51. Ultra Math: 5 Strategies to Master It in Your Races
Ultra math is something every ultrarunner does. We rely on it, we stress over it, and more often than we’d like to admit, we regret the decisions we make because of it. In this episode, I’m breaking down what ultra math actually is and why it can quietly derail your race if you’re not careful.
The issue isn’t the numbers themselves. Numbers are neutral. The problem is how we use them, especially when we’re tired, stressed, and trying to make decisions in the middle of a race. That’s when ultra math starts to feel like a verdict instead of just information, and it can lead to pushing too hard, wasting time, or even deciding to drop when you didn’t need to.
In this episode, I’m giving you five strategies to help you take control of ultra math instead of letting it control you. From what to do before the race to how to handle calculations in the moment, these tools will help you make better decisions, stay focused, and avoid the kinds of mistakes that lead to regret later.
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:
What ultra math is and why it’s such a common source of stress and mistakes in races.
Why the problem isn’t the numbers themselves, but how you interpret and act on them.
How ultra math can lead to poor decisions like pushing too hard, wasting time, or dropping unnecessarily.
Why doing math during a race is inherently unreliable due to fatigue and stress.
5 specific strategies to help you stay in control of ultra math before and during your race.
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Full Episode Transcript:
We don't trust it. We regret believing it. We do it wrong, but we still do it and make irreversible decisions from it. I'm talking about ultramath. And today, I'm going to give you five strategies for mastering 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 51. Ultramath is one of those subjects that we commiserate about as ultrarunners. We all do it. It's almost universally stressful, and it's the common factor in some of our biggest race regrets. And mastering it, like how you do it and how you use it, is one of the most underrated skills in ultrarunning.
So today, I'm giving you a system for it so that you're in control of how you use it instead of the other way around. And to make sure we're all on the same page, let me define exactly what I'm talking about in this episode when I say ultramath. Ultramath is doing calculations in your head during a race, like calculations about your pace and your distance and your time. And sometimes it's a single calculation, and sometimes it's a cascade, like, "I hit the 50-mile aid station at 6 p.m. How long is it going to take me to get to the 56-mile aid station? What time will I get there? Will I make cutoff?" That's ultramath.
I'm not talking here about breaking the race into mental sections to make the distance feel manageable or the math that you do planning your race beforehand. Those are different skills for different episodes.
Here is how ultramath usually starts. At some point in a race, one of two things happens. Either you actually need a number or you just think you do. You need a number when it genuinely changes what you do next, like estimating whether you're close enough to the aid station to finish off your water bottle, for example. Or the other scenario is you think you need a number when you're feeling anxious.
Like you haven't seen another runner for a while and you're not sure how you're doing on pace, so you just want that number for reassurance. So you do math, not because the answer is going to change anything that you do, but because the urge to know feels urgent. It's the same compulsive pull as scrolling social media, and it costs you the same thing: the focus that you needed to have on something else.
So, whether you do the number for practical reasons or just to calm some anxiety, it doesn't matter. What you do is throw out every caution and every lesson that you've ever sworn that you've learned about ultramath, every promise that you have made to yourself not to do it, and you do it anyway. You do math in your head while you're running a race, like sometimes a series of calculations while you're navigating a course, running over technical trail, maintaining your pace, and monitoring your eating and your drinking and your level of effort. Like, even saying that out loud makes it sound completely ridiculous. Why would we ever depend on this for anything important? So it should be no surprise that there are so many ways that this goes badly.
To start with, there's the math itself, especially when it's a series of calculations. It's hard to do in your head. It's hard to do in your head while you're moving, especially, and it's equally hard to make yourself stop running because you're so focused on maintaining pace and pushing, so it's equally hard to make yourself stop running, step aside, and do it on your phone. But however you do it, it's going to cost you time and the focus you needed to have on what's actually going to get you to the finish line.
And sometimes, you just do bad math. Like you use the wrong inputs. You forget it's a nine-mile section and you make your calculation based on eight miles. Or you do the arithmetic wrong, or you round the numbers to make the calculation possible and easier to do in your head, like two and a half hours for nine miles instead of two hours and 27 minutes for 9.2 miles, which makes it easier in your head but introduces error that you immediately forget is there. You started with an estimation, and you end with what feels like a fact.
