56. How to Tell an Excuse From a Reason in Ultra Running
Every ultra runner worries about making the wrong call in a hard moment. Did you back off for a legitimate reason, or did you let yourself off the hook with an excuse? In this episode, I’m breaking down one of the most important mental skills an ultra runner can build: how to tell the difference so you can stop second guessing yourself and trust your decisions.
What makes this so difficult is that excuses and valid reasons can look almost identical in the moment. Whether you’re deciding to shorten a run, skip difficult conditions, back off because of injury, or even drop from a race, the real challenge is not the decision itself, but how you arrive at it. When you don’t know how to separate excuses from smart choices, training becomes more stressful, races become harder, and your trust in yourself starts to erode.
In this episode, you’ll discover two simple tests to help you tell whether you’re acting from an excuse or a valid reason. I’ll show you how to make clearer decisions, avoid the guilt and regret that come from giving in to excuses, and build the kind of self trust that allows you to train and race with greater confidence.
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.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why ultra runners often struggle to tell excuses from real reasons.
The hidden costs of second guessing your decisions.
How excuses quietly affect both training and race outcomes.
The difference between clean disappointment and dirty disappointment.
Two practical tests to evaluate your decisions in real time.
How to stop fearing that you’re lazy or a quitter.
Why building self trust makes you a stronger, calmer runner.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
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.
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Episodes Related to Telling an Excuse from a Reason in Ultra Running:
Ep #35. How To Stop Procrastinating Your Runs and Get Out the Door
Ep #47. How to Manage Fatigue Brain: Strategies for Ultra Races
Full Episode Transcript:
Every ultra runner worries that they're lazy or a quitter. And today, you're going to find out how to tell for yourself.
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 56. I've been recording this podcast for just over a year now, and there is so much that I see in training and races and coaching that I can't wait to share. And I love hearing how you're using this podcast, so thank you all for listening. Today, I have something that's going to help you in your everyday ultra running world. How to tell if you're making a decision from a valid reason or an excuse. This comes up all the time in coaching.
A lot of what I do with clients is helping them respond to the hard moments in training and in racing. All of those moments where you have to make a call about what to do next, and it's not clear what call you want to make. In those moments, the question underneath that decision is this: Is this a real reason, or am I letting myself off the hook? Did I bail on a run for a good reason, or did I blow it off for an excuse?
I love when this comes up because it's a skill that every ultra runner needs to stop second-guessing themselves and stop thinking they're a quitter and know for sure, be able to relax that they made the decision that they want to make. And what I love even more is helping clients work through this for themselves, so they learn how to do this with their own situations in real-time, which is exactly what I'm going to give you tools for today.
So, in this episode, I'm going to share how to tell the difference when you're in that moment of deciding and you can't tell and how to pass up that excuse even when you feel powerless against it. Fear of excuses inevitably comes up for all of us, me included. And where it obviously comes up, the big example that we all think of with excuses is in deciding whether to drop out of a race or not, to drop down in distance, or to defer the race to next year. But it also comes up in more subtle, everyday ways in training.
Those chronic, everyday cases where you're deciding whether to get out the door and run in bad weather, and whether you should shorten your planned long run, and whether it's okay to save time and skip the trail run that's further away and more epic, and you would get more hill work, and it would be beautiful, and just get the miles closer to home on pavement instead.
And what I want you to know, one thing I want you to know of many in this podcast is, there's no right answer here. There's only the choice that you make and how it works for you, whether it works for you or whether it doesn't. But how you arrive at that choice, that's what matters.
And here's why. Ultra running takes discipline. We know that because we run extreme distances, so we rightfully pride ourselves on doing hard things. So you don't want to be the runner who gives in to excuses and takes shortcuts and gives in to laziness that ends up with struggling, not finishing races, and feeling that tidal wave of regret in the race because of it. And then that turning into the dreaded slippery slope where we lose fitness and drive, and we ultimately never recover our fitness and drive again. It becomes a habit, and there is no return.
