There’s a moment in almost every race when you start to fight yourself: you think about slowing down, start to overthink your pace and start to dread the remaining distance. Experienced runners aren’t immune to the discomfort of running hard. But they’re usually better at deciding what to do about it.
Instead of using discomfort as a reason to stop, they learn to distinguish between between a spike in effort and a sign that something is actually wrong. Your brain is constantly taking in information from your muscles, heart, lungs and surroundings to decide how much effort you can afford to spend. As fatigue builds, those signals get louder. Here’s how to train your brain to push through when things start to feel hard.
Discomfort vs. pain
Perceived exertion (the feeling of how hard you’re working) involves both the brain and signals coming from the body. It also plays an important role in regulating how hard we exercise and how we pace ourselves. That’s why the same pace can feel so different depending on the circumstances: five kilometres at race pace might feel manageable early in a race, but more difficult near the finish.
Consistent training can change that though. Research suggests regular exercise can increase pain tolerance over time. Experienced athletes tend to demonstrate greater pain tolerance than less-active people. If you regularly perform hard but controlled efforts, working hard becomes familiar and less psychologically challenging.
That doesn’t mean runners should ignore pain. Sharp, unusual or worsening pain is usually a sign that something is wrong, and you should reduce your effort or stop. The goal is to become better at recognizing normal running discomfort without automatically interpreting it as pain or a reason to quit.
Self-talk helps
The voice in your head during a hard effort isn’t just background noise. In a randomized study, researchers found that athletes who completed two weeks of motivational self-talk improved their time to exhaustion and reported lower perceived exertion. Self-talk should be short, specific and believable; postural cues are also helpful. Relax your shoulders. Stay tall. One kilometre at a time. You’ve done this before.
The goal is to give your brain something productive to do while the discomfort gets louder. You’re effectively tricking yourself into focusing on something other than the fact that you’re tired or fatigued.
Distract yourself
Easier said than done–when you’re running, sometimes all you can think about is the fact that you’re running. But you can redirect your thoughts toward things such as breathing or cadence to remain present but focused on something measurable rather than how you feel.
Music, scenery or focusing on the runner ahead can work, too. Neither strategy is universally superior. Research suggests distraction can be particularly useful at lower or moderate intensities, while physiological signals become harder to ignore as exercise approaches maximal intensity. That means there’s value in practising both.
On an easy run, let your mind wander. During a tempo workout, check your breathing and form. During race-specific sessions, practise staying calm when it feels uncomfortable. You’re essentially teaching yourself: I’ve felt this before, and I know what to do next.
Practice before the race
The best time to learn how you’ll respond to discomfort isn’t on race day. Build controlled discomfort into training. Finish a tempo with a strong final kilometre. Run some race-pace intervals when you’re carrying a little fatigue. Practise your cues when you’re tired enough that your brain starts looking for an escape route.
But don’t turn every workout into a test of mental toughness. The objective isn’t to become someone who can suffer indefinitely. It’s to become better at distinguishing between “this is hard” and “something is wrong.”