But here's the thing. Whether you do the math right or whether you do it wrong, the real problem here isn't the number. The number itself is neutral. I really want you to get this. The number is just digits and units. It's neither good news or bad news by itself. It's just a number. The real problem here is what happens when you decide what that number means, and then you act on it. Like, as one runner told me, "Ultramath somehow always gives answers that say finishing isn't possible." And that answer, right or wrong, feels like a verdict. It feels like a fact.
So, suddenly, you think you have to push hard to have any chance of making the next cutoff. So you burn all the energy you needed for your next 20 miles to make that cutoff. Or you sit in the aid station by the fire, trying to decide if you should keep going. And in your decision, waffling back and forth, here's what the number says, "Am I going to make it? Am I not going to make it?" In that indecision, you end up using the time that you needed to get out of the aid station ahead of cutoff. If you were already considering dropping, the number is now your permission slip.
And after the race is over, after the dust clears, we see the real cost of ultramath. "I had the time to finish and I didn't see it. I was sure that I couldn't." Or, "I used up all my time sitting in the aid station trying to decide if I could make it." Or, "I only had to push through that one hard section and then it got easier after that. I could coast after that." Or, "If I'd only kept moving and eaten something, I would have pulled out of that low. I've done it before." And the hardest one to say out loud is this: "If I'm honest, I really wanted an excuse to drop, and I can't get that back."
So, we learn all over again, anew, why ultramath is so dangerous. Not only because the math is hard, hard to do in your head while you're moving, but especially because we're not in a position to use the answer well, which is exactly why having a system of strategies matters.
So, this system has two parts. There's what you do before the race to set yourself up for success, and then there's what you do in the race when the math is actually happening. And there's five strategies total. And here they are.
The first one is front-load the math. Here's the most important thing to understand about in-race math. The only numbers you're going to generate with a fully functioning brain are the ones that you calculate before the race starts. Everything you calculate after the go goes off is compromised to some degree, either by fatigue or by stress or by the thousands of things in a race competing for your attention. So do as much of the math as you can beforehand. Think through what calculations that you've wanted to do in past races and what you'll want in this one.
Like, figure out your aid station times in the way that you'll want to think about them on the course, by clock time or elapsed time, whichever one works for you. Calculate how long you expect each section to take. Work out what pace you need to stay ahead of cutoffs. Then, write it down. I print a small card off, not so small that I'm going to need my reading glasses. And I laminate that card so it survives being pulled in and out of my pack multiple times the whole race. And I also keep a written backup because I've lost that card more than once before, and you definitely don't want to be hours into the race suddenly having to do math that you weren't prepared to do or that you've already done.
The goal is to arrive at every point in the race where you'd want a number with a pre-race number that was already calculated beforehand with a fresh brain and double checked, in your hand, at the ready, so you're not having to do any math in the race.
So that's strategy number one. Strategy number two is to pre-decide how you'll make decisions with your math. Strategy one was about pre-computing the numbers as much as you can ahead of time. This strategy is about pre-deciding what you'll do with them. You want to have decision rules before the emotion hits because once you're sitting in an aid station in front of the fire at mile 70, in the dark, feeling your feet ache, losing body heat by the minute and realizing that the pace you just calculated means that you're going to have to dig deep to have a chance at finishing, in that moment, you won't make the same decision you'd make right now, sitting here, listening to this podcast. You'll make the decision that your lowest self makes at its lowest moment. And that's how we end up with regrets.
Like right now, comfortably, away from the race, you might think you don't need rules. You might think, "I'm just going to run until they pull me." Easy. But runners who say that routinely don't stick to it. The race gets real, and that plan disappears. So setting rules ahead of time gives you an anchor in that moment by the fire when everything else is uncertain and you're waffling. It saves mental energy. It saves time. The five minutes you wasted trying to decide if you have time to tape your blisters or not, while also not taping your blisters, are five minutes that you could have used as cushion on cutoff instead. Like, you end up wasting five precious minutes on cutoff and also not taping your blisters because of that indecision.