So understandably, it's a big worry for ultra runners. Is this action I'm considering taking just an excuse? Is this the start of the slippery slope? We think the slippery slope is what an excuse will cost us, but hear me on this, excuses actually cost us even more than that we don't even realize. And first of all, there's the time and effort it costs you when you spend your time waffling about a decision because you can't tell if you're being smart or weak.
When you can't tell the difference, you worry that you're going to regret a decision and you spend time in that worry second-guessing yourself. You wonder, the weather is bad and this is only a small daily run. Is it okay to do a few miles on the treadmill instead? Or is it okay to skip an important long run for another priority? Should I drop down to the 100K or just run the 100-mile as planned? Or, of course, the big kahuna of all these decisions, do I drop out of the race or keep going?
These decisions, every time they come up, they paralyze you because you want to make them right, you want to make smart decisions. So you waste your time making the decision, trying to make the smart one when this time really is better spent focusing on your race.
Another cost of not being able to tell an excuse from a reason is, if you can't tell the difference, you start using excuses in training. And you arrive at the starting line without the mileage and the hill strength and the speed that you intended and needed to build in training. And then you use the excuse in the race itself. "I didn't train enough." And you end up with the results that don't reflect what you're actually capable of. You don't do the training because you gave in to little excuses here and there that didn't seem like they were a big deal, and then the race isn't what it could be.
The third cost, and this is the biggest cost of all, is what it does to how you see yourself. When you can't tell if you're using an excuse, you start to suspect yourself. You start wondering if you're actually the runner that you think you are, if you will really push through the hard parts of a race, dig deep when you need to, and train like you say you will.
And that suspicion against yourself makes you reluctant to commit to the big races that you really want to do and you really can do, because you start seeing yourself as a quitter, somebody who is too easily tempted to excuses and gives in to them. And you beat yourself up about the run you cut short or the race you dropped from, and if you did use an excuse, it feels unforgivable. You don't forgive yourself for it. And it becomes this character flaw that you're just stuck with. You have to live with. It's just who you are. And that's a hard way to run.
And look, worrying that you're giving in to an excuse is understandable because even when you're trying really super hard not to fall for excuses, they can still look a lot like smart reasons. When you are in the middle of deciding, "Do I run in this brutal cold?" "Do I push harder in this race that's already beaten me up?" it's not always obvious what you're feeling and whether that's a real reason or an excuse.
Take an injury, that's everybody's favorite example. Take an injury. Bailing on the last part of a long run to avoid further re-injuring yourself or to avoid an injury looks almost identical to using it as an excuse to stop pushing yourself. You still are thinking about the injury either way. You're still asking yourself, "Am I pushing too hard?"
So if you're there and you can't tell an excuse from a reason, don't get frustrated with yourself. What's good about this is that you actually do care about the difference and you don't want to give in to excuses. That is actually a great sign that this matters to you. You just need a way to tell those two things apart. And there's a way to tell the difference. And once you know it, good news, it's actually really simple.
It's in where you feel disappointment. If you drop out of a race for a good reason, you feel what I call clean disappointment about your goal. You really wanted whatever it is that you were going for, whether it's a PR or a finish or whatever. You really wanted it and you're disappointed that you aren't going to get it. But if you drop for an excuse, you feel what I call dirty disappointment. You feel guilt or shame about yourself, not about the goal, about yourself. You know in the back of your mind that you're lying to yourself. One is disappointment about the goal, the other is disappointment about yourself.
So, before you do something where you're worried you're going to use an excuse, imagine doing it and not doing it, and think about how you'll feel after each of these two choices. What about this decision will feel disappointing? Giving up your goal or giving up on yourself? That's the test. If you're thinking of bailing on a run, for example, because it's cold and it's raining, and you know you could do it, but it's going to be really miserable, you'll feel guilty afterwards about yourself and your decision. That guilt is the sign.
