20. The Simple Training Plan for the Mental Side of Ultra Running

Unstoppable Ultra Runner with Susan Donnelly | The Simple Training Plan for the Mental Side of Ultra Running

As ultra runners, we often hear that the sport is 80% mental, but what does that really mean? Even if it were only 50% mental, that’s still half your race! The mental side of ultra running can make all the difference. But it’s hard to know what to do when you're bombarded with conflicting advice, endless tips, and mantras that don't stick when you need them most. Without a clear, structured approach, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and stuck.

In this episode, I’m breaking down a simple, effective 5-step training plan specifically designed for the mental side of ultra running. I’ll show you how to shift your focus from “just surviving” the mental hurdles to actively building mental resilience, confidence, and race-day strategies that work. You won’t need to be a mental toughness expert to execute these steps. They’re practical, repeatable tools that you can start using right away to improve your mindset.

Through these 5 key steps, you’ll understand how to manage negative thoughts, stay focused through the toughest moments, and create a race plan that empowers you. These aren't abstract concepts. They're practical tools backed by over 1,000 hours of coaching that will give you the mental resilience to finish strong, no matter what the race throws at you.

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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:

  • Why ignoring the mental side of ultra running costs you more than you realize.

  • How to manage negative thoughts and emotions to stay in control during races.

  • Why developing mental strength can be even more powerful than developing physical fitness.

  • Why reimagining your self-image is crucial to your running success.

  • How to redefine failure and risk so fear stops holding you back from racing boldly.

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

It's said that ultramarathons are 80% mental. But even if it was only 50%, that's still half your race. Half your race. Wouldn't it make sense to get strong at the mental side too?

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.

Hi and welcome to episode 20. Of course it pays to get strong mentally. But here's why runners don't. It's not lack of ability, it's the confusion around it. There are too many shoulds and shouldn'ts and endless tips and hacks and conflicting advice, and nothing fits together. So it's like you have a million little things that you have to remember in the middle of a race.

And you don't even know what's missing from your mental strength or if you're leaving something out because you have no clear picture in your head of what it takes to build the mental strength you want. And who has time to figure it all out from scratch?

So the bottom line for most runners is that it feels completely out of reach. Why even try? But ignoring the mental side of the sport comes at a cost, of course. The overwhelm just keeps you stuck getting by in this race and the next race, and you keep promising yourself you're going to get better at it, but you don't.

And skipping the mental side leaves you vulnerable, of course, to DNFs and having bad races. And all that fear and self-doubt and negative thinking makes races less fun or worse, it makes you quit. And relying on tips and mantras, it just isn't enough. It's like having a doorknob to a house instead of having the whole house.

And the worst cost, it damages your trust in yourself. Because every time you promise yourself, it's usually in the middle of a race when it's really tough and you're really having a hard time. You promise yourself, after this race is over, I'm going to get better at the mental side of this sport.

And then the race is over and you don't. And then you find yourself in the next race in the same situation and you promise yourself again, and you go through that same cycle again. And so every time you go through this cycle, you break trust with yourself and you teach yourself to not trust yourself. So think about it. If somebody else kept making promises to you and not following through, you'd stop trusting them. It's the same with you.

And that's why today, I'm going to simplify the mental side of ultra running for you. To clear up that confusion and show you how simple it can be to build the mental strength you need to run your best. And to give you what you need to cut through the confusion. A training plan for the mental side of ultra running.

First though, I want to clear up a source of confusion. What do we even call the mental side of ultra running? There's so many terms that float around about this. I mean, is it mental toughness? Is it mental strength? Is it inner strength? Is it grit? Is it resilience?

Here in this podcast and throughout this podcast, what you're going to hear is that I'm talking about all of these. I think that getting lost in the small distinctions between those terms is really just an unnecessary distraction. I mean, whichever term we use, we're really talking about the same thing. We really want the same thing. So, on this episode and throughout this podcast, you'll hear me use these terms interchangeably. Don't get sidetracked by the labels.

What I'm going to give you here for this training plan are the 5 steps, 5, that you need to take on any ultra with confidence. And I didn't just dream these up. These came from over 1,000 hours of coaching and seeing what worked and what didn't and what got runners better results faster.

Over time, the coaching everybody needed fell into these 5 simple steps. And every mindset basic you need will fit into these 5 steps. 5. And that's what you want. A simple training plan, a clear, simple training plan, just like the one you have for your body. Except this is one for your mind.

And why this approach works? This keeps it simple. Everything fits into these 5 steps. These 5 steps solve any problem that your mind throws at you in a race. They’re repeatable and reliable. They give you more control than you knew you had in a race, which is beautiful. And they're, again, backed by over 1,000 hours of real coaching results and my own experience trying these things out.

And best of all, once you learn these steps, once you get these skills, you don't lose them. It's not like fitness that can disappear. And you never start over from zero on these again. You always have them.

I'm going to go through these steps one by one. And step number one is managing negative thoughts and emotions. And here's why this is important. Your mind has a natural negative bias because its main job is to keep you alive. So to do that, it's always scanning for threats and things that can go wrong. In other words, negative things.

That matters because your thoughts affect every decision you make in a race, big and small. I mean, everything from where you're going to put your foot next on the trail to whether you stay in the race or drop. Big decisions and little decisions and all your actions.

Most of the time, we react automatically to our thoughts without even realizing it. I mean, your brain might say, it might create the thought for you that, I'm so tired. I still have so far to go. I just can't make it. And because it feels true, you act on it and you quit.

