When you're running a 5k and feel like you're going to hit the wall and slow down, what do you tell yourself?

Question

Meb Keflezighi · Answer

Riding the 5k is such fun and it's a perfect distance even when you're struggling, when you feel that you're exhausted or you have to hit the wall. You can talk to yourself into saying, hey I only have about, say you're at the 2 mile mark and you hit the wall and say I got one more mile, you know exactly how far that is, you can slow down and you can get to the finish line, maybe not as strong as you have started, but that's the beauty of the 5k. Whereas a marathon you're gonna get slower and slower and mentally get defeated, but on the 5k you can talk to yourself into doing, hey I only got one mile to go or half a mile to go or 400 meters to go and it's gonna be over very quickly, versus marathon it'd be challenging. So as long as you kind of talk yourself into and strategize, sometimes you gotta go out hard and hit the wall and figure it out, hey this is not for, the pace is not for me and then sometimes you gotta start slow and finish strong and then say, hey I felt great that way and by that time you know what's the best way to execute a 5k for you. If you hit the wall don't worry about it, it happens, but it's a 5k only so you should be able to get yourself into that finish line to the best you can.

Brad Hudson · Answer

So one of the most important things you can learn as an athlete and what separates good and great athletes too is you got to learn to suffer. Practicing suffering, getting through discomfort is huge to your success. And there definitely are some techniques you can use to try to get you through tough situations, you know bad patches, whatever you want to call it, to stay focused. Most of the time you just want to focus on the two to three minutes ahead of yourself. The human body doesn't like it when you think of the whole, so you want to segment things and break things down into small increments that you can get through and focus on two to three minutes at a time. You know some of the science, it does look like you can do things like counting in your head and if that's too easy you can count in a different language or something. One to eight, one to four, keep doing it back and forth. You can do thumb tapping, can help, like pen tapping when you're going through really tough things. You know and this just takes your mind off maybe the discomfort for a little bit, but you don't want to do anything too complex because that takes away from your task. So you need to tell yourself, you know be positive with yourself that you can get through it and you know everyone goes through those moments of doubt maybe in races where it gets very difficult and getting through that is imperative to your success. So segment things, break things down, try different techniques, use mental imagery outside of that to get through it that can really help you. And keep a log of this when maybe you're giving up at times that you can try to help yourself get through it.

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"When you're running a 5k and feel like you're going to hit the wall and slow down, what do you tell yourself? "