So, here's what you're going to do instead. Before the race, go through every scenario you can think of and decide your rule ahead of time. Like, what will you do if you're behind goal pace? What will you do if the math says you won't make cutoff? What will you do if making cutoff is going to be tight? What will you do if the math says you can finish, but you'll have to push, and the course has been muddy, you're tired, and there's more rain coming? What will you do if a volunteer tells you that you only have 10 minutes on cutoff? What will you do if your crew or your pacer says that they don't think you can make it? If your solution to math is to delegate it to a pacer or another runner that you team up with on the course, the rule for how you're going to use their answer is exactly the kind of thing to decide now, before the race.
The effort that you put into making these decisions now, when you have a clear brain, pays off in the race in a very specific way. You stop having to decide. The decision's already made. You just have to implement it. That's not just easier and faster, though. That's what mastery looks like. You know what you're going to do. You don't have to think about it.
All right. Next, we move into doing math in the race itself. The third strategy here is to ask why you're doing the math. When you feel an urge in the race to do math, pause before you start calculating and ask yourself one question: Why do I want this number? The first reason to ask is practical. Is it worth it? Every calculation costs you focus and energy that you need for running. So, before you start doing math, ask: Is what I learn here going to change anything that I'm doing right now? What will I do with this number that I'm not already doing? If you can run sustainably faster, do that. Run faster. You don't need the math to tell you to do it. But if the answer to both questions is, "Nothing. I'm not going to do anything different with it," skip the math and stay focused on moving forward.
The second reason to ask why you're doing the math, though, is harder. It's to check yourself for an ulterior motive. Am I doing this because I'm in a low and I want a way to justify that I can't finish so that I have a good reason to drop? Be honest with yourself here. It's just you and you. You don't have to tell anybody else because here's what's actually happening in that moment. "I want to stop" implicates you, like implicates weakness in you. "I can't finish" lets you off the hook. Hey, the numbers say so. It's not me saying that. The numbers are telling me that I can't finish. So the math doesn't just validate the decision, it launders it, makes it clean. And once that happens, the race becomes over in your head. A fatigued brain and a fatigued body at mile 65 just simply won't stay in the race after that. You're too far down the DNF road. So before you do the math in the race, know why you're doing it.
All right. The fourth strategy is to double-check your answer. Like once you have a number, your brain treats it as a fact. It's carved in stone. It's not an opinion. It's math. It's truth. And the last thing you want to do is spend more effort to go back and just repeat that math. You already have an answer. You want to move on. Believe me. I get it. In engineering school, the moment I had a solution, I wanted to move on. I had more homework to do. So going back to check the answer that I just got felt like I was making the homework last twice as long. It felt like I was losing ground. And that was not in a race scenario.
But a race decision made on a wrong number costs far more than the time it takes to check that number. And the math we do fails in three specific ways that probably aren't obvious in the moment. The actual arithmetic that you do can be wrong. Like, you can make actual calculation errors, invisible to a tired, distracted brain that's already decided the answer feels right. Your inputs, you can use the wrong inputs. Like, you thought you had 10 hours left when you actually have eight hours left. And another way the math can be wrong is that the math and the inputs can be right, but this moment that you're basing your calculation on doesn't represent the miles ahead. Like you genuinely can't go faster right now, but right now isn't the next 20 miles ahead.
And on top of all of this, on top of those three ways that the math can be wrong, there's time pressure. Math done in a hurry, whether you're running in a race or not, is more prone to all three types of errors. So before you act on a number, look at how you built that number and ask if any of these three errors might apply. The easiest way to check is to approach the calculation from a different direction.
If your math says going four miles per hour will get you to the next aid station ahead of cutoff, does that still feel like the right answer when you think of it as 15-minute miles? A different form of the same number can catch errors that the original calculation missed. And it's easier to check your math this way. It feels easier because it gets rid of the resistance you might have to doing the same exact calculation over again. You're almost kind of doing a different calculation.