But it's not the truth. It's just a thought. So you can't afford to let negative thoughts dictate your race. That's why you need to learn to manage your thoughts and emotions, to stay in control of yourself and your choices and your actions. Because otherwise, you're just reacting to whatever story your brain cooks up.

So, what this looks like in coaching is I teach my clients a mind shift process that first of all helps them notice when a thought isn't supporting their goal of finishing, and second, to choose a better thought that is going to support them. For example, instead of, I'm too tired to finish, they may decide to think, yeah, I'm tired, but I've already run most of this race. I only have a third of it left and I can finish that tired.

Once you start noticing and managing your thoughts, the next step in the training plan is building a set of practical race skills that you'll actually need out on the course. And you might think, well, racing should come naturally. I mean, just run. But there are some common, critical ways that your thoughts and emotions affect you in a race, and those are worth their own solutions.

So, I coach 5 of these essentials. The first is relentless focus. The skill of staying locked on your goal instead of getting distracted by things like aid stations and talking to other runners and losing track of where you are and what you're doing in the race and even dropping. I've had clients get distracted, running with runners that they've been sharing the trail with and that runner drops and they drop too. So that's the first of these 5 essentials.

The second is surfing the lows, learning to ride them out instead of quitting. The third is problem solving like a pro, fixing issues even when you're tired. The fourth is stop the drop, tools to keep you from giving up. And the fifth one is pain mastery, the ability to handle pain and discomfort so you keep running stronger longer.

So, that's the set of 5 essential race skills I teach my clients. And any one of these can save your race, but together, they give you the confidence that you can handle whatever comes up in the race and that you know what you're doing. With those skills in hand, the next piece in the training plan is putting it all together in a race plan.

So, step number three is create a race plan. One of the biggest doubts runners have is whether they can finish the race and hit their goal because without a plan, finishing is more doubtful. You're really leaving your race up to chance and luck and hope. That's what you're gambling all your training on. So it's no wonder there's doubt.

A step-by-step race plan shows you exactly how you can get it done. I mean a plan turns, can I do this, into, oh, here's exactly how I can do it. And even when unexpected challenges come up that change your plan in the middle of a race, you're better suited to know how to adapt and keep moving forward.

So, I work with my clients to create a custom plan specifically for them, their pace and their goals, and what makes it unique is that it combines pace, the course, and mindset in a way that's really easy to visualize and to follow during the race. It's not a spreadsheet. For those of you who cringe and think a race plan is a spreadsheet, I'm not talking about a spreadsheet. This is more like a story. And they walk into the race calm, knowing how to finish.

But even with a plan, there's still one thing that can sabotage a race. So, step number four in your mental training plan is redefining risk and failure. Because fear of failure is the single biggest thing holding runners back. It makes racing miserable. It keeps you running over cautiously and it steals the joy from ultra running.

So, I teach my clients how to use failure to their advantage, not just survive it, but use it to their advantage and to become comfortable taking risks and to make ultra running fun again.

As you get comfortable handling failure though, the next piece is possibly the most important one: how you see yourself as a runner. So, step 5 is seeing yourself differently. And this might seem fluffy and optional, but it's honestly probably the most important one of all because the way you see yourself limits, limits what you can achieve. This is how it works. You can't achieve more than you believe you're capable of. The moment you do, you're going to self sabotage back to your old self-image and stay there.

So, to achieve more, you first have to see yourself as capable of more. You have to believe you can do this more. So, I teach my clients how to step over that gap and become the strong runner they want to be. We go through how they see themselves now, develop a plan for becoming the runner they want to be, and we implement that plan over the course of coaching.

All right, those are the 5 steps. Number one, learn how to manage your negative thoughts and emotions so you control them, not the other way around. Two, build a set of essential race skills that every ultra runner needs for any race. Three, create a step-by-step race plan that shows you how you're going to get it done. Four, change the way you see risk and failure. Five, change how you see yourself as an ultra runner.

When you build these, you get mental resilience when it counts, trust in your own inner strength and skills, unshakeable confidence that you know what you're doing on race day, and the freedom to race boldly instead of safely. And last but definitely not least, the chance to become someone stronger along the way.

This is what to do. This is where to put your mental strength efforts. This plan, these 5 steps are sustainable. If you do these, they will give you a lifetime of solid ultra running. And mastering this is definitely within your reach. You don't need to be fast or have a certain number of races or distances. You just need the willingness to be a little bad at it while you learn and to get back up and to keep improving.

Support makes it easier. It makes all this whole process simpler, faster, and easier than figuring it out alone, and it turns that uncomfortable trial and error part of learning into progress. But it definitely takes the struggle out of going it alone and it gives you tools, perspective, and accountability and helps you build mental strength in weeks, not years. It took me 14 years to get to this point. I definitely want to shorten that and make that easier for you.

These aren't abstract ideas. They're 5 actionable steps to build mental strength that you can use in your next race and the one after that, and the one after that. So start building these skills. Start working this training plan and watch your mental game get stronger, race by race.

All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thank you for listening and share this with a friend who will appreciate it. 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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Susan Donnelly

Susan is a life coach for ultrarunners. She helps ultrarunners build the mental and emotional management skills so they can see what they’re capable of.

http://www.susanidonnelly.com
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19. Why Ultra Running Isn’t Selfish