RTTC #236 How Do I Build My Confidence to Finish My Race?

In this episode of Running to the Castle, Dr. Ali tackles one of the most common fears runners bring to her: will I actually finish this race? 

She breaks down why small, incremental training increases build real, physical proof that your body can handle race day, and why a single rough workout due to heat, stress, or life circumstances doesn't mean your fitness is slipping. 

Dr. Ali shares her "10% more, 10% faster" framework for trusting your training and walks through why looking at the facts, not the qualifiers, is the key to real confidence. 

She's honest about where coaching ends and professional mental health support may be needed, too.

Learn more about Stronger. Faster. Finisher. !

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Get personalized support, smarter training, and strategies designed specifically for slow, back-of-the-pack runners who want to build a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, have time for character photos and energy to enjoy the Disney Parks. Learn more about the Stronger. Faster. Finisher. Program today and be the first to know when doors open!

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  Hi, I'm Dr. Ali
  I've been running for 15+ years and been in the rehab space since 2012 when I earned my Doctor of Physical Therapy Degree. I get injury prone runDisney runners across the finish line without feeling broken.

Transcript

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Hey, how's it going? Today I'm talking about how do I build my competence to finish my race. This is Running to the Castle, a podcast for slow, back-of-the-pack Run Disney runners on a journey to running magical miles. Join me, Dr. Ally, as I share the secrets I've gathered as a runner, doctor of physical therapy, and coach. You'll learn the exact ways I get my clients to the castle strong, have a bigger buffer ahead of the balloon ladies, and have time to stop for character photos. Keep listening if your goal is to PR in fun, cross the finish line without feeling broken, and have energy to enjoy the Disney park. This question comes up a lot. And it if you've never done a race before, or you've attempted a race and you didn't finish, you DNF'd, you did not finish. This is a big concern. It causes a lot of anxiety for runners. And they ask me, well, how do I know I'm going to finish the race? How can I be more confident that what I'm doing is going to work? So there are a lot of factors here. And I'm going to start off with one that I actually won't really talk about. I am not equipped to talk about it. I don't have training in this way. But some of this is an internal struggle that you may need to talk to a therapist about how to build your internal confidence in yourself. Based on past experiences you've had, you may not have the confidence in yourself in a lot of areas. Running may be one of them. And you may need to talk to a professional, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a sports psychologist, other professionals that can help you dive into some factors that may be ongoing for you that are interrupting your own confidence. So I want to start off by saying that because I won't be going into that. I don't have the training to coach or walk somebody through that. And that may be what you need. Ways that I recommend building confidence are what I'm going to talk about today. And it is part of it is doing the thing, right? But you hear people say that and you probably are like, well, I am doing the thing and I still don't feel confident that I'm going to do it. So here, here's where I'm coming from with this. The way I build my training programs, it induces small wins over time. The training plans that I create, the long run increases slowly over time so that you continue to add more miles or add more time on your feet at an incremental amount. And it's such a small amount that your body barely even notices that you've done more. The purpose of me doing that is so that it is less daunting week after week, right? Like you aren't going from three miles one week and then five miles the next week, or even six miles the next week, 15 miles one week, and then the next week 20 miles, right? Like those are massive jumps. And if I saw those on a training schedule, I'd be like, uh, no, no. There's no way that's happening. How am I gonna do that? I just did three. Now I need to do almost double that. I need to do five this week. If I've never done it before, I'm I'm going to have confidence issues. And so I build my training plans so that you can have small incremental increases. I didn't build it for the confidence building act of it, but that is a happy side effect of it. I built it because of the training load aspect. From a physical therapy background, you need progressive overload, meaning that you're you're progressively over time adding a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. Like it's building up a toothpick castle. You keep going one toothpick on top of the other, on top of the other, and doing it at a slow amount. You don't just drop the toothpick on the top, right? Like you very strategically place that toothpick in the right spot at the right time with the right speed and velocity so that the whole thing doesn't come crumbling down. That's how I devise my training plans so that somebody can do it without injury. Now remember, my background first is physical therapy. I started in on the physical therapy world first, then I became a runner, then I worked with people with regular orthopedic