The Boston Marathon will be here on April 20 and runners are preparing for the big day, both physically and psychologically. For more insight into the mental preparations for the marathon, GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz spoke with mental performance coach and Northeastern University lecturer, Grayson Kimball, who’s been running marathons on and off for the last 25 years. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.
Mark Herz: I wanted to start out by saying, running has been famously described as within the realm of solitude. Some people seek that out. Others love group runs and running clubs are big. So, I want you to talk about those two threads from your perspective.
Grayson Kimball: Yeah, so I got into distance running about 25 years ago. I ran my first Boston Marathon back in 2002, and when I ran that, it was just with a couple of buddies. We weren’t part of a big charity or anything. Most of our runs were like two or three of us and on the weekly runs, it was sometimes just me and I really, really started to enjoy the solo time and I would put on my my headphones and just run. I would run primarily listening to the Grateful Dead, which was a great opportunity for me to just enjoy the music, enjoy the moment, and next thing you know, you’re seven, eight miles deep. I really liked that. But everyone has a different perspective on it. Some people certainly like having those large groups, mainly more for support, accountability, and other people are just totally, if you want to call it, intrinsically motivated. I don’t care who’s there, who’s not there, the weather — I’m going out, getting in my run, and I’m going to feel good about myself after.
Herz: So having coached yourself and coached others through marathons, talk about some of the key points in preparation for a marathon and some of the key points on race day because I assume that they’re not always the same.
Kimball: Well, one common theme is having the right mindset. Normal thoughts are that you’d never run a marathon. Some of these runners that I’ve trained, they’ve never run a mile and they’ve decided to run the Boston Marathon. The first thing they do is they look at the training schedule and their eyes go immediately to the 18-mile run, the 20-mile run. Even though that’s months away, it’s like, “How am I going to then do it?” So, from day one, I really stress this idea of “think, feel, run.” Identify what you’re thinking about because that’s going to affect how you feel and how you’re feeling is going to effect how your run is going. If that first half-mile just feels off, well that’s going to effect that next thought, “See, I knew it, I can’t do it. This is going to be hard,” and then you’re going to feel sad, depressed, frustrated, and that obviously affects how that run is. Now you still might finish your five-mile run, but mentally you are not engaged in what you were doing. So if you can teach them right off the bat, be in control and identify what you’re thinking about and how you feel you can gain some control over your performance.
Now, if you have a poor 16-mile run, or you really struggle in that 18-, 20-mile run, but you’re like, “Oh my God, that was really, really hard. How am I going to be able to run six more miles? I could barely get through this 20.” Nope, physiologically, you are trained to do it. So I try to stress this idea of having what I call the achievement mindset versus the avoidance mindset. The achievement mindset is, “I’m going to eat right, I’m gonna sleep right, I am going to stretch, I do all the things I need to do. I’m going to pace myself.” It’s all about achieving something. Whereas some runners will go into the marathon with the avoidant mindset, and that is, “If it’s not too hot today, I should be okay. As long as I don’t dehydrate, I should be fine. As long this doesn’t happen, I’ll be fine.” So their whole mindset is about avoiding failure rather than achieving success. When you can get the runner to be 80% achievement, 20% avoidance, because no one’s ever gonna be 100% something, but if you can be 80% achievement mindset, now you’ve given yourself the tools to be successful and you’re constantly thinking about how you’re going to get through the race, rather than trying to avoid things so you don’t fail during the marathon.
Herz: As I’m listening to you, I’m thinking about, what if after all that, what about the psychology of actually crossing that finish line? Talk to us about that. What you’ve experienced and what you’ve seen.
Grayson Kimball: Yeah, some people will say it’s the most emotional time ever. As I see that finish line, I start crying. When you hear that, when you run the marathon, especially for the first time, you’re kind of thinking, “Oh, well, I guess that’s how I should feel too.” Sometimes you don’t feel emotional, you feel excitement, you feel accomplished. So everybody has a different response to it. One thing that I like to do is listening to music. What I would do for the marathons is I would have my playlist, knowing that, all right, it’s gonna take me roughly four hours to run the marathon. I’m gonna make sure that at about three hours and 53 minutes, a certain song is going to come on and that’s what’s gonna push me over that finish line.
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