But if you're coming back from pneumonia and you really want to run, even though it's cold and raining, and it's going to be miserable, and you don't care about the miserableness, you're skipping the run to avoid a setback from that pneumonia. There's no guilt, just disappointment about not getting those miles in today. This isn't about what you're supposed to want. It's about what you actually feel and why you feel it.
That is the first test, but I also always like to have a backup, another tool in my toolbox. So, if you still can't tell if you're being motivated by a reason or an excuse, here's a way to double-check. And this test is about responsibility. A reason acknowledges responsibility and focuses on solutions, even if there are other people and unhelpful circumstances involved. An excuse blames and avoids accountability and focuses on stopping. You blame your crew or the cutoffs or the weather. You blame things that are outside your control.
Again, let's take injury, everybody's favorite example. If you're injured, a reason might look like this: "I'm only going to run six miles instead of my intended long run to give my knee another week to recover so I can get back to logging big miles without worrying about reinjuring it. I hate shortening that run, but I'd much rather make the investment in a solid recovery than push it to get a few more miles in today." That's a reason. The same scenario with an excuse will sound like this: "I can't run because my knee still hurts." So the test here is, am I taking responsibility, or am I blaming something else as an excuse? Or here's another way to phrase that: am I focusing on a solution or on getting out of doing something?
Let me give you a real big example about what these two tests put together look like in real life. And here's a scenario: My boyfriend at the time and I had flown to Ireland for a vacation, and we had only one day in a packed schedule to do something that I had been dying to do. It was on my musts of the trip, and that was to summit a specific mountain. And when we arrived that morning, the top of the mountain was hidden in a total whiteout of cloud with high winds, ridiculously high winds. I couldn't see the top, but we thought we're here, we're going to do it anyway.
So we ran up to the cloud line, but in the wind with zero visibility, once we got to that cloud line, we had to slow down and eventually go on all fours. It was steep, we couldn't see. We went on all fours to feel for the top, and I couldn't see if there was a drop-off or if we were going to bypass the peak and miss it and get lost. But it felt like we were so close. We estimated when we could kind of see where we thought the mountaintop might be. We aimed for that and we thought we were so close.
We could have been right next to it. But I decided it was too dangerous. I decided the risk outweighed the chance of success and I opted to turn around. I told my boyfriend, "Turning around." He kept after it a little bit longer and he said that he thought he made it to the top and he decided to claim that, but how would he know, because we couldn't see it?
And here's the key. I was so disappointed about the goal, going halfway around the world and wanting to do this one thing on this trip, one thing amongst a few things that I really wanted to do and not accomplishing it while we were there. But I've always been proud of myself for making that hard decision. It's disappointing to be so close and maybe right next to a goal and to let it go. But I figured, okay, the mountain will always be there and maybe someday I can come back on a better day.
So, when I apply the two tests to this situation, here's what I come up with. If I use the first test about disappointment, I was proud of myself. I was disappointed in not reaching the goal. That's clean disappointment. That's a reason. When I test it the second way about responsibility, I took responsibility for my safety and very reluctantly made a disappointing but very mature decision to turn around. By both tests, that was a reason, not an excuse. An excuse in this case would have looked like this: "It's too hard in all this wind and cloud. The weather has ruined our one chance at this because we won't ever even be able to tell if we get to the top. Getting to the cloud line is close enough. That's good enough."
Notice that the excuse version, there's no disappointment about the goal. Missing it is good enough. That excuse blames the weather for ruining the day and focuses on stopping, not on potential solutions like how could we solve this? And the solution in my reason was maybe one day I'll get back here on a better day. And here's the end of the story. I did eventually go back on a sunny, blue-sky day. I reached the top and I estimate that literally, thinking back about that previous day, I was probably right next to the peak that day years earlier and I just didn't know it.