injuries, surgeries, then I got into running, working with runners. And so from a personal standpoint, I have seen how the other guys' training plans do or don't work and who they do or don't work for. And then with my physical therapy background, taken the information I have learned with progressive overload and added that to the training schedule. And then the world that I'm in has just changed a little bit over time. And I work a little bit less with rehabbing injuries, a little bit less with the injury-prone athlete and more with this category, this group of runners who are slow back of the pack and see all of this information out there that's meant for somebody who is consistently or has been consistently running for years and has done the basics and is faster. So they can do these faster things or these things that require more load on their body. That's that's not who my training plan is made for. My training plan is made for slow back-of-the-pack runners who are relatively new to running. Yes, maybe they are coming back from an injury, or yes, maybe they have battled some aches and pains through the years and they just they're fed up with it and they don't want to do that anymore. So that's where my training plans come into play first. But it has this added benefit of you're you're doing a little bit more each week. And so when you do it that way, you get these constant small wins week after week after week. And you may not even notice that you are having these small wins because they're hard to see. But some things that we can look at are, you know, did I give it my best? Did I hit the goal of the workout? Right. Like I talk about running with purpose. Each workout has a purpose. And that exact purpose may change day to day. I've done some runs where I'm just like, I am literally checking the box today. I don't want to do it. It, this is not at the top of my list for today, but I need to spend time on my feet this week because I have a race that I'm training for. And if I miss this week, who knows what the next two weeks are gonna look like. So maybe I don't want to do it. I'm not hurt, I'm not in pain, I'm not sick. I just flat out, you know what? I would rather watch TV all day today. That happens. And sometimes I do push myself and just I'm gonna get out there. And sometimes I just walk those miles because the goal was to get the miles done at whatever pace needs to happen, right? Other runs are maybe speed workouts. And the goal is to push my limits, make myself work hard at a fast pace for this amount of time. Yes, I have paces that I'm trying to hit during that run. And it's not a pass fail. If I hit all of the paces, that's the only way to pass. No, no, let's look at what the overall goal of this one speed workout is 30, 20, 10. The goal is run a pace for 30 seconds, run a second pace for 20 seconds, and sprint a third pace for 10 seconds. Maybe I'm supposed to, quote unquote, supposed to hit 15 minute per mile pace for the 30 seconds and 13 minute per mile pace for the 20 seconds, and 11 minute per mile pace for the 10 seconds. But maybe I get 1530 for the third 30 seconds, and maybe I get 14 minutes per mile for the 20 seconds, and maybe I only hit 12 minute per mile pace for the 10 seconds. Does that mean I failed? No, because A, you did the thing. And for the goal of that workout, the goal was to do three distinct paces. We, of course, want to hit and exceed our upper limits. Sometimes that doesn't happen. It doesn't mean that you didn't try hard. There are other factors into play. What if that particular workout, that 30, 20, 10, where you didn't hit the paces that were written on your training schedule, but it was actually 95 degrees outside. And those paces that you're supposed to, quote unquote, supposed to hit, were from a day that you pace tested in your body's ideal weather conditions, which for me is like 75 degrees. So let's just say it was 75 degrees when I got those numbers, but now it's 95 degrees. Well, in 95 degree weather, my heart rate is already going to be probably just at starting out 10 beats per minute faster. Don't quote me on that number. That is an educated guess on what that number elevated is. When that happens, we're already into our higher work zone, right? Our body is already working harder. And our body doesn't know the difference between what it's doing in 75 degree weather at fast paces, quote unquote fast paces, right? These are all relative, these are subjective terms, but we're calling my 75 degree weather, my 15 minute, my what did I say, 13 minute, and my 11 minute, those paces that I was quote unquote supposed to hit. Those are my ideal fast paces. But if I'm already at an elevated state for working, 95 degrees, I am I'm not going to hit those numbers, but I still achieved my goal of running three distinct paces. So one person may say, Oh God, I never hit my paces. It this is awful. Like all of these new paces that I just got in May, these are awful. I'm never hitting them. Then this is really killing my vibe. This is really killing my confidence. But we need to look at the fact of we're doing this in significantly hotter weather, I'm not even going to say warmer, significantly hotter weather. And our body already has to work hard to cool us down. Because if it's hotter outside, our internal temperature is also going to be hotter. And our body has to work hard to cool that down. So that means that our heart has to beat a different amount, our breathing rate's going to be higher because of that. And we're overall going to feel more sluggish because every little