And if you're not ready to recheck your number right now or if you feel like there's something off with the number, but you can't find it, use a waiting rule. Like, keep moving, eat something, reach the next aid station, and redo the math with 15 minutes more mileage behind you. Not because the answer will necessarily change, but because a decision this important deserves a brain that isn't at its lowest point. That's the freshest your brain can be and still have the answer to the math be relevant. And if the math says the same thing after that, then it carries more weight. You can rely on it more.
The fifth and final strategy here is to challenge the story that you're telling yourself about the number. Ultramath has a known bias. This is why we laugh at it so much. And knowing the direction of that bias is itself a correction. Whether you made a math error or not, the result of doing math in the middle of an ultra is almost always bad news, some version of, "I can't hit my goal," or worse, "I can't finish." When the math says that there's no hope, which is a lot of the time, and you might as well give up now and avoid injury, when it's telling you that, that's precisely the moment that you need to be suspicious of what the number means.
Here you have to intentionally, make yourself question what that number is telling you because your brain takes that number, judges it as bad news, and immediately builds a story around it to make that conclusion feel airtight. It lines up evidence and fills in details and makes the ending feel like the inevitable truth so fast you don't even know it. Like, "I might miss cutoff" before you know it turns into, "Well that's going to feel awful. I knew I'd be too slow. I didn't train enough. Why didn't I train enough? I blew off that last long run. Why didn't I do the strength training I said I would? I am so lousy at training. What am I going to tell everybody? I better start figuring that out." You're well past double-checking the number at that point.
Like, once that story feels complete like this, overriding it takes mental effort that you probably don't have at mile 65. So to make it easier to challenge that story in the middle of a race, do this one thing. Ask how that number could mean you can hit your goal. You can finish. Like how is the number good news? Go to the opposite of the bad news story your brain tells you. Could it mean the opposite of what you think it means? How would that work? Can it mean that you actually do have a chance to finish?
Here's what that looks like in practice. Like, let's say the math says you're going to be two minutes ahead of cutoff. The story your brain tells you is that, "Two minutes? There's no way I can finish. I might as well drop now." The opposite of that story would be, "Hey, I'm still in the race. I still have a shot." That example, I know going with that second story is possible because I lived it. At Warhammer 100, somewhere around mile 80, I came into an aid station, tired and beat up and frustrated from continual navigation errors, to learn that I had two minutes on cutoff.
Now, my irritation with myself and the situation I was in was extremely high, and in that emotional state, I could have easily reacted and made that two minutes mean, "There's no way. Forget it. I'm done. I am out." But instead, I made it mean, "There's no way I'm dropping now. I worked too freaking hard to get here. I have a shot at finishing, and I'm going to get out of this aid station and keep going and make that finish happen," which I did. And get this. I finished second woman. Two minutes. Same number, same neutral number, two completely opposite outcomes. There is either the DNF story or the story that got me the second female finish. That race depended entirely on which story I told.
This strategy of challenging the story that you're telling about the number isn't just think positive, it's when the math says give up or drop. It's over. Ask yourself, "How is the story wrong? How could someone else see this number?" And here's some irony worth noticing at this point. You did ultramath because you wanted a fact, like a concrete, reliable number to base a decision on. Like, how hard do I need to push in the next few miles? But the moment you get that number, you toss its reliability out the window by jumping to a conclusion about what that number means, a story that's typically based in fear and how you're not going to make it, which now stresses you out, the opposite of what you thought you would feel when you had a number, so you're worse off than you were before. But only because the number was never the problem. The story you're telling yourself about the number was the problem.
Here's what I want you to remember. Numbers are neutral. They're just digits and units. The story you tell yourself about the number isn't, and you get to choose a story that's going to get you to the finish line.
All right. Those are the five strategies. The through line that ties all five strategies together is this. Math feels like the most objective thing in a race, and that's exactly why it can be so dangerous. It's specific numbers. It feels airtight, but those numbers and the story they tell are being built and checked and interpreted by a tired, distracted version of your brain. At the moment your judgment is least trustworthy and the stakes are the highest. If you don't have a system of strategies to be in control of your math, you stand a good chance of ending up with regrets. So here's what mastery of ultramath actually looks like.
