Did you know that your brain can be your enemy?

Is all this really going on up there?
(Courtesy TZA @ Flickr)

There's a great article out there all about how our brains get in the way of us achieving our desired goals. Gregory Ciotti has cobbled together some interesting items from the research world to give us a heads-up (pun intended) on our scheming brain, and gives us some ideas on how to cope with it and achieve our goals in spite of ourselves, or at least in spite of our brains. Today and tomorrow we'll review some of Gregory's interesting observations, plus we'll look at how our little brain's dirty tricks apply to our training for a marathon. This should be interesting. (Shhhh! I'm typing very quietly now, so that my brain doesn't wake up and see what we're talking out. I don't want it to find out about our nasty little plan to trick it.)

Your brain can hurt your goals by fantasizing too much

Some visualization is good, but fantasizing too much tends to make our brain think that we've already achieved the goal, lessening motivation. Staying rooted in the present and seeing everyday progress against nearer-term, tangible checkpoints helps us avoid the false messages our brain will try to throw at us in our flights of fantasy.

Applied to training towards the goal of completing a marathon: It certainly doesn't seem wrong to visualize ourselves crossing that finish line on race day, arms raised in triumph. There's not much chance of the timelapserunner being deluded into thinking he's already run and completed this marathon thing. However, the trick here is having a detailed training plan with many near-term, tangible checkpoints ... or mile markers, as the case is. Focusing on each day's workout should keep us locked into the present moment even while we dream of donning that medal come January 20th.

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Your brain procrastinates on big projects by visualizing the worst parts

Let's face it: procrastinating is like eating chocolate - it provides immediate stress relief even if we know we'll pay for it later. But there's a couple of facts about how our brain works that we can use to deal with this: a) we remember better the things that are partially done, and b) if we start something, we're more likely to continue working on it. So, don't obsess about the tough spots ahead, as the Nike slogan goes: Just do it (meaning: do something towards the goal).

Applied to training towards the goal of completing a marathon: Again, the beauty of a program with a well-structured schedule. Obsessing over the 20, 23, and 26 mile training runs ahead of us for which we fear we aren't prepared can be shutdown by just doing the run today for which we are prepared.

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Your brain will "abandon ship" at the first sign of distress

Everyone who's ever been on a diet or who has made some effort to lose weight can identify with this: you weaken and have a dessert that you didn't plan on having, then - before you know it - your eating a second helping of that dessert. It's like, "Oh well, today's eating plan is shot - might as well give up, at least for today ... maybe even the whole idea of dieting." One momentary act of weakness - missing today's goal - makes it more likely that we'll weaken more. The only way to recover is to stop and re-examine the successes we've had and realize that the long term goal is not lost. Like stumbling, just get back up and start anew.

Applied to training towards the goal of completing a marathon: I've suffered this malady in running before: miss one day of training and I'm set up to missed the second. Miss the second and missing the third is no big deal. And so on. Hey, we had one snow day back when and we gave up exercise for more than two years! The plan has to be for me to dust myself off and get back on the horse, so-to-speak, if that happens. So far, I've missed a couple of days of walking, but none of the run / walk / run days. If I do, I need to just reflect and recommit.

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We've got a couple more of these nasty brain games to look at tomorrow. See you then.

TODAY'S WORKOUT: Three miles walking at 15:57 pace. No problems. Did our Fab Fourteen active-isolated stretching after the walk.