thing is going to take more effort because our body is already using resources to cool us down. So we, when we're thinking about building confidence, which is what this episode is about, when we're thinking about building confidence, we have to put it in perspective as well. What was the goal of this run? This goal of this run, 30, 20, 10, I'm going at three distinct paces. Yes, I'm trying to hit these other ones, but put it in perspective. Did I get those paces from a more ideal weather timeline? And now it's July and it's 95 degrees and 80% humidity. Very different running paces on those days, right? Or I just talked to a client in Stronger Faster Finisher and their long run, which is supposed to be easy peasy lemon squeezy, they're going their easy run pace, felt awful. And they were actually in zone four, the almost the entire run. So much longer than they usually are. And they they felt like the run was hard. Well, turns out this person donated blood the day before this long run. When you donate blood, you lose blood volume. And so your body is trying to pump out the same volume of blood with every single beat, but it literally doesn't have enough blood volume because when you donate blood, you are, it is leaving your body. And I don't even know how much they take. I'm not even gonna give a guess, but any little amount is going to affect it. I mean, even just in surgery, right? Like let's say you have a surgery, you have a knee scope, something that's like kind of in out minimal blood loss. And that's why they do it arthroscopically. It's minimal blood loss. Arthroscopic means scope. They put like the camera and the tube in you. Arthro means joint. So arthroscopy, arthroscopic surgery versus colon scopy, colonoscopy, going in your colon with the camera, right? Laproscopic, laparo. I actually have to look that up. I don't know why I use this as an example, but laparoscopically would be like an abdominal surgery, scopy, with the the smaller hole, right? Minimal blood loss, but that will still affect your heart rate and your breathing rate because it had just some blood loss. And so then your body has to work harder to get the same effect. It has to pump harder. In the example of the long run after donating blood, your body has to work harder because it wants to pump out the same amount of blood, but there literally isn't the same amount of blood. So it's going to beat faster and harder to try and get that same end result, which is why I don't recommend working out the day of or the next, usually two days after donating blood because your body needs to get back to homeostasis. It doesn't like change. Homeostasis, it likes static. It likes, it likes its home static. Think of it that way. It likes where it's been at and it doesn't want changes. That was just one example. So when we're thinking about confidence, somebody may look at that long run that this runner did and be like, oh my God, I'm I'm getting worse. I was in zone four the whole time. My God, this is supposed to be an easy run. This is supposed to be the easiest. I'm just doing terrible. I'm getting slower. I have to work harder at this. But let's put this in perspective. Your body was going through a whole lot. So let's not look at each one individual workout. Let's look at it at as a whole. There are also many other factors why that workout may have felt awful. Let's say this person didn't donate blood, but maybe the day before it was a holiday and they drank alcohol and they stayed up four hours later past their normal bedtime. They woke up at their normal time. And because of that sleep change, they weren't as hungry in the morning. So they didn't eat their final couple of bites of their uh English muffin as an example. They didn't drink as much water the day before because they were drinking alcohol. They started off dehydrated, and then maybe that run was awful. It's not the run in this aspect. What else is going on? We don't run and work out in a vacuum. There are so many other factors. I'm not working, I didn't work out the past couple of days. I didn't do my long run again this week. I chose to make this a D-load week, which it actually was going to be originally. And then because I was staying home because of Fourth of July weekend. Long story short, we were gonna go out of town, but we didn't. I was like, oh, well, since we're not going out of town, I'm gonna still do my long run. It was supposed to be 7.61 miles. And then that didn't happen because of other life events that made me stressed out. When I get stressed out, I break out in hives. When I get too hot, I break out in hives. When I take an ice bath, I break out in hives. Do we see a pattern here? I know this about myself, and so does my husband. And he's actually the one who made the call. And he's like, You're not running tomorrow. I'm I'm making that executive decision for you. And he's he was totally right. I should not have run. And my stress levels have just not changed. And it's not worth me feeling miserable. And so D-Load week and I'm adjusting, and my training plan will adjust for me. Now, I'm not even in an active training phase or a training block, as other people may say. So I have, I do have the luxury of this. But also, if you're following my training plans, you also have the luxury of making it a D-load week because I have those worked in. Depending on the race distance you're doing, you have plenty of time to quote unquote catch up. And you know I say quote unquote catch up because it's not catching up. It's it's just worked in there because stuff happens. But had I