“You will not give up again,” I told myself. “Stop calculating. Just keep running.”
I took a sip of water and trudged forward in the dark forest. “Just until the next checkpoint. Then you can take a break.”
I wondered if they had coffee.
Halfway through my first 100-mile race, I was on the verge of repeating the same mistake I made during my first 24-hour ultramarathon just 3 months earlier. I started calculating: “How much time would I need if I just walked the rest of the way?” Wouldn’t that be enough to finish? After all, I had only started running a year ago.
But I reminded myself of my biggest regret after that 24-hour race—I had convinced myself that 150 kilometers would be “good enough” for my first try. My longest run before that was only 61 kilometers, and when I let myself believe walking was acceptable, I stopped running entirely. My goal no longer mattered.
Not this time. I wanted to finish in under 24 hours. I needed to keep running to achieve this goal, so I forced myself to run, using the mental techniques I had practiced in training.
I broke the remaining miles into small segments and repeated my mantra: “A slow jog is better than a walk.” I kept moving from aid station to aid station and checkpoint to checkpoint.
And I finished—in 22:07 hours, as the 15th female.
What got me there wasn’t just physical preparation. It was the mental strategies I had practiced for months.
Because in ultramarathon running, the real challenge isn’t just physical. It’s in your head. And just as you can train your body to run faster and farther, you can train your ability to keep going when every signal tells you to stop.
In this article, we’ll explore the science of mental fatigue and the evidence-based strategies that can help you override it—so that when your body says stop, your mind knows how to say keep going.
The Science Behind Mental Fatigue: Why We Feel Like Stopping
Fatigue is more than just muscle exhaustion—it’s a mental battle.
Research has shown that mental fatigue increases our perception of effort, making everything feel harder even when our bodies are still capable of pushing forward.
But what exactly drives this mental exhaustion?
To understand this phenomenon, researchers have developed three predominant theories of mental fatigue that offer fascinating insights into why we struggle during extreme endurance events.
1. The Central Governor Theory
The Central Governor Theory, pioneered by exercise physiologist Tim Noakes, proposes that our brain acts as a protective mechanism. Imagine your brain as an overprotective parent, constantly monitoring your body’s resources and imposing limits to prevent potential damage. Even when your muscles have more to give, this internal governor might signal fatigue to ensure survival.
2. The Psychobiological Model
The Psychobiological Model takes a different approach. Developed by Samuele Marcora, this theory suggests that fatigue is fundamentally about balancing effort and motivation. As mental fatigue increases, the perceived effort of a task grows disproportionately. What might have felt manageable at the start of a race can become overwhelming as your mental resources deplete.
3. The Interoceptive Model
The Interoceptive Model focuses on how we perceive internal bodily signals. When mentally fatigued, our interpretation of physical sensations becomes distorted. A mild muscle ache transforms into an insurmountable challenge, and our ability to accurately assess our true physical condition becomes compromised.
These theories aren’t competing explanations but complementary perspectives. Collectively, they reveal that endurance is a complex interplay between physical capability, mental perception, and psychological motivation.
Understanding these models isn’t just academic for ultrarunners; it’s a practical toolkit for pushing beyond perceived limits. By recognizing that fatigue is as much a mental construct as a physical reality, we can develop strategies to renegotiate our internal boundaries.
However, just as you can train your body to run faster and further, you can also train your mind to maintain drive when every signal suggests stopping. The following techniques can help you overcome these mental barriers and push through the most challenging moments in a race.
Segmentation: Breaking the Race Into Manageable Chunks
Our brains struggle with conceptualizing extreme distances all at once. According to Anticipatory Regulation Theory, we gauge effort based on expectations. If the finish line feels impossibly far, we instinctively slow down to preserve energy. We reduce cognitive overload and maintain motivation by breaking a race into smaller, manageable chunks.
During point-to-point races, I rely on the same strategy that successfully kept me going in my first 100-miler – thinking only from one aid station to the next. Instead of thinking about the whole distance and how much I still have to cover, I try to focus only on the current section of the course and tell myself I only need to get to the next aid station.
This obviously doesn’t work in timed events where you run around a loop for many hours, but I apply a similar strategy here. Instead of thinking about how long I still need to keep moving, I tell myself, “Just one more loop,” when the going gets tough.
This strategy successfully kept me running around a motocross track for 24 hours during the Mad Chicken Run 2023 and secured my win.
Self-Talk: Rewriting the Mental Script
According to the Psychobiological Model, endurance performance is dictated by perceived effort and motivation. Mental fatigue increases perceived effort, making running feel harder than it actually is.
But how you talk to yourself when you’re running matters.
Positive self-talk can reduce the perceived difficulty of the run and activate brain regions associated with motivation. You can practice this by training alone and without listening to music, podcasts, or audiobooks.
I always run alone and limit my use of headphones during ultramarathon training. This helped me better understand how my mind works during long efforts, challenging workouts, or when I have to run in weather conditions I hate.
