What do you tell yourself?

I know this is going to sound completely stupid but please bear with me.

So my workout today was a 5km tempo with each km faster then the previous one. However, this route is downhill for the first 2km but uphill on the last 3km, which makes it very difficult to run each km faster. I ended up running 2 fast km's and then running 3 pretty consistent km's that were slightly slower then those first two.
My coach told me that I could have run those km progressively faster and the reason I couldn't is because I needed to keep focused. He recommended that I have a saying I repeat over and over again but I can't think of one that doesn't sound cheesy. Any Thoughts?

Note * It was raining and the roads were slippery with slush from melting snow but he didn't make any pace adjustments for the weather so the physical part is non-issue

Thanks for any input and I'm sorry if this sounds strange

JB

fuck shit up, fuck shit up, fuck shit up, fuck shit up, fuck shit up

hxc wrote:fuck shit up, fuck shit up, fuck shit up, fuck shit up, fuck shit up

this.

I don't do that but hxc's works. Just run the first 2 km really slow.

i don't think this is a stupid/strange question- i tried having a mantra-type thing a while ago.
it's kind of cheesy, but "pain is temporary, pride is forever" worked for me and has a nice tempo (and hey, it's not cheesy if no one else knows about it)
you could try song lyrics too
most of the time though i end up counting to 8 in my head. kind of lame and really boring, but i always lapse into it.

That's pretty stupid of your coach. You certainly ran effort wise harder each km. Anyway, the mantra I use sometimes is "break the pain" (rather than letting the pain break you)

usually a part of some random song just repeats in my head

i just repeat a word. sometimes its like "gay gay gay gay gay" or "shit shit shit shit shit"

^^^ well then...lol.
I don't necessarily have a saying that I say to myself, but if I really need to work hard on something, then I think about a time in my running career that went bad, and about how I never want to relive that moment again so I better get going.

during one race i knew i shouldve been going faster so i told myself
"stop being a little bitch" haha im nice but it worked.

hannah wrote:i don't think this is a stupid/strange question- i tried having a mantra-type thing a while ago.
it's kind of cheesy, but "pain is temporary, pride is forever" worked for me and has a nice tempo (and hey, it's not cheesy if no one else knows about it)
you could try song lyrics too
most of the time though i end up counting to 8 in my head. kind of lame and really boring, but i always lapse into it.

I like the pain is temporary, pride is forever, I think I will use that. I do use song lyrics but my coach told me not to do that because it apparently makes me lose focus. I think this is total bs but he has some very impressive credits so he must be doing something right.

Thanks for all the input

alex-likes-running wrote:i just repeat a word. sometimes its like "gay gay gay gay gay" or "shit shit shit shit shit"

Yeah I won't lie. I will say the worst things over and over in my head when I need to push myself. Not exactly encouraging in general, but it works for me.

njrunner14 wrote:

alex-likes-running wrote:i just repeat a word. sometimes its like "gay gay gay gay gay" or "shit shit shit shit shit"

Yeah I won't lie. I will say the worst things over and over in my head when I need to push myself. Not exactly encouraging in general, but it works for me.

haha you don't know how many times i've heard girls in races saying out loud to themselves " fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck" or "shit shit shit shit shit shit"

FUCKEN GOT THIS SHIT!

if u aint first, your last

I usually say "you got this", or when I need to pick it up or kick, I'll think "if not now, when?"

I didn't know people talked to themselves so much. I just run my race and focus on catching the person in front of me.

There's this course thats super narrow, where you can only go through ferns and branches to pass someone..and there was this girl going slower then I wanted, I was calling her dirty names in my head.


haha

Usually during races I just think how I really don't like one of my teamates and I'd rather chop off my right arm then let her beat me. Or I bribe myself with food, like beat x amount of time and you'll get a milkshake!
^ I swear that works.

i bribe myself with food for my long runs haha. i'll be like, finish this run, and you can pig out all you want.

When i got my pr i was saying pre's quote "The best pace is a suicide pace"and it reminded me that i needed to push myself as hard as i could to get that sub 21 i wanted to bad. And i did!

alex-likes-running wrote:i bribe myself with food for my long runs haha. i'll be like, finish this run, and you can pig out all you want.

Me too lol.

this sounds dumb but i remember i was looking at pictures from one of the guys' away xc invitationals like last year, and the course was notorious for this one huge hill. one of the pictures was of the hill, on which the host school had spraypainted "WE <3 HILLS". so during hard runs/workouts with hills, i just tell myself repetitively "i love hills, i love hills, i love hills". it doesn't always work, but it's worth a shot lol.

or, instead of cursing in my head over and over again, i just let out a nice loud "fuck" hahaha

Hahaha. The "WE <3 HILLS" thing is funny. Our course has a ginormous hill too. I don't know if we'd end up spray-painting anything on it, but saying that in my head is worth a shot.
Yeah during races I'll only think in my head, but sometimes on my long runs when I'm all by myself, I'll think about things and if I remember anything embarassing or stupid I did, I'll actually say out loud, "you fucking idiot." Haha I don't know.

yea my course has a bigass hill too. i just think about taking smaller steps while running up it.

We do sets of 30 hill sprints up our ginormous hill so I just tell myself, "you can do this thiry times in practice, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to do it once in a race"

and then in my head I tell myself general things like "do not let this fucking bitch beat you."

I get angry haha.