Mental & Physical Limitations

How fast you think you can race has a lot to do with how fast you can actually race.

In training you do the physical work to reach a certain goal fitness. Let's say this goal fitness is to run a 5:25 mile. Week after week, month after month, year after year you improve your physiological fitness.

Every runner has physiological (physical) limits that they are born with, but 99% of runners never reach them for a variety of reasons. One of these reason that a runner can control and change very easily is the psychological (mental) limitations we put on ourselves.

Looking at the graph lets say this runners' goal is to run a 5:25 mile (the blue star). Their physiological development (the dashed line) is improving and they are on their way to reaching their goal. The green square is where their current physiological (physical) fitness is... maybe a 5:40 mile. Then we have the red circle, this runners' current mental fitness. The mental limitations they put on themselves. This point might be a 6:10 mile.

Once this runner overcomes this mental limitation their true fitness will show in races. Over time a runner will have to readjust what they think they are capable of running. This process never ends. One suggestion for letting your true fitness shine in your races is to remember... "Do or do not. There is no try."