run, I would have felt awful the rest of the day with the heat, my stress, my resting heart rate has been higher because of this stress. My resting heart rate being higher means that my workout heart rate is going to be higher, which means my body is already working harder. And so, my long run, I am predicting, but I won't know this for a fact because I'm not going to test it. Because I know historically how I feel when I do these things. But my heart rate would be elevated. I would need to go slower, and it would still feel like I'm working just as hard. And if I didn't know these things, that may kill my confidence. So there are so many factors. So one thing to do is look at everything that's going on and look at everything that's been going on in the past really four weeks. When my runners work with me in Stronger, Faster Finisher, I ask a lot of questions. And I don't ask like, okay, you know, just tell me about today. It's what have the past four weeks looked like? What? And that's, I may already know that information because you may, we may be very actively sharing this information between each other. But if I don't know that information yet, it's going to be what has the past few weeks, past month looked like? Because I don't look at this in a vacuum and I look at all things. What has work been like? What has family life been like? What's temperature like? What's sleep like? What's fueling and just general eating and nutrition like, right? Don't let one run kill your confidence. You have to see it as a whole. Another thing that you can do to help build your confidence is look at the facts. I look at facts. I don't want to hear, well, not that I don't want to hear qualifiers. I don't take qualifiers into consideration when I am making a plan, right? So a qualifier would be if I'm talking to somebody about a long run they did. Oh, well, tell me about this long run you did three weeks ago. Look at this pace. Well, yeah, or look at this distance. And they would say, oh yeah, I did that distance at that pace. But it was da-da-da-da-da. It was cool out. It was, I was well hydrated. I was well fueled. Yes, those things are important to take note of. But when we're talking confidence, let's look at the facts. You did that distance. You did that pace. Fact. You did those things. Fact. I don't care that it was the ideal situation because your body clearly can do it. And then we can start lining up to make it so that we have ideal situations. But when we're talking confidence, we look at the fact that I did this distance or I was on my feet for this amount of time. Or I hit this pace, right? Like fact, you did it. And then we can talk about how we recreate that and make it happen again and again and again. But confidence building, look at facts. As soon as you start qualifying it, you've lost your confidence. Or it was never there to begin with. But you're negating it. You aren't giving yourself that credit. Give yourself that credit. It's your body and you did the thing. You did it. You went that distance. You stayed on your feet for that amount of time. You hit that pace, right? When runners are asking me or or their confidence of I can't stay ahead of the balloon, ladies. I I first go to pace testing. What are the paces you are hitting? If any of those paces are faster than a 16 minute per mile pace for easy, moderate, or hard, I know you can do it. I know you can stay ahead of the balloon ladies right now. If those paces, easy, moderate, or hard, if if all of them are slower than a 16 minute per mile pace, it doesn't mean you can't stay ahead of the balloon ladies. It may take long. Okay. But let's go back. I haven't run into a runner who doesn't have at least one of those paces, but more likely at least two of those paces faster than 16 minute per mile pace. And it's important to know that even just one of those paces being faster than balloon lady pace or sweeper pace, because remember, the balloon ladies are the visual representation of the sweep line. They aren't the actual sweepers. They get a lot of villain energy from the crowd, but they aren't the ones that are sweeping. Anyway, they maintain the 16 minute per mile pace. And if you can hit at least your hard pace faster than them, then I know your body is capable of staying ahead of them. So I know you can do it. And then I create the plan to replicate and improve upon that pace. But the fact is your body can do it for at least 30 seconds or 15 seconds, whatever your run interval is, right? Your body can hit that pace for at least 15 seconds. So it's not out of the realm of possibility. Now let's make it so that you can do that over and over and over again. But I look at the fact. The fact is your body did that. Your body can go that pace. Fact. No qualifiers, no saying, well, it was only 30 seconds. Don't qualify it because we're looking at facts. You did this. And then we can create a plan to replicate that. So it happens over and over and over again, and you get faster and faster and faster. And one of the ways of getting faster is going slower on that lump. One conversation I had with one of my stronger faster finisher members the other day was let's look at the facts because we had a lot of qualifiers in a conversation. And it was, well, you know, I did get to eight miles, but that was duh. And I almost just wanted to be like, nope, stop. I, of course, am not interrupting. But my my my initial gut reaction is to stop the person talking right then and there. But we got through it, and fact is that I wanted to bring to their attention was I want you to say a