69. "My Body Betrayed Me" (The Poisonous Thought Hurting Your Ultrarunning)
After a disappointing race, it's easy to look for someone or something to blame. You trained hard. You followed the plan. You did everything you could. So when your race falls apart, the thought, "My body betrayed me," can feel completely justified. But what if that seemingly harmless thought is quietly damaging your confidence, your motivation, and your future as an ultrarunner?
Blaming your body after a tough race creates a relationship that makes training, racing, and improving much harder than it needs to be, but seeing your body as a teammate (instead of your enemy) changes the way you approach every single race. This week, I share why I've never once thought, "My body betrayed me," even after multiple DNFs and a hip replacement and why blame stops you learning, while curiosity helps you keep improving.
You'll discover how to evaluate a disappointing race without turning against yourself, why taking responsibility gives you more control instead of less, and how building trust with your body can help you race with more confidence for years to come. If you've ever walked away from a race feeling like your body let you down, this episode will give you a healthier, stronger way to move forward
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 the thought "My body betrayed me" is more damaging than it first appears.
How blaming your body affects your motivation, confidence, and future races.
Why you should view your body as a teammate rather than an obstacle.
The difference between blame and honest race evaluation.
How taking responsibility gives you more control over your future performance.
Why curiosity leads to better learning and stronger race results.
How building trust with your body can help you enjoy ultrarunning for years to come.
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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Episodes Related to the Most Dangerous Thought in Ultrarunning:
Full Episode Transcript:
After a bad race, there's a thought I hear. One that sounds harmless but can slowly destroy your performance and your love of the sport. I've had every reason to think it, especially lately. I never have. And it's one of the reasons I'm still here, still in ultra running after 30 years. And today, I'll tell you why.
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.
How are you all doing today? I hope your summer running is the best ever. Before I dive into the episode, I'm going to share an unexpected benefit of listening to the podcast. I have a client from Minnesota who, of course, listens to this podcast during training runs. She was in Colorado to pace a friend recently and she went out early to Colorado, she had some extra days and she took advantage of that and went for a trail run.
And on this trail run, she remembered mountain lions. What to do? What to do? She wracked her brain, and all she could think of was making herself big, and that just didn't seem big enough, good enough. So she pulled out her phone, put on a podcast on speaker phone, and finished up her run. And she got back to her car just fine. No mountain lions encountered. So, I won't claim that this podcast deters mountain lions, but it can't hurt.
All right. Today, I want to talk with you about something that I hear when runners talk about a disappointing race. One where they DNF'd, or they struggled through it, or they didn't get close to their goal, they missed it by a mile. And what I'm talking about is a really poisonous thought. And by poisonous, I mean it does an outsized amount of damage for how harmless it sounds.
There's really no good outcome of thinking this. And the reason this came up is that recently I heard a runner say this, and it just hit me that I've never thought it. In all these years, in 30 years of ultra running, I've never thought it. And my clients don't either. So, why is that? Why are my clients and I free of this and others not? And I got to wondering, do runners see what this thought does over time? Probably not. So, that's why the podcast. And here is the thought I'm talking about: My body betrayed me.
Think back to your last disappointing long run or race, one where there was a lot on the line. You needed it to go well. It had to. And it should have. By all rights, this long run or this race should have gone well, but instead, it fell apart. It was the opposite of what you wanted. This time though, the race falling apart or the long run falling apart wasn't your negative thinking or your decisions or your fears or anything mindset.
This time, it was your body. Your body that you put so many hours and so much effort into training just right. Like all the miles, the hills, the speed work, the cross training, a training plan, a nutrition plan, a hydration plan, an electrolyte plan, physical therapy and healing time for an injury. You gave it everything. But your body betrayed you. It just gave up. It quit. It stopped moving. It stopped wanting to go. Or that injury that you solved came roaring back out of nowhere. However your body failed, it shouldn't have. And now you're angry at it.
It betrayed you. I mean, you can't trust it. It's weak, and you have a right to be angry about it. So, that's how you got there. That's how you got to thinking this thought. And here's why thinking that your body betrayed you is poison. And I don't use that word lightly, because here's the damage it causes.
