How Bad Do You Want It?

“A newer model of endurance performance integrates the body and the mind through the brain. This alternative theory was dubbed the ‘psychobiological model’ by its primary developer Samuele Marcora. According to the model, exhaustion occurs during real-world endurance competition not when the body encounters hard physical limits such as total glycogen depletion but rather when the athlete experiences the maximum level of perceived effort he is willing or able to tolerate. Hard physical limits do exist, of course, but no athlete ever reaches them because the purely psychological limit of perceived effort tolerance is always encountered first. The seemingly inexorable slowing that occurs at the approach of exhaustion is not mechanistic, like a car running out of gas, but voluntary.”

A race is like a fire walk. When you start a race, you are standing before a bed of hot coals, at the far end of which stands a wall. The wall represents your ultimate physical limit. You will never reach it. Your goal is merely to get as close to the wall as possible, for the closer you get, the better you perform. As the race progresses, your bare feet press into the searing coals again and again. Each step is more painful than the one before. (Don’t forget: Pain is different from perceived effort. This is a metaphor.) Eventually, you come to the limit of your pain tolerance and you are compelled to leap off the glowing embers. The distance between this point and the wall is a measure of how well you performed relative to your full potential.

Physical fitness determines where the wall that represents your physical limit is placed. Mental fitness determines how close you are able to get to that limit in competition. Mental fitness is a collection of coping skills—behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that help athletes master the discomfort and stress of the athletic experience, mainly by increasing tolerance for perceived effort and by reducing the amount of effort that is perceived at any given level of intensity of exercise. What I call the new psychology of endurance sports aims to cultivate mental fitness by helping athletes understand the challenges they face from a psychobiological perspective and by showing them how to emulate the ways in which the most successful athletes cope with these challenges.”

“Research on the psychology of pain has produced similar findings. A number of studies have compared the effects of two contrasting anticipatory attitudes—acceptance and suppression—on pain perception. Some people have a natural tendency to look ahead to the repetition of a familiar pain stimulus with acceptance. They tell themselves, ‘This is going to hurt, but no worse than before.’ Other people try to cope with the same situation through suppression, a form of denial. They tell themselves, in effect, ‘I really hope this doesn’t hurt as much as it did the last time.’ Psychologists have generally found that, compared to suppression, acceptance reduces the unpleasantness of pain without reducing the pain itself. For this reason, it is a more effective coping skill. … In common language, this attitude of acceptance toward an impending disagreeable experience is called ‘bracing yourself.’”

“Psychologists distinguish two types of perfectionism: adaptive and maladaptive. Adaptive perfectionism is a never-satisfied mindset that can have a positive influence on performance. Maladaptive perfectionism, on the other hand, often leads athletes to engage in self-destructive behaviors such as overtraining. This variety of perfectionism is known to be associated with low self-esteem and insecurity. Athletes who harbor a general feeling that they are never good enough are prone to overtrain in their unending quest to prove their worth. Confident athletes tend to be much more able to shape their training on the basis of rational internal observation.”

“Psychologists have a name for this phenomenon: the audience effect. The online Psychology Dictionary defines it as ‘the influence of the presence of other people on an individual’s behavior.’ Psychologists believe that the audience effect is mediated by a so-called sociometer, a mechanism involving multiple regions of the brain, including the anterior insula and the inferior gyrus. Through this mechanism people notice and interpret the attention of those around them and use this input to adjust their behavior in ways that are likely to earn more positive attention.

In essence, the audience effect coaxes people into holding themselves to higher standards. Consider a 2011 study conducted by psychologists at Newcastle University published in Evolution and Human Behavior, which found that college students were more likely to clean up after themselves in a cafeteria when posters depicting human eyes were conspicuously displayed on the walls. The audience effect elevates people’s standards not only for moral behavior but also for any kind of task performance that might be judged. We humans want to be seen as being ‘good at’ whatever we do in the presence of others.”

“The question that each athlete faces in the crucial moments of a race—How bad do you want it?—is fundamentally a question of motivation. A number of factors influence how close a fire walker gets to the wall of his or her ultimate physical limit, but motivation exerts the strongest influence. Lurking behind the question of how badly an athlete wants to do his or best is a deeper question… Is it worth it? The intensity of an athlete’s motivation to achieve the best performance he or she can is determined largely by the value placed on it. Athletes push through extremely high levels of perceived effort in races because they anticipate being rewarded. In most cases this reward is neither utilitarian (e.g., money) nor sensorial (e.g., a delicious celebratory meal) but personal. Some sort of meaning is attached to doing one’s best. That is its value. And the meaning is different for every athlete.”

“The next day, Pre described the race in his diary. ‘It was a very hard race from the word go with a combination of great runners and a tough course,’ he wrote. ‘I had my problems winning. I felt several times like giving into the pain and letting Gary [sic] win but I just couldn’t. I just kept driving myself harder and harder, longer and longer.’

This frank confession of psychological vulnerability, of unsteadiness in the face of suffering, would have surprised Steve’s legions of worshipful fans across America, known as ‘Pre’s People.’ Through his sadomasochistic racing style and his brash public comments, Pre had built a reputation as the toughest of racers, a fearless gladiator for whom the mastery of effort came easily. ‘The only good race pace is a suicide pace,’ he said in typical fashion before one contest, ‘and today looks like a good day to die.’

Such swaggering declarations had given some fans the impression that Pre actually enjoyed the suffering. Nothing could have been further from the truth. He faced moments of crisis in almost every race, and on occasion his weaker side held sway. ‘I wasn’t competitive,’ he lamented after a losing effort in Europe. ‘We were neck and neck with 50 yards left and