phrase because remember, we're talking facts, we're not talking qualifiers. So when you start thinking that you can't do your next long run, you can't do the race distance, you can't do the race time, you can't stay on your feet that long, you can't stay ahead of the balloon ladies. The way my training plan is written is it's a certain amount of distance for the long run. Now I talk long run a lot because that is typically the one that is the mental roadblock. So the long run is written. So it's a 10% increase for five to six weeks. And then that fifth or sixth week is a deload week, meaning you cut back to let your body either adjust, give yourself a break, or you can use that deload week at another point in time to accommodate a vacation, a day that you're sick, or what have you. So when you get to week, let's say let's start right at week one for marathon training. 3.1 miles is the long run. The next week, week two is 3.41 miles. The next week, week three is 3.75 miles. The next week, week four is 4.13 miles. Okay, so what I want you to think about is the difference between 3.1 to 3.41 is 3.41 is 10% more, meaning 3.41 miles is 3.1 miles plus 10% of that plus 0.31. Okay, so anybody who doesn't know decimals and and percentages, percentages, right? 10% is 0.1 as a decimal. So when we are adding it up, it is we have to take 10% of 3.1. We move the decimal place over to the left, one place 0.31. So now we do 3.1 plus 0.31, and that equals 3.41. Okay. When you are doing that, talking about this, if you're training for a marathon, you probably are thinking, God, these miles are so low in the beginning. I just want to start off at six or seven miles. Just start me off higher because this is so dumb. I can do this. Part of going all the way back to 3.1 or 3.41 is the confidence building because every week, every increase is 10%. So your body only feels a 10% difference. Don't look at the full mileage because even 10 miles to 11 miles, that's a 10% increase going from 10 miles to 11 miles, because 10% of 10 miles is one mile. 10 plus one is 11. Same thing at you know, 15 miles. 10% of 15 miles is 1.5 miles. So a 15 to a 16.5 mile run is still 10%. When we think about it as percentage increases, that's what our body feels it at. It needs to work 10% harder or 10% longer. And in the case of a long run, it's 10% longer because you should not be working harder. You should still be staying at your easy peasy lemon squeezy pace, your easy pace. So the pace stays the same. So it's not 10% harder, it's 10% longer. Can we agree that 10% more is a small amount, right? Like if we are, let's think about drinking water. If we need to increase 10% more of our water intake every day, is that a small or a large amount? It's a small amount. Like looking at my LaCroix water, forgive me if I pronounced that wrong, but 12 fluid ounces on this delicious strawberry peach sparkling water. 10% more of that would be 1.2 fluid ounces. If I told myself that I need to increase my water intake by 10% more each day, and I that means each time I drink a can of my LaCroix water, I need to, when I finish that can, I need to drink 1.2 fluid ounces more. And when we look at the size of a can, if this is 12 ounces, 1.2 fluid ounces is gonna be somewhere way down at the bottom. That's not that much more, right? Because 10% really is such a small amount. So if I had to drink 1.2 fluid ounces more every time I finished a can of my sparkling water, that's not gonna bust me at my seams, right? Like I'm not gonna feel like my bladder or my stomach is overly extended, right? My body's not going to notice that I basically took one more sip of water. But 10% more is barely perceptible to your body. And so we start all the way at 3.1 miles and increase slowly over time. So our body can very easily adjust to 10%. It starts off slow. So then by the time we get to 15 miles and need to then go to 16.5 miles after that, our body is so used to this 10% increase that it barely notices we're doing a difference physically. Physically, our body barely notices. Mentally, we may get in our way. And that's where I want you to start saying this phrase. I know I can do this because I've done it before, and it's only 10% more. I know I can do this because I've done it before, and it's only 10% more. And you can do it because you have done it and it's only 10% more, right? And so we start saying that at the beginning, 3.1 miles. That should never be your very first run in your life. So you can start off right from the gate. I can do this because I've done it before. And it should only be 10% more than what you were doing before, but that is not always the case at the beginning of a training schedule. But week two, I know I can do this because I've done it before and it's only 10% more. Week three, I know I can do this because I've done it before and it's only 10% more, and so on and so forth until you get all the way up to your longest long run. Now you may be saying, Allie, you don't have me go 10% less than race distance. No, you're right, I don't. I have you go 70 to 80% of race distance. But let's do that math, right? So 80% of 26.2 is 20.96. Would you say that 20 miles and 20.96 pretty much the same thing? You may or may not agree with that. I don't agree with that. It's just a statement I have heard. But the difference with these long, easy runs is you are going so slow that by the time you get to that 20 mile long run for a marathon, 10 miles for a half marathon, but same concept. And if you want me to talk about this in terms of half marathon, let me know. Run Disney DPT on