Front-load the math. Do as much as you can ahead of time because the only numbers you can generate with an uncompromised brain are the ones that you calculate before the race even starts. Two, pre-decide your rules. Define your decisions, how you're going to use those numbers, before you're in the emotion of a race, or the emotional reaction is going to make the decision for you. Three, ask why you're doing the math in the first place, and don't do it unless the answer justifies the cost in time and distraction. Four, double-check your answer. A decision made on a wrong number costs you way more than the time it's going to take you to double-check the answer. And five, challenge the story. The number is neutral. The story your brain tells about it isn't. And you can choose a story that's going to get you to the finish line.
Ultramath can be genuinely useful. It can even put your mind at ease, but only when you're the one in control of when and how you use it. That's what mastery looks like.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know somebody who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear.
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 51. Ultramath is one of those subjects that we commiserate about as ultrarunners. We all do it. It's almost universally stressful, and it's the common factor in some of our biggest race regrets. And mastering it, like how you do it and how you use it, is one of the most underrated skills in ultrarunning.
So today, I'm giving you a system for it so that you're in control of how you use it instead of the other way around. And to make sure we're all on the same page, let me define exactly what I'm talking about in this episode when I say ultramath. Ultramath is doing calculations in your head during a race, like calculations about your pace and your distance and your time. And sometimes it's a single calculation, and sometimes it's a cascade, like, "I hit the 50-mile aid station at 6 p.m. How long is it going to take me to get to the 56-mile aid station? What time will I get there? Will I make cutoff?" That's ultramath.
I'm not talking here about breaking the race into mental sections to make the distance feel manageable or the math that you do planning your race beforehand. Those are different skills for different episodes.
Here is how ultramath usually starts. At some point in a race, one of two things happens. Either you actually need a number or you just think you do. You need a number when it genuinely changes what you do next, like estimating whether you're close enough to the aid station to finish off your water bottle, for example. Or the other scenario is you think you need a number when you're feeling anxious.
Like you haven't seen another runner for a while and you're not sure how you're doing on pace, so you just want that number for reassurance. So you do math, not because the answer is going to change anything that you do, but because the urge to know feels urgent. It's the same compulsive pull as scrolling social media, and it costs you the same thing: the focus that you needed to have on something else.
So, whether you do the number for practical reasons or just to calm some anxiety, it doesn't matter. What you do is throw out every caution and every lesson that you've ever sworn that you've learned about ultramath, every promise that you have made to yourself not to do it, and you do it anyway. You do math in your head while you're running a race, like sometimes a series of calculations while you're navigating a course, running over technical trail, maintaining your pace, and monitoring your eating and your drinking and your level of effort. Like, even saying that out loud makes it sound completely ridiculous. Why would we ever depend on this for anything important? So it should be no surprise that there are so many ways that this goes badly.
To start with, there's the math itself, especially when it's a series of calculations. It's hard to do in your head. It's hard to do in your head while you're moving, especially, and it's equally hard to make yourself stop running because you're so focused on maintaining pace and pushing, so it's equally hard to make yourself stop running, step aside, and do it on your phone. But however you do it, it's going to cost you time and the focus you needed to have on what's actually going to get you to the finish line.
And sometimes, you just do bad math. Like you use the wrong inputs. You forget it's a nine-mile section and you make your calculation based on eight miles. Or you do the arithmetic wrong, or you round the numbers to make the calculation possible and easier to do in your head, like two and a half hours for nine miles instead of two hours and 27 minutes for 9.2 miles, which makes it easier in your head but introduces error that you immediately forget is there. You started with an estimation, and you end with what feels like a fact.
But here's the thing. Whether you do the math right or whether you do it wrong, the real problem here isn't the number. The number itself is neutral. I really want you to get this. The number is just digits and units. It's neither good news or bad news by itself. It's just a number. The real problem here is what happens when you decide what that number means, and then you act on it. Like, as one runner told me, "Ultramath somehow always gives answers that say finishing isn't possible." And that answer, right or wrong, feels like a verdict. It feels like a fact.
