So, start practicing redirecting your attention on your long runs. Maybe set a timer to go off every 30 minutes and ask yourself, "What am I paying attention to right now?" If it's not pace or fuel, hydration, or navigation, practice redirecting your attention there. The more you do this in training, the easier it becomes in races.
And here's what happens when you get good at it. This is so cool. You stay present more of the time. And when you're present, you make better decisions. And when you make better decisions, you run more efficiently. And when you run more efficiently, you go faster. When you consistently manage your attention this way, you get faster without increasing your leg speed. It's beautiful, because you eliminate the inefficiencies that come from mental distraction. When your attention is focused on execution instead of scattered here, there, and everywhere like a BB in a can across a dozen different things during the race, every step then becomes powerful. You actually get more speed out of the same level of fitness. Isn't that great?
Here's what that looks like in a race. You spend more time focused on what actually keeps you on pace instead of losing maybe, let's say, 5 to 10 minutes every hour to mental wandering. You stay engaged with executing your race instead. Like 5 to 10 minutes every hour, that's a lot of time. You make better real-time decisions that keep your speed up because you're working with current information instead of past anxieties or future projections. You notice when your pace slips before it becomes a big problem. You consistently fuel before you crash. You stay on course because you're paying attention to navigation markers, not off in la-la land.
So you finish races feeling like you gave your best effort regardless of the outcome. There's none of that lingering regret about mental mistakes or wishing you'd run faster or wondering what could have been if you'd just stayed focused.
And here is a cool bonus. This skill transfers to everything else in your life. Think about it. The ability to direct your attention consciously to what is most important to you is one of the most valuable capabilities you can develop in life, whether you're at work or managing a family crisis or chasing down a PR in a race. That is a cool bonus.
So, here's what I want you to take away from this episode. Your attention is a tool, but it isn't just another nice-to-have tool in your run ultra running tool kit. It's the tool that determines how effectively you use every other tool. You can have the perfect pacing strategy, but if your attention is scattered, you won't execute it right. You can have the best fueling plan with the best fuel in the world, but if you're not present enough to implement it and actually eat, it's useless.
You can know every trail marker and cutoff time and all of that and have it written down on cards or your arm or however you do that, but if you're lost in mental chatter about past races or future fears or what others are doing, that knowledge won't serve you. It can't help you.
The runners who break through and run their best, the ones who finally put together the race that they know they're capable of, they're not necessarily stronger or faster or better trained than they were before, but they are definitely the ones who learned how to harness their attention so that even in fatigue, they point it to what matters. Your mind is powerful and your attention is valuable. And right now, you have everything you need to use both of them more effectively to run faster. The question isn't whether you have the physical capability to reach your goals. The question is, are you willing to take control of where you spend your attention? Because when you do, you unlock the speed that you already have.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thank you for listening. If you know somebody who could use this, please share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you all 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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