Instagram, and I'll make an episode about it. But 20 mile long run, by the time you get to that 20 mile long run, because you go so slow, that long run should take you the entire time that you are going to take on your marathon. Meaning, if you think your marathon is going to take you seven hours, I want that 20 miles to take you seven hours. Even if that means that you have to walk five miles of it. You shouldn't, if you're going slow enough, you shouldn't have to do that. But the reason I do that is because you only have to run, you only have to run about 60% of the distance to be able to complete the race distance. But that's a big jump for me. That's a really big jump for me. So I bring it to 80%. But when you go race distance or longer, a couple of things happen. All of those extra miles, week after week after week, right? Because you're gonna do, if you do that, you would do 20 miles one week and then 22 miles and then 24 miles and then 26 miles and then maybe 28 miles or 29 miles. And that's a whole extra, what, five or six weeks that I just listed out at going all of those miles, right? That's a lot of uh pressure on your joints. And if you've had any aches or pains, you're just going to keep doing that week after week after week. So that's one thing that happens. You, whether you can cause injury or it's just aches and pains, right? Because pain doesn't always equal injury, but it doesn't matter for the sake of this conversation. Either way, that could happen, or even the more likely thing to happen, even if you don't get aches and pains and you don't get injury, you are exhausted for race week. You are exhausted and your body is ready to be done. And you haven't given yourself enough taper because you do the 29 miles, you know, two weeks before race day. When I recommend the 20 miles is three weeks, at least three weeks before race day. Your body is exhausted and then it gives out on race day and you don't finish. And now it's a it's almost, it seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but really it's the actions that you took before. And so I recommend keeping it at 20 miles, but make it take you the entire time, even if that means you have to walk extra, which most of my runners to get it to be the amount of time that it's going to take you on race day, they either have to slow down slower than their easy pace or they need to walk more miles. And so once you get to that distance, that 20 miles for seven hours. Now, when you get to race day, I can do this because I've already done it and it's just 10% faster. So going up to this, it was, I know I can do this because I've done this and it's just 10% more. Well, it's not 10% more, but you are gonna go 10% faster. We already know that you can be on your feet for that length of time, right? That's the length of time. And I use seven hours as an example because that's balloon lady math time, right? It will take them seven, I think it's seven hours in one minute or something like that. When they maintain that 16 minute per mile pace, it will take about seven hours. So even if you start with the balloon ladies and you go faster, you now know you can do it because you've done it for seven hours. You've been on your feet for seven hours already. You've done it. And now just go a little bit faster to complete that race. So I can do this because I've done it before and it's only 10% more. And once you get to race day, I know I can do this because I've done it before and it's only 10% faster, right? Like if you look at your paces, if you went 10% faster and did not start with the balloon ladies, could you finish that marathon? But the answer is yes. And you likely are actually going to go faster than 10% faster because race day adrenaline is a real thing. But at least give yourself that confidence of, well, I've already been on my feet for that length of time. I've already done it because you have. But that's the key. You have to do that. You have to make that 20 mile or take however long you think race day is going to take you. And if it's seven hours, you need to take seven hours and then 10% faster. Because even if you don't go, let's say your pace is close to balloon lady pace for your long run. You know you can be on your feet for seven hours. 10% faster is still faster than balloon lady pace, right? Even if you, even if race day pace is 15 minute per mile pace, which if you, if you do, let's let me back it up here. Let's say your long run pace is 16 minute per mile pace. 10% faster than that is 1.6 minutes per mile faster. That puts you in the 14s. Let's just, let's just say 10%, because I don't want to do the math right now. Let's just say the 10% pace faster is 1.5 minutes per mile faster. That would put you at 1430 minute per mile pace. At 14 minutes and 30 seconds per mile pace over the course of 26 miles, that's going to give you about a 40 minute buffer if you started with the balloon ladies. So if your long run pace is 16 minute per mile pace and you go 10% faster at 14 minutes and 30 seconds per mile pace, you can gain a 40-minute buffer over the course of 26 miles. Would that still get you across that finish line? Yeah. And that's that's just 10% faster. That's not that much faster, right? 