So, suddenly, you think you have to push hard to have any chance of making the next cutoff. So you burn all the energy you needed for your next 20 miles to make that cutoff. Or you sit in the aid station by the fire, trying to decide if you should keep going. And in your decision, waffling back and forth, here's what the number says, "Am I going to make it? Am I not going to make it?" In that indecision, you end up using the time that you needed to get out of the aid station ahead of cutoff. If you were already considering dropping, the number is now your permission slip.
And after the race is over, after the dust clears, we see the real cost of ultramath. "I had the time to finish and I didn't see it. I was sure that I couldn't." Or, "I used up all my time sitting in the aid station trying to decide if I could make it." Or, "I only had to push through that one hard section and then it got easier after that. I could coast after that." Or, "If I'd only kept moving and eaten something, I would have pulled out of that low. I've done it before." And the hardest one to say out loud is this: "If I'm honest, I really wanted an excuse to drop, and I can't get that back."
So, we learn all over again, anew, why ultramath is so dangerous. Not only because the math is hard, hard to do in your head while you're moving, but especially because we're not in a position to use the answer well, which is exactly why having a system of strategies matters.
So, this system has two parts. There's what you do before the race to set yourself up for success, and then there's what you do in the race when the math is actually happening. And there's five strategies total. And here they are.
The first one is front-load the math. Here's the most important thing to understand about in-race math. The only numbers you're going to generate with a fully functioning brain are the ones that you calculate before the race starts. Everything you calculate after the go goes off is compromised to some degree, either by fatigue or by stress or by the thousands of things in a race competing for your attention. So do as much of the math as you can beforehand. Think through what calculations that you've wanted to do in past races and what you'll want in this one.
Like, figure out your aid station times in the way that you'll want to think about them on the course, by clock time or elapsed time, whichever one works for you. Calculate how long you expect each section to take. Work out what pace you need to stay ahead of cutoffs. Then, write it down. I print a small card off, not so small that I'm going to need my reading glasses. And I laminate that card so it survives being pulled in and out of my pack multiple times the whole race. And I also keep a written backup because I've lost that card more than once before, and you definitely don't want to be hours into the race suddenly having to do math that you weren't prepared to do or that you've already done.
The goal is to arrive at every point in the race where you'd want a number with a pre-race number that was already calculated beforehand with a fresh brain and double checked, in your hand, at the ready, so you're not having to do any math in the race.
So that's strategy number one. Strategy number two is to pre-decide how you'll make decisions with your math. Strategy one was about pre-computing the numbers as much as you can ahead of time. This strategy is about pre-deciding what you'll do with them. You want to have decision rules before the emotion hits because once you're sitting in an aid station in front of the fire at mile 70, in the dark, feeling your feet ache, losing body heat by the minute and realizing that the pace you just calculated means that you're going to have to dig deep to have a chance at finishing, in that moment, you won't make the same decision you'd make right now, sitting here, listening to this podcast. You'll make the decision that your lowest self makes at its lowest moment. And that's how we end up with regrets.
Like right now, comfortably, away from the race, you might think you don't need rules. You might think, "I'm just going to run until they pull me." Easy. But runners who say that routinely don't stick to it. The race gets real, and that plan disappears. So setting rules ahead of time gives you an anchor in that moment by the fire when everything else is uncertain and you're waffling. It saves mental energy. It saves time. The five minutes you wasted trying to decide if you have time to tape your blisters or not, while also not taping your blisters, are five minutes that you could have used as cushion on cutoff instead. Like, you end up wasting five precious minutes on cutoff and also not taping your blisters because of that indecision.
So, here's what you're going to do instead. Before the race, go through every scenario you can think of and decide your rule ahead of time. Like, what will you do if you're behind goal pace? What will you do if the math says you won't make cutoff? What will you do if making cutoff is going to be tight? What will you do if the math says you can finish, but you'll have to push, and the course has been muddy, you're tired, and there's more rain coming? What will you do if a volunteer tells you that you only have 10 minutes on cutoff? What will you do if your crew or your pacer says that they don't think you can make it? If your solution to math is to delegate it to a pacer or another runner that you team up with on the course, the rule for how you're going to use their answer is exactly the kind of thing to decide now, before the race.