First with training. When you need to train for your next race after this bad race or bad long run, you have a hard time getting out the door to train. You have a hard time pushing, putting in the full effort. Your motivation is low, you're dragging. You can only seem to go through the motions. You don't have the energy for real training and you don't know why. And that's because in the back of your mind now, you think that giving the full effort isn't worth it because it's not going to pay off. Your body isn't going to perform like it should, so hard training is just going to be wasted. I mean, why bother?
And then after training, it shows up in races because now when you're preparing for a race, you don't trust your body. You're not going to count on it and have it fool you again. No way. So that means that if you're expecting it to betray you again, you can't rely on finishing or hitting your goal. So every time now you think about the race, you start imagining dropping or missing your goal. You start expecting not to hit your goal. That's the race you end up practicing in your head over and over and over again.
That's the one you visualize, the one you don't want. And that's the way you run. Distracted and on alert and preoccupied, expecting the worst to happen the whole entire race. Watching your body for any sign of weakness instead of just paying attention to what you're doing and running the way you're capable of. You're on lookout for signs of weakness that your body is quitting on you, just kind of waiting for it to happen. And in the meantime, you're trying to grit and willpower your way through because now in your head, you have to overcome your body.
Your body is an obstacle to you finishing. And also in the race, when you're thinking this, you don't solve problems. You might try one solution, one or two sure ones, but if they don't work, you just kind of check out because you already know what's coming and it's not worth like thinking up new solutions to this problem because why fight the inevitable? Why try every solution under the sun, try desperate measures if your body's just going to quit on you anyway?
And then at the first sign of trouble, you check out. You start to quiet quit because you “knew” this would happen. You “knew” you couldn't depend on your body. So, you waste time in the race bracing for failure. You let solvable problems stop you. It slows you down. It makes hitting your goal harder. It makes the whole race unenjoyable. But the worst effect, and why I think this is so harmful, why I choose the word poisonous is what it does to your relationship with your body and your ultra running future.
Your results in a race, like how much you enjoy running and your results depend on your relationship with your body. Think of your body as a teammate, which it is. Your teammate for ultras and your teammate for life. In a race, one of you can't race without the other. You both have parts to play, you and your body. You both have to pull weight to achieve your goal. One of you can't cross the finish line without the other, literally. Now, imagine distrusting your teammate, your one and only teammate. And you have proof that you can't trust them. So, why would you ever enter a big, important race?
Why would you go for a dream race that requires more of you? Your body becomes the thing standing between you and the life you want. It becomes the obstacle. So of course, you resent it, you criticize it, you hate on it. You say mean things to it. You blame it out loud to others and say it betrayed you. And in the back of your mind, you know you have no way out. This is the body you have. But you're thinking it's unreliable and you're stuck with it. And you hate that.
So, you dial things back. You settle for easy races and in the meantime, you lose the spark that comes from going for a big goal, from daring to reach for more, the reason we get into ultra running. You're certain that your body's going to betray you again, certain that it's not going to show up. It's not going to do what you trained it to do. So you stop believing that it can. You stop believing it's capable of reaching your goals. And that will take you out of ultra running completely, eventually.
So this small, innocent-sounding thought takes you in the opposite direction of your goals and your dreams. And here's why I don't think it. I see my body's performance as my responsibility. That puts it within my power to control. It's my job. It can't betray me on its own. I decide how to train my body. I choose to either do the training or not. I decide how to take care of it, how much sleep it gets, what I feed it. I decide whether and how to address any injuries or problems.
I make all the decisions about what to race and how to race it. And in the race, I pay attention to my body or I don't. I interpret my body's needs for fluid or fuel or electrolytes or cooling down or warming up or layers. You get the point. That's all your job as the team lead, all those decisions. Your body can't just betray you. The real problem here is that you're not taking care of your responsibility. Instead of asking what you'd do differently next time, you make your body the reason for failure so the fault doesn't have to be yours in your job.
So your body in the race isn't betraying you. It's giving you information and your job is to use it to run your best. When you don't use that information, that's on you. But when you blame your body instead for the race performance and for betraying you, it's dishonest and it doesn't serve you. Blame ends the race evaluation right there. I mean, if it's your body's fault, there's nothing else to look for.