These two tests aren't infallible. They're not lock-solid, infallible. You might still be tempted to use an excuse to justify skipping a daily run or running a less challenging long run or even cutting a race short. They work well, they work best when you're honest with yourself. You have to actually want to know the answer. If you're set on using an excuse no matter what, no test is going to stop you. And if you're really set on it, you can justify dropping or skipping that run. But why would you when you know what it costs you?
So, here's a good thing to know if you're still thinking, "I don't care. I just want to drop out of the race," or if you feel powerless against the pull to use an excuse. Know this: there's a counterintuitive paradox in using an excuse to justify quitting in some way. We think excuses are lazy and the easy way out, but it's actually easier to pass up excuses than to use them.
Because if you stop using excuses, call yourself on this habit, and it is a habit, and you stop allowing yourself to use them, you train more consistently. That's easier. You build self-trust while you build fitness all the way through your training. You get better at what works for you instead of blaming things for your performance and never getting better at ultra running. You race stronger because you can trust yourself not to use an excuse to quit. And these results compound over time. The less often you resort to an excuse, I'm talking everyday excuses too, the better your races get and the stronger you get.
You get to go through ultra running and life being a person who follows through, gets results, trusts herself, stops waiting for everything to be perfect and takes responsibility for her life instead of blaming everything around her. You stop letting fear run your life. You start making choices that free you up to run your best. This is exactly the kind of work I do with my clients, learning to read yourself clearly in the moments that matter. If you want to do that work with support, I'd love to talk to you. There's a link in the show notes to set up a free consult call with me. I would love to talk to you about coaching.
And here is what I know from my own experience. At the end of the day for me, knowing how to tell the difference between an excuse and a reason makes running simpler, calmer, and best of all is what it does for my relationship with myself. I know I'm not going to lie to myself. I know I'm trustworthy with myself. I know I may not be able to depend on the weather or other people, and sometimes even my body, but I can always depend on being honest with myself. And I have proof I can make tough decisions to quit when I would 100% rather keep going. That makes me a mature ultra runner. That's what mastery looks like.
It's easier to run hard and push myself because I'm not scared of how I'll react to that and what I'll do if I push too hard. I know what I'll do. If there's an honest reason to back off the pace, I will. And I don't lie to myself with an excuse. I don't need an excuse. I'm just not going to do that to myself. It doesn't benefit me or feel good. And none of this, none of what I just told you about me, is unique to me. All of that is available to you. And when you use these tests, you stop worrying that you're a quitter because you know that you're not.
All right you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. And if you know someone who could use this, please share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
Welcome to Unstoppable Ultra Runner, the podcast for ultra runners who refuse to let anything hold them back. I’m your host, Susan Donnelly, veteran of over 150 100-mile races, and a coach who helps runners like you break through mental roadblocks, push past doubt, and run with confidence. Let’s go.
Welcome to episode 56. I've been recording this podcast for just over a year now, and there is so much that I see in training and races and coaching that I can't wait to share. And I love hearing how you're using this podcast, so thank you all for listening. Today, I have something that's going to help you in your everyday ultra running world. How to tell if you're making a decision from a valid reason or an excuse. This comes up all the time in coaching.
A lot of what I do with clients is helping them respond to the hard moments in training and in racing. All of those moments where you have to make a call about what to do next, and it's not clear what call you want to make. In those moments, the question underneath that decision is this: Is this a real reason, or am I letting myself off the hook? Did I bail on a run for a good reason, or did I blow it off for an excuse?
I love when this comes up because it's a skill that every ultra runner needs to stop second-guessing themselves and stop thinking they're a quitter and know for sure, be able to relax that they made the decision that they want to make. And what I love even more is helping clients work through this for themselves, so they learn how to do this with their own situations in real-time, which is exactly what I'm going to give you tools for today.