Running without being distracted by the company of others or music also makes it easier to test various mental techniques that will help you push through low points in a race.
My go-to strategy for stopping negative thoughts and preventing a negative emotional spiral is to use mantras.
A mantra is essentially a mental anchor—a simple phrase you repeat to yourself when your body screams to stop, and your mind wants to negotiate. It’s a powerful psychological tool that can reset your thinking and push you through the toughest parts of an ultramarathon.
During the 2024 “Sachsentrail” mountain ultra, I used the mantra “I’m an efficient and fast hiker” specifically to prevent myself from slowing down during the long, grueling uphill sections. But I didn’t just randomly choose these words—I practiced them during my hiking training, embedding them into my muscle memory and mental framework. When the uphills became punishing, this phrase became my internal rhythm, keeping me moving forward.
During the 24-hour Mad Chicken Run, when my energy plummeted, and each step felt like a negotiation, I borrowed a technique from elite ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter. Her minimalist mantra, “Robot, robot, robot,” became my lifeline. By reducing movement to a mechanical, repetitive action, I disconnected from the pain and continued to move. It worked beautifully, helping me maintain momentum when everything wanted me to stop.
Some runners prefer to use different mantras for each stage of a race. You might start with “patient and controlled” in the early miles, then transition to “give it everything you’ve got” as you approach the finish.
For my high-intensity training, such as lactate threshold work, I rely on the phrase “this is easy, this is fun”—a mantra that reframes discomfort and keeps my mind from spiraling into negative thoughts.
The magic of mantras isn’t in some mystical power but in their ability to redirect your mental focus. Repeating a chosen phrase prevents your mind from dwelling on fatigue, pain, or the overwhelming distance ahead. You’re training your brain just as you’re training your legs.
Mindfulness: Staying Present To Overcome Discomfort
Mental fatigue distorts our perception of effort. The Interoceptive Model suggests that experienced athletes perform better because they interpret bodily signals more accurately. Mindfulness helps you recognize discomfort without amplifying it.
Mindfulness in ultrarunning isn’t about achieving some zen-like state of calm. It’s about developing a razor-sharp awareness that helps you navigate the storm of physical and mental challenges. How we interpret bodily signals can make the difference between persevering and giving up.
A powerful tool is the body scan. It involves systematically directing attention through different body parts and observing sensations without judgment. Instead of viewing bodily sensations as threats or reasons to stop, body scanning teaches you to become a neutral observer of your physical experience.
During my early training, I tended to panic because of discomfort. I still needed to learn the difference between discomfort caused by stressing my body in new ways and pain that was a sign of injury. Mindfulness became my tool for learning to read my body’s sensations and staying calm when it began to hurt.
Are my calves tight? Is there a slight twinge in my knee? A subtle ache in my lower back? By practicing body scanning during training, I built a more nuanced understanding of my body’s communication. I learned to distinguish between the discomfort of pushing my limits and the sharp pain that might indicate something more serious—like developing an internal early warning system that keeps me both safe and capable of pushing forward.
And instead of panicking when my quads began to burn, I learned to observe the sensation objectively. “My quads are burning,” I’d tell myself, “and that’s just information, not a stop sign.” This simple reframing transformed pain from an enemy to a neutral messenger.
This objective observation was more than just a physical technique—it became a mental breakthrough. I realized that my thoughts about pain were often more limiting than the pain itself. I learned to disassociate from my thoughts, understanding that I don’t need to believe everything my mind tells me at the moment.
Just because my brain was debating whether to stop didn’t mean I actually needed to stop.
The magic of mindfulness in ultrarunning isn’t about eliminating struggle. It’s about changing your relationship with that struggle.
When every fiber of your being wants to stop, mindfulness gives you the tools to stay present, observe, and, most importantly, continue.
Building Your Ultra Mind
The strategies we’ve explored—segmentation, self-talk, and mindfulness—are more than survival techniques. They offer a comprehensive approach to mental training that transforms our understanding of endurance.
Through countless miles, I’ve learned that mental training isn’t a one-time skill you acquire but a continuous practice. Just as physical conditioning requires consistent effort, your mental muscles need regular exercise. Each training run and challenging workout is an opportunity to strengthen your body and your psychological resilience.
The science behind mental fatigue reveals something profound: our limitations are often more psychological than physical. The Central Governor Theory, the Psychobiological Model, and the Interoceptive Model all point to the same fundamental truth—our minds are both the greatest limiting factor and the most powerful performance enhancer.
But here’s the most critical lesson: Mental training is deeply personal. The mantra that works for me might not work for you, and the mindfulness technique that helps me push through a 24-hour race might feel completely foreign to another runner. The key is experimentation, practice, and self-discovery.
In ultrarunning, as in life, our greatest opponent is rarely the external challenge. It’s the voice inside our head telling us we can’t continue. By developing these mental strategies, we learn to negotiate with that voice. We realize that discomfort is not a stop sign but a passing landmark on our journey.
Remember: You’re not just training to run farther. You’re training to expand the boundaries of what you believe is possible.