There's no incentive to find another cause of failure. It's your body. There's nothing to solve because betrayal isn't solvable. So you just walk away. You blame your body, you walk away, and you lose all the learning from that race with no plan to change anything. So nothing changes. Because you've made your body the bad guy and yourself the helpless victim. When you think this and you blame your body, you betray it and yourself.
Now listen, I'm being hard here. There's no judgment, though, because we have all had races where we're disappointed in our body's performance. But I'm being intentionally blunt here because when you bypass taking accountability for your decisions, it stops you from improving. And it creates a rift between you and your body in your mind that just gets wider and wider. And I want you to keep improving and working your best with your body, because so much more is available to you as a strong team. So much more is possible for you when you work well with your body.
And look, I have had plenty of opportunity to think that my body betrayed me with the hip that I had to replace recently. I've had plenty of right to think that it failed on me. And I DNF'd a few times in the last couple years and my body was the limiting factor. But it never, in all those DNFs and all the years since I first heard that I was going to have to have a hip replacement, it has never once crossed my mind to think that my body betrayed me.
What I felt after each of those DNFs instead is a deep love and gratitude for my body's loyalty and for how hard it worked above and beyond what it was trained to do and to do its absolute best to do what I asked it to. Like not once or twice, not here or there, every single time. And not recently, it's done that my entire life. Now I felt frustration those DNFs, but the frustration I felt in those races was mine, pointed at me because I didn't know how to help my body.
I knew my body was struggling, but I didn't know what to do, how to help it, and what to fix. And that was on me as a team lead, and I just couldn't do it, and it was very frustrating. One gift of spending time over the last six years, and it's been six years since I was first told that I would have to have a hip replacement to today. So one gift of spending that six years with medical professionals pointing out to me with my x-rays up on the screen in front of both of us exactly how bad my hips are, and believe me, it is not fun to watch and have them point it all out at the time.
But one gift of that is that each time I walk out of their office, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my body, almost to the point of tears because I have seen in front of me, I've seen the picture, I've seen exactly what it's overcoming every time I've asked it to crank up hard climb after hard climb and pound down a technical descent without falling. My body, in spite of bone on bone and cysts that should have prevented it from traversing 100 miles a long time ago, has been doing that anyway because I asked it to. It always does its best for me and more. And it still is.
I mean, getting back after surgery, I'm hiking now. I'm hiking up to almost 13 miles. Getting back to that after surgery and being told by my PT that my progress is amazing, I cannot tell you how many times I have thanked my body and told it how proud I am of it. And yes, I talk to my body. So, here's a reminder for you. I know it can seem normal. We are ultra runners. We have ultra running friends. We think about ultras. It seems normal, but we're in an extreme sport.
So you're asking a lot more of your body than most of the rest of the population of the world ever will. That doesn't mean your body can't do it and more. It just means that sometimes we forget that we're asking a lot of our body. Sometimes you look around at your peers and see what their body can do that yours can't. And think about it this way. To be here in this sport is a miracle. And you arrived here to this miracle with the body that you have. So a far better strategy is to appreciate your body for what it can do, even when it's hurting, and to do your job to allow it to run its best.
Ultra running just works better that way. And here, I think, is why my clients don't get into blaming their body. The skills and tools that they learn with me, like race planning, race execution skills, controlling negative thinking, mastering risk, expanding their identity, those tools and skills are what they need to take responsibility for their own team. And behind all of that, behind all the skills and tools I teach them and all of our coaching sessions is honesty. Facing what happens in training and races with curiosity, not with blame for themselves or their bodies.
That's how they end up building mental strength and improving so fast. The game that my clients are playing is to improve as fast and get as strong as they can. They learn and they use tools that do that, and they see that they don't need blame. It serves no purpose for them. I mean, why would they need it? It only makes things worse. So what they're building is like a pro mindset. Think about this. If you were a pro, would you think that your body betrayed you? I mean, would you finish a race and say, my body betrayed me this time, end of story? No. You'd evaluate the race in detail and find every cause you could, and then build a plan to solve them all.
So your body's performance isn't something that happens to you. It's something you're responsible for creating, which means that it's in your ability to control. If you think that your body is capable of betraying you, this podcast episode is your call to change. Because it's a poisonous thought that you can clean up right now. Cleaning it up doesn't just change how you think, it changes whether you keep racing, keep improving, keep loving the sport at all. That thought might feel harmless. It's not. It's the difference between a runner who keeps improving and one who resentfully settles for less race after race.