So, in this episode, I'm going to share how to tell the difference when you're in that moment of deciding and you can't tell and how to pass up that excuse even when you feel powerless against it. Fear of excuses inevitably comes up for all of us, me included. And where it obviously comes up, the big example that we all think of with excuses is in deciding whether to drop out of a race or not, to drop down in distance, or to defer the race to next year. But it also comes up in more subtle, everyday ways in training.
Those chronic, everyday cases where you're deciding whether to get out the door and run in bad weather, and whether you should shorten your planned long run, and whether it's okay to save time and skip the trail run that's further away and more epic, and you would get more hill work, and it would be beautiful, and just get the miles closer to home on pavement instead.
And what I want you to know, one thing I want you to know of many in this podcast is, there's no right answer here. There's only the choice that you make and how it works for you, whether it works for you or whether it doesn't. But how you arrive at that choice, that's what matters.
And here's why. Ultra running takes discipline. We know that because we run extreme distances, so we rightfully pride ourselves on doing hard things. So you don't want to be the runner who gives in to excuses and takes shortcuts and gives in to laziness that ends up with struggling, not finishing races, and feeling that tidal wave of regret in the race because of it. And then that turning into the dreaded slippery slope where we lose fitness and drive, and we ultimately never recover our fitness and drive again. It becomes a habit, and there is no return.
So understandably, it's a big worry for ultra runners. Is this action I'm considering taking just an excuse? Is this the start of the slippery slope? We think the slippery slope is what an excuse will cost us, but hear me on this, excuses actually cost us even more than that we don't even realize. And first of all, there's the time and effort it costs you when you spend your time waffling about a decision because you can't tell if you're being smart or weak.
When you can't tell the difference, you worry that you're going to regret a decision and you spend time in that worry second-guessing yourself. You wonder, the weather is bad and this is only a small daily run. Is it okay to do a few miles on the treadmill instead? Or is it okay to skip an important long run for another priority? Should I drop down to the 100K or just run the 100-mile as planned? Or, of course, the big kahuna of all these decisions, do I drop out of the race or keep going?
These decisions, every time they come up, they paralyze you because you want to make them right, you want to make smart decisions. So you waste your time making the decision, trying to make the smart one when this time really is better spent focusing on your race.
Another cost of not being able to tell an excuse from a reason is, if you can't tell the difference, you start using excuses in training. And you arrive at the starting line without the mileage and the hill strength and the speed that you intended and needed to build in training. And then you use the excuse in the race itself. "I didn't train enough." And you end up with the results that don't reflect what you're actually capable of. You don't do the training because you gave in to little excuses here and there that didn't seem like they were a big deal, and then the race isn't what it could be.
The third cost, and this is the biggest cost of all, is what it does to how you see yourself. When you can't tell if you're using an excuse, you start to suspect yourself. You start wondering if you're actually the runner that you think you are, if you will really push through the hard parts of a race, dig deep when you need to, and train like you say you will.
And that suspicion against yourself makes you reluctant to commit to the big races that you really want to do and you really can do, because you start seeing yourself as a quitter, somebody who is too easily tempted to excuses and gives in to them. And you beat yourself up about the run you cut short or the race you dropped from, and if you did use an excuse, it feels unforgivable. You don't forgive yourself for it. And it becomes this character flaw that you're just stuck with. You have to live with. It's just who you are. And that's a hard way to run.
And look, worrying that you're giving in to an excuse is understandable because even when you're trying really super hard not to fall for excuses, they can still look a lot like smart reasons. When you are in the middle of deciding, "Do I run in this brutal cold?" "Do I push harder in this race that's already beaten me up?" it's not always obvious what you're feeling and whether that's a real reason or an excuse.
Take an injury, that's everybody's favorite example. Take an injury. Bailing on the last part of a long run to avoid further re-injuring yourself or to avoid an injury looks almost identical to using it as an excuse to stop pushing yourself. You still are thinking about the injury either way. You're still asking yourself, "Am I pushing too hard?"