The effort that you put into making these decisions now, when you have a clear brain, pays off in the race in a very specific way. You stop having to decide. The decision's already made. You just have to implement it. That's not just easier and faster, though. That's what mastery looks like. You know what you're going to do. You don't have to think about it.
All right. Next, we move into doing math in the race itself. The third strategy here is to ask why you're doing the math. When you feel an urge in the race to do math, pause before you start calculating and ask yourself one question: Why do I want this number? The first reason to ask is practical. Is it worth it? Every calculation costs you focus and energy that you need for running. So, before you start doing math, ask: Is what I learn here going to change anything that I'm doing right now? What will I do with this number that I'm not already doing? If you can run sustainably faster, do that. Run faster. You don't need the math to tell you to do it. But if the answer to both questions is, "Nothing. I'm not going to do anything different with it," skip the math and stay focused on moving forward.
The second reason to ask why you're doing the math, though, is harder. It's to check yourself for an ulterior motive. Am I doing this because I'm in a low and I want a way to justify that I can't finish so that I have a good reason to drop? Be honest with yourself here. It's just you and you. You don't have to tell anybody else because here's what's actually happening in that moment. "I want to stop" implicates you, like implicates weakness in you. "I can't finish" lets you off the hook. Hey, the numbers say so. It's not me saying that. The numbers are telling me that I can't finish. So the math doesn't just validate the decision, it launders it, makes it clean. And once that happens, the race becomes over in your head. A fatigued brain and a fatigued body at mile 65 just simply won't stay in the race after that. You're too far down the DNF road. So before you do the math in the race, know why you're doing it.
All right. The fourth strategy is to double-check your answer. Like once you have a number, your brain treats it as a fact. It's carved in stone. It's not an opinion. It's math. It's truth. And the last thing you want to do is spend more effort to go back and just repeat that math. You already have an answer. You want to move on. Believe me. I get it. In engineering school, the moment I had a solution, I wanted to move on. I had more homework to do. So going back to check the answer that I just got felt like I was making the homework last twice as long. It felt like I was losing ground. And that was not in a race scenario.
But a race decision made on a wrong number costs far more than the time it takes to check that number. And the math we do fails in three specific ways that probably aren't obvious in the moment. The actual arithmetic that you do can be wrong. Like, you can make actual calculation errors, invisible to a tired, distracted brain that's already decided the answer feels right. Your inputs, you can use the wrong inputs. Like, you thought you had 10 hours left when you actually have eight hours left. And another way the math can be wrong is that the math and the inputs can be right, but this moment that you're basing your calculation on doesn't represent the miles ahead. Like you genuinely can't go faster right now, but right now isn't the next 20 miles ahead.
And on top of all of this, on top of those three ways that the math can be wrong, there's time pressure. Math done in a hurry, whether you're running in a race or not, is more prone to all three types of errors. So before you act on a number, look at how you built that number and ask if any of these three errors might apply. The easiest way to check is to approach the calculation from a different direction.
If your math says going four miles per hour will get you to the next aid station ahead of cutoff, does that still feel like the right answer when you think of it as 15-minute miles? A different form of the same number can catch errors that the original calculation missed. And it's easier to check your math this way. It feels easier because it gets rid of the resistance you might have to doing the same exact calculation over again. You're almost kind of doing a different calculation.
And if you're not ready to recheck your number right now or if you feel like there's something off with the number, but you can't find it, use a waiting rule. Like, keep moving, eat something, reach the next aid station, and redo the math with 15 minutes more mileage behind you. Not because the answer will necessarily change, but because a decision this important deserves a brain that isn't at its lowest point. That's the freshest your brain can be and still have the answer to the math be relevant. And if the math says the same thing after that, then it carries more weight. You can rely on it more.
The fifth and final strategy here is to challenge the story that you're telling yourself about the number. Ultramath has a known bias. This is why we laugh at it so much. And knowing the direction of that bias is itself a correction. Whether you made a math error or not, the result of doing math in the middle of an ultra is almost always bad news, some version of, "I can't hit my goal," or worse, "I can't finish." When the math says that there's no hope, which is a lot of the time, and you might as well give up now and avoid injury, when it's telling you that, that's precisely the moment that you need to be suspicious of what the number means.