10% at the beginning of this conversation. We said 10% is not that much more. Don't bring in qualifiers. I can see, I can think of qualifiers that are coming up in your brain. Don't bring in the qualifiers. Give yourself the confidence that you can cross that finish line. I just sat here debating if I was going to talk about this part. I rely heavily on math because, like Katie Heron says in Mean Girls, math is the same in every language. It doesn't change, right? Like math is math is math. Start paying attention, not hyper focusing on your paces, but really start seeing your paces and believing that you just did that. Like maybe you have a one-off one here or there, and you're like, did I really just hit like 16, excuse me, six minute per mile pace? I have that instance sometimes. And maybe that one instance was a one-off. But if it keeps coming back over and over and over again, believe that you are doing that. And it's not that your watch or your treadmill is wrong. If you've, if you think your treadmill is wrong, get it recalibrated. Get somebody out there, have them fix it. You know, if you go to the gym, I don't know how you go about that process, but you can ask them how often they have these tuned up. But if it's your own, have somebody come out, tune it up, make sure it's okay. If anything, I notice that treadmills are actually slower than what we can do because of just wear and tear and buildup that happens on the treadmill. And then the treadmill isn't tracking at normal. So let's say I put it at 5.0 miles per hour. Maybe it's actually going slower than that. And I could go faster than that, is what that means, right? Because of buildup, or if the the belt is actually off and like rubbing wrong, then it's not going as fast. So if anything, that's what I've noticed that the treadmill isn't faster than what it says, it's slower than what it says. Right. But start looking at your paces and start focusing on recognizing what your body feels like when you're doing these paces. So then you can say, okay, well, my 16 minute per mile pace really is my easy pace. And my, what did I use as examples earlier? Oh, I used 15 minutes and 13 minutes as moderate and then 11 minutes as hard. Right. Start believing that those are actually your paces. And again, going back to the beginning, if you can't trust that math, if you can't trust those numbers that keep coming up over and over and over again, you may need some mental health work on that. That because your your watch is not gaslighting you. Your watch is not lying to you. Right? Or go out, find a track, measure a distance and repeat. Let's say you do, I don't know, a hundred meters. I don't know. I don't know what a long distance in meters for these sprints is. All I know is what I hear Olympics and then what American football players have to do for their time trial, whatever. But it doesn't matter. You can do it for any length of distance. You can do it for 10 feet if you wanted. Go measure. If you really aren't trusting the numbers, go measure out a distance on a track. Have somebody time you how long it takes you to get across that distance and do the math to see how fast you ran. Right? If you do a hundred meters in, I don't know, 10 seconds. I have no idea if that's a realistic number or not. I don't, I probably not. That's probably like Usane bolt numbers, right? Let's say you do 100 meters in 30 seconds. Go do the math to figure out how many miles per hour that is. If you don't know to know how to, go find yourself somebody who likes math, ask them to do it, put it into Chat GPT, put it into Gemini, put it into Claude, ask some, like, hey, I went this distance. It took me this amount of time. Convert that for me to miles per hour or minutes per mile, or both, and see what that number is. And do that distance at your easy pace, do that distance at your moderate pace, do that distance at your hard pace and see what the average out is. And no qualifiers, no, oh well, I only did it for a hundred meters, not 26.2 miles. Remember, the qualifier doesn't matter. Can your body physically do that at a pace? Can your body physically do that? If the answer is yes, then it's just following the strategic plan that gets you to do that pace over 26.2 miles. Right? Like I'm not promising your hard pace at 26.2 miles. That one's unrealistic because your hard pace should be your all-out sprint. And nobody, not even the Olympians, are able to do an all-out sprint for 26.2 miles. But if your body can do it, now it's just the strategic plan over a strategic amount of time to get you to be able to do it for a longer distance or a longer amount of time, longer than that hundred meter dash. Right? So these are all ways to start trusting yourself. And part of it is believing in yourself that you did actually do that thing. That wasn't made up. You did do 3.1 miles last week. So you can do 3.41 miles because you've already done it. You've done 3.1 and it's just 10% more to equal the 3.41. And then we get up to race distance after our longest run, taking us the amount of time it's going to take us to do that 26.2 miles. I can do it because I've already done it. I've already been on my feet for seven hours. I know I can do it because I've already been on my feet for seven hours. And now I'm gonna go 10% faster. And believe yourself when your body hit those paces. Either believe yourself because you've done the mental health work to overcome a mental block in believing in yourself. Or let's trust the map. Go do it. Go mark out a certain distance and then do what your body feels like when you do that easy pace, what your body feels like when you do that moderate pace, what your uh body feels like when you do that hard pace and see what those numbers translate out to be. You can do this. I know you can do this. I know you can do this. You need to start believing in yourself. And I outlined the actions you can take today to start making that happen.