So if you're there and you can't tell an excuse from a reason, don't get frustrated with yourself. What's good about this is that you actually do care about the difference and you don't want to give in to excuses. That is actually a great sign that this matters to you. You just need a way to tell those two things apart. And there's a way to tell the difference. And once you know it, good news, it's actually really simple.
It's in where you feel disappointment. If you drop out of a race for a good reason, you feel what I call clean disappointment about your goal. You really wanted whatever it is that you were going for, whether it's a PR or a finish or whatever. You really wanted it and you're disappointed that you aren't going to get it. But if you drop for an excuse, you feel what I call dirty disappointment. You feel guilt or shame about yourself, not about the goal, about yourself. You know in the back of your mind that you're lying to yourself. One is disappointment about the goal, the other is disappointment about yourself.
So, before you do something where you're worried you're going to use an excuse, imagine doing it and not doing it, and think about how you'll feel after each of these two choices. What about this decision will feel disappointing? Giving up your goal or giving up on yourself? That's the test. If you're thinking of bailing on a run, for example, because it's cold and it's raining, and you know you could do it, but it's going to be really miserable, you'll feel guilty afterwards about yourself and your decision. That guilt is the sign.
But if you're coming back from pneumonia and you really want to run, even though it's cold and raining, and it's going to be miserable, and you don't care about the miserableness, you're skipping the run to avoid a setback from that pneumonia. There's no guilt, just disappointment about not getting those miles in today. This isn't about what you're supposed to want. It's about what you actually feel and why you feel it.
That is the first test, but I also always like to have a backup, another tool in my toolbox. So, if you still can't tell if you're being motivated by a reason or an excuse, here's a way to double-check. And this test is about responsibility. A reason acknowledges responsibility and focuses on solutions, even if there are other people and unhelpful circumstances involved. An excuse blames and avoids accountability and focuses on stopping. You blame your crew or the cutoffs or the weather. You blame things that are outside your control.
Again, let's take injury, everybody's favorite example. If you're injured, a reason might look like this: "I'm only going to run six miles instead of my intended long run to give my knee another week to recover so I can get back to logging big miles without worrying about reinjuring it. I hate shortening that run, but I'd much rather make the investment in a solid recovery than push it to get a few more miles in today." That's a reason. The same scenario with an excuse will sound like this: "I can't run because my knee still hurts." So the test here is, am I taking responsibility, or am I blaming something else as an excuse? Or here's another way to phrase that: am I focusing on a solution or on getting out of doing something?
Let me give you a real big example about what these two tests put together look like in real life. And here's a scenario: My boyfriend at the time and I had flown to Ireland for a vacation, and we had only one day in a packed schedule to do something that I had been dying to do. It was on my musts of the trip, and that was to summit a specific mountain. And when we arrived that morning, the top of the mountain was hidden in a total whiteout of cloud with high winds, ridiculously high winds. I couldn't see the top, but we thought we're here, we're going to do it anyway.
So we ran up to the cloud line, but in the wind with zero visibility, once we got to that cloud line, we had to slow down and eventually go on all fours. It was steep, we couldn't see. We went on all fours to feel for the top, and I couldn't see if there was a drop-off or if we were going to bypass the peak and miss it and get lost. But it felt like we were so close. We estimated when we could kind of see where we thought the mountaintop might be. We aimed for that and we thought we were so close.
We could have been right next to it. But I decided it was too dangerous. I decided the risk outweighed the chance of success and I opted to turn around. I told my boyfriend, "Turning around." He kept after it a little bit longer and he said that he thought he made it to the top and he decided to claim that, but how would he know, because we couldn't see it?
And here's the key. I was so disappointed about the goal, going halfway around the world and wanting to do this one thing on this trip, one thing amongst a few things that I really wanted to do and not accomplishing it while we were there. But I've always been proud of myself for making that hard decision. It's disappointing to be so close and maybe right next to a goal and to let it go. But I figured, okay, the mountain will always be there and maybe someday I can come back on a better day.