Here you have to intentionally, make yourself question what that number is telling you because your brain takes that number, judges it as bad news, and immediately builds a story around it to make that conclusion feel airtight. It lines up evidence and fills in details and makes the ending feel like the inevitable truth so fast you don't even know it. Like, "I might miss cutoff" before you know it turns into, "Well that's going to feel awful. I knew I'd be too slow. I didn't train enough. Why didn't I train enough? I blew off that last long run. Why didn't I do the strength training I said I would? I am so lousy at training. What am I going to tell everybody? I better start figuring that out." You're well past double-checking the number at that point.
Like, once that story feels complete like this, overriding it takes mental effort that you probably don't have at mile 65. So to make it easier to challenge that story in the middle of a race, do this one thing. Ask how that number could mean you can hit your goal. You can finish. Like how is the number good news? Go to the opposite of the bad news story your brain tells you. Could it mean the opposite of what you think it means? How would that work? Can it mean that you actually do have a chance to finish?
Here's what that looks like in practice. Like, let's say the math says you're going to be two minutes ahead of cutoff. The story your brain tells you is that, "Two minutes? There's no way I can finish. I might as well drop now." The opposite of that story would be, "Hey, I'm still in the race. I still have a shot." That example, I know going with that second story is possible because I lived it. At Warhammer 100, somewhere around mile 80, I came into an aid station, tired and beat up and frustrated from continual navigation errors, to learn that I had two minutes on cutoff.
Now, my irritation with myself and the situation I was in was extremely high, and in that emotional state, I could have easily reacted and made that two minutes mean, "There's no way. Forget it. I'm done. I am out." But instead, I made it mean, "There's no way I'm dropping now. I worked too freaking hard to get here. I have a shot at finishing, and I'm going to get out of this aid station and keep going and make that finish happen," which I did. And get this. I finished second woman. Two minutes. Same number, same neutral number, two completely opposite outcomes. There is either the DNF story or the story that got me the second female finish. That race depended entirely on which story I told.
This strategy of challenging the story that you're telling about the number isn't just think positive, it's when the math says give up or drop. It's over. Ask yourself, "How is the story wrong? How could someone else see this number?" And here's some irony worth noticing at this point. You did ultramath because you wanted a fact, like a concrete, reliable number to base a decision on. Like, how hard do I need to push in the next few miles? But the moment you get that number, you toss its reliability out the window by jumping to a conclusion about what that number means, a story that's typically based in fear and how you're not going to make it, which now stresses you out, the opposite of what you thought you would feel when you had a number, so you're worse off than you were before. But only because the number was never the problem. The story you're telling yourself about the number was the problem.
Here's what I want you to remember. Numbers are neutral. They're just digits and units. The story you tell yourself about the number isn't, and you get to choose a story that's going to get you to the finish line.
All right. Those are the five strategies. The through line that ties all five strategies together is this. Math feels like the most objective thing in a race, and that's exactly why it can be so dangerous. It's specific numbers. It feels airtight, but those numbers and the story they tell are being built and checked and interpreted by a tired, distracted version of your brain. At the moment your judgment is least trustworthy and the stakes are the highest. If you don't have a system of strategies to be in control of your math, you stand a good chance of ending up with regrets. So here's what mastery of ultramath actually looks like.
Front-load the math. Do as much as you can ahead of time because the only numbers you can generate with an uncompromised brain are the ones that you calculate before the race even starts. Two, pre-decide your rules. Define your decisions, how you're going to use those numbers, before you're in the emotion of a race, or the emotional reaction is going to make the decision for you. Three, ask why you're doing the math in the first place, and don't do it unless the answer justifies the cost in time and distraction. Four, double-check your answer. A decision made on a wrong number costs you way more than the time it's going to take you to double-check the answer. And five, challenge the story. The number is neutral. The story your brain tells about it isn't. And you can choose a story that's going to get you to the finish line.
Ultramath can be genuinely useful. It can even put your mind at ease, but only when you're the one in control of when and how you use it. That's what mastery looks like.
All right, you all, that's this week's episode. Thanks for listening. If you know somebody who could use this, share it with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear.
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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