So like my clients, I'm inviting you to a stronger, more honest approach to ultra running where you don't need to hide from mistakes. You jump at the chance to learn from them so that you can solve them for the next race. They are like treasure from your race. And think about it this way. Your body simply isn't capable of betrayal. It's only capable of doing exactly what you trained it, fed it, rested, and asked it to do. So if you want a different result, that's on you, the team lead. So the next time a race falls apart, don't ask what your body did to you. Don't look for excuses.
Ask what you'd do differently. That question is the difference between a rift in the relationship that keeps widening and a partnership that keeps getting stronger. You were blessed with a body, and not just any body, one that can do amazing things. It has never once tried to fail you. Trust is yours to build and not your body's to prove.
All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. 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.
How are you all doing today? I hope your summer running is the best ever. Before I dive into the episode, I'm going to share an unexpected benefit of listening to the podcast. I have a client from Minnesota who, of course, listens to this podcast during training runs. She was in Colorado to pace a friend recently and she went out early to Colorado, she had some extra days and she took advantage of that and went for a trail run.
And on this trail run, she remembered mountain lions. What to do? What to do? She wracked her brain, and all she could think of was making herself big, and that just didn't seem big enough, good enough. So she pulled out her phone, put on a podcast on speaker phone, and finished up her run. And she got back to her car just fine. No mountain lions encountered. So, I won't claim that this podcast deters mountain lions, but it can't hurt.
All right. Today, I want to talk with you about something that I hear when runners talk about a disappointing race. One where they DNF'd, or they struggled through it, or they didn't get close to their goal, they missed it by a mile. And what I'm talking about is a really poisonous thought. And by poisonous, I mean it does an outsized amount of damage for how harmless it sounds.
There's really no good outcome of thinking this. And the reason this came up is that recently I heard a runner say this, and it just hit me that I've never thought it. In all these years, in 30 years of ultra running, I've never thought it. And my clients don't either. So, why is that? Why are my clients and I free of this and others not? And I got to wondering, do runners see what this thought does over time? Probably not. So, that's why the podcast. And here is the thought I'm talking about: My body betrayed me.
Think back to your last disappointing long run or race, one where there was a lot on the line. You needed it to go well. It had to. And it should have. By all rights, this long run or this race should have gone well, but instead, it fell apart. It was the opposite of what you wanted. This time though, the race falling apart or the long run falling apart wasn't your negative thinking or your decisions or your fears or anything mindset.
This time, it was your body. Your body that you put so many hours and so much effort into training just right. Like all the miles, the hills, the speed work, the cross training, a training plan, a nutrition plan, a hydration plan, an electrolyte plan, physical therapy and healing time for an injury. You gave it everything. But your body betrayed you. It just gave up. It quit. It stopped moving. It stopped wanting to go. Or that injury that you solved came roaring back out of nowhere. However your body failed, it shouldn't have. And now you're angry at it.
It betrayed you. I mean, you can't trust it. It's weak, and you have a right to be angry about it. So, that's how you got there. That's how you got to thinking this thought. And here's why thinking that your body betrayed you is poison. And I don't use that word lightly, because here's the damage it causes.
First with training. When you need to train for your next race after this bad race or bad long run, you have a hard time getting out the door to train. You have a hard time pushing, putting in the full effort. Your motivation is low, you're dragging. You can only seem to go through the motions. You don't have the energy for real training and you don't know why. And that's because in the back of your mind now, you think that giving the full effort isn't worth it because it's not going to pay off. Your body isn't going to perform like it should, so hard training is just going to be wasted. I mean, why bother?
And then after training, it shows up in races because now when you're preparing for a race, you don't trust your body. You're not going to count on it and have it fool you again. No way. So that means that if you're expecting it to betray you again, you can't rely on finishing or hitting your goal. So every time now you think about the race, you start imagining dropping or missing your goal. You start expecting not to hit your goal. That's the race you end up practicing in your head over and over and over again.