So, when I apply the two tests to this situation, here's what I come up with. If I use the first test about disappointment, I was proud of myself. I was disappointed in not reaching the goal. That's clean disappointment. That's a reason. When I test it the second way about responsibility, I took responsibility for my safety and very reluctantly made a disappointing but very mature decision to turn around. By both tests, that was a reason, not an excuse. An excuse in this case would have looked like this: "It's too hard in all this wind and cloud. The weather has ruined our one chance at this because we won't ever even be able to tell if we get to the top. Getting to the cloud line is close enough. That's good enough."
Notice that the excuse version, there's no disappointment about the goal. Missing it is good enough. That excuse blames the weather for ruining the day and focuses on stopping, not on potential solutions like how could we solve this? And the solution in my reason was maybe one day I'll get back here on a better day. And here's the end of the story. I did eventually go back on a sunny, blue-sky day. I reached the top and I estimate that literally, thinking back about that previous day, I was probably right next to the peak that day years earlier and I just didn't know it.
These two tests aren't infallible. They're not lock-solid, infallible. You might still be tempted to use an excuse to justify skipping a daily run or running a less challenging long run or even cutting a race short. They work well, they work best when you're honest with yourself. You have to actually want to know the answer. If you're set on using an excuse no matter what, no test is going to stop you. And if you're really set on it, you can justify dropping or skipping that run. But why would you when you know what it costs you?
So, here's a good thing to know if you're still thinking, "I don't care. I just want to drop out of the race," or if you feel powerless against the pull to use an excuse. Know this: there's a counterintuitive paradox in using an excuse to justify quitting in some way. We think excuses are lazy and the easy way out, but it's actually easier to pass up excuses than to use them.
Because if you stop using excuses, call yourself on this habit, and it is a habit, and you stop allowing yourself to use them, you train more consistently. That's easier. You build self-trust while you build fitness all the way through your training. You get better at what works for you instead of blaming things for your performance and never getting better at ultra running. You race stronger because you can trust yourself not to use an excuse to quit. And these results compound over time. The less often you resort to an excuse, I'm talking everyday excuses too, the better your races get and the stronger you get.
You get to go through ultra running and life being a person who follows through, gets results, trusts herself, stops waiting for everything to be perfect and takes responsibility for her life instead of blaming everything around her. You stop letting fear run your life. You start making choices that free you up to run your best. This is exactly the kind of work I do with my clients, learning to read yourself clearly in the moments that matter. If you want to do that work with support, I'd love to talk to you. There's a link in the show notes to set up a free consult call with me. I would love to talk to you about coaching.
And here is what I know from my own experience. At the end of the day for me, knowing how to tell the difference between an excuse and a reason makes running simpler, calmer, and best of all is what it does for my relationship with myself. I know I'm not going to lie to myself. I know I'm trustworthy with myself. I know I may not be able to depend on the weather or other people, and sometimes even my body, but I can always depend on being honest with myself. And I have proof I can make tough decisions to quit when I would 100% rather keep going. That makes me a mature ultra runner. That's what mastery looks like.
It's easier to run hard and push myself because I'm not scared of how I'll react to that and what I'll do if I push too hard. I know what I'll do. If there's an honest reason to back off the pace, I will. And I don't lie to myself with an excuse. I don't need an excuse. I'm just not going to do that to myself. It doesn't benefit me or feel good. And none of this, none of what I just told you about me, is unique to me. All of that is available to you. And when you use these tests, you stop worrying that you're a quitter because you know that you're not.
All right you all. That's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. And if you know someone who could use this, please share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear. See you next week. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Unstoppable Ultra Runner. If you want more ultra talk, mindset tools, and strategies for running with confidence, visit www.susanidonnelly.com. This podcast receives production support from the team at Digital Freedom Productions. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next week.
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