That's the one you visualize, the one you don't want. And that's the way you run. Distracted and on alert and preoccupied, expecting the worst to happen the whole entire race. Watching your body for any sign of weakness instead of just paying attention to what you're doing and running the way you're capable of. You're on lookout for signs of weakness that your body is quitting on you, just kind of waiting for it to happen. And in the meantime, you're trying to grit and willpower your way through because now in your head, you have to overcome your body.
Your body is an obstacle to you finishing. And also in the race, when you're thinking this, you don't solve problems. You might try one solution, one or two sure ones, but if they don't work, you just kind of check out because you already know what's coming and it's not worth like thinking up new solutions to this problem because why fight the inevitable? Why try every solution under the sun, try desperate measures if your body's just going to quit on you anyway?
And then at the first sign of trouble, you check out. You start to quiet quit because you “knew” this would happen. You “knew” you couldn't depend on your body. So, you waste time in the race bracing for failure. You let solvable problems stop you. It slows you down. It makes hitting your goal harder. It makes the whole race unenjoyable. But the worst effect, and why I think this is so harmful, why I choose the word poisonous is what it does to your relationship with your body and your ultra running future.
Your results in a race, like how much you enjoy running and your results depend on your relationship with your body. Think of your body as a teammate, which it is. Your teammate for ultras and your teammate for life. In a race, one of you can't race without the other. You both have parts to play, you and your body. You both have to pull weight to achieve your goal. One of you can't cross the finish line without the other, literally. Now, imagine distrusting your teammate, your one and only teammate. And you have proof that you can't trust them. So, why would you ever enter a big, important race?
Why would you go for a dream race that requires more of you? Your body becomes the thing standing between you and the life you want. It becomes the obstacle. So of course, you resent it, you criticize it, you hate on it. You say mean things to it. You blame it out loud to others and say it betrayed you. And in the back of your mind, you know you have no way out. This is the body you have. But you're thinking it's unreliable and you're stuck with it. And you hate that.
So, you dial things back. You settle for easy races and in the meantime, you lose the spark that comes from going for a big goal, from daring to reach for more, the reason we get into ultra running. You're certain that your body's going to betray you again, certain that it's not going to show up. It's not going to do what you trained it to do. So you stop believing that it can. You stop believing it's capable of reaching your goals. And that will take you out of ultra running completely, eventually.
So this small, innocent-sounding thought takes you in the opposite direction of your goals and your dreams. And here's why I don't think it. I see my body's performance as my responsibility. That puts it within my power to control. It's my job. It can't betray me on its own. I decide how to train my body. I choose to either do the training or not. I decide how to take care of it, how much sleep it gets, what I feed it. I decide whether and how to address any injuries or problems.
I make all the decisions about what to race and how to race it. And in the race, I pay attention to my body or I don't. I interpret my body's needs for fluid or fuel or electrolytes or cooling down or warming up or layers. You get the point. That's all your job as the team lead, all those decisions. Your body can't just betray you. The real problem here is that you're not taking care of your responsibility. Instead of asking what you'd do differently next time, you make your body the reason for failure so the fault doesn't have to be yours in your job.
So your body in the race isn't betraying you. It's giving you information and your job is to use it to run your best. When you don't use that information, that's on you. But when you blame your body instead for the race performance and for betraying you, it's dishonest and it doesn't serve you. Blame ends the race evaluation right there. I mean, if it's your body's fault, there's nothing else to look for.
There's no incentive to find another cause of failure. It's your body. There's nothing to solve because betrayal isn't solvable. So you just walk away. You blame your body, you walk away, and you lose all the learning from that race with no plan to change anything. So nothing changes. Because you've made your body the bad guy and yourself the helpless victim. When you think this and you blame your body, you betray it and yourself.
Now listen, I'm being hard here. There's no judgment, though, because we have all had races where we're disappointed in our body's performance. But I'm being intentionally blunt here because when you bypass taking accountability for your decisions, it stops you from improving. And it creates a rift between you and your body in your mind that just gets wider and wider. And I want you to keep improving and working your best with your body, because so much more is available to you as a strong team. So much more is possible for you when you work well with your body.
And look, I have had plenty of opportunity to think that my body betrayed me with the hip that I had to replace recently. I've had plenty of right to think that it failed on me. And I DNF'd a few times in the last couple years and my body was the limiting factor. But it never, in all those DNFs and all the years since I first heard that I was going to have to have a hip replacement, it has never once crossed my mind to think that my body betrayed me.
What I felt after each of those DNFs instead is a deep love and gratitude for my body's loyalty and for how hard it worked above and beyond what it was trained to do and to do its absolute best to do what I asked it to. Like not once or twice, not here or there, every single time. And not recently, it's done that my entire life. Now I felt frustration those DNFs, but the frustration I felt in those races was mine, pointed at me because I didn't know how to help my body.
I knew my body was struggling, but I didn't know what to do, how to help it, and what to fix. And that was on me as a team lead, and I just couldn't do it, and it was very frustrating. One gift of spending time over the last six years, and it's been six years since I was first told that I would have to have a hip replacement to today. So one gift of spending that six years with medical professionals pointing out to me with my x-rays up on the screen in front of both of us exactly how bad my hips are, and believe me, it is not fun to watch and have them point it all out at the time.
But one gift of that is that each time I walk out of their office, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for my body, almost to the point of tears because I have seen in front of me, I've seen the picture, I've seen exactly what it's overcoming every time I've asked it to crank up hard climb after hard climb and pound down a technical descent without falling. My body, in spite of bone on bone and cysts that should have prevented it from traversing 100 miles a long time ago, has been doing that anyway because I asked it to. It always does its best for me and more. And it still is.
I mean, getting back after surgery, I'm hiking now. I'm hiking up to almost 13 miles. Getting back to that after surgery and being told by my PT that my progress is amazing, I cannot tell you how many times I have thanked my body and told it how proud I am of it. And yes, I talk to my body. So, here's a reminder for you. I know it can seem normal. We are ultra runners. We have ultra running friends. We think about ultras. It seems normal, but we're in an extreme sport.
So you're asking a lot more of your body than most of the rest of the population of the world ever will. That doesn't mean your body can't do it and more. It just means that sometimes we forget that we're asking a lot of our body. Sometimes you look around at your peers and see what their body can do that yours can't. And think about it this way. To be here in this sport is a miracle. And you arrived here to this miracle with the body that you have. So a far better strategy is to appreciate your body for what it can do, even when it's hurting, and to do your job to allow it to run its best.
Ultra running just works better that way. And here, I think, is why my clients don't get into blaming their body. The skills and tools that they learn with me, like race planning, race execution skills, controlling negative thinking, mastering risk, expanding their identity, those tools and skills are what they need to take responsibility for their own team. And behind all of that, behind all the skills and tools I teach them and all of our coaching sessions is honesty. Facing what happens in training and races with curiosity, not with blame for themselves or their bodies.
That's how they end up building mental strength and improving so fast. The game that my clients are playing is to improve as fast and get as strong as they can. They learn and they use tools that do that, and they see that they don't need blame. It serves no purpose for them. I mean, why would they need it? It only makes things worse. So what they're building is like a pro mindset. Think about this. If you were a pro, would you think that your body betrayed you? I mean, would you finish a race and say, my body betrayed me this time, end of story? No. You'd evaluate the race in detail and find every cause you could, and then build a plan to solve them all.
So your body's performance isn't something that happens to you. It's something you're responsible for creating, which means that it's in your ability to control. If you think that your body is capable of betraying you, this podcast episode is your call to change. Because it's a poisonous thought that you can clean up right now. Cleaning it up doesn't just change how you think, it changes whether you keep racing, keep improving, keep loving the sport at all. That thought might feel harmless. It's not. It's the difference between a runner who keeps improving and one who resentfully settles for less race after race.
So like my clients, I'm inviting you to a stronger, more honest approach to ultra running where you don't need to hide from mistakes. You jump at the chance to learn from them so that you can solve them for the next race. They are like treasure from your race. And think about it this way. Your body simply isn't capable of betrayal. It's only capable of doing exactly what you trained it, fed it, rested, and asked it to do. So if you want a different result, that's on you, the team lead. So the next time a race falls apart, don't ask what your body did to you. Don't look for excuses.
Ask what you'd do differently. That question is the difference between a rift in the relationship that keeps widening and a partnership that keeps getting stronger. You were blessed with a body, and not just any body, one that can do amazing things. It has never once tried to fail you. Trust is yours to build and not your body's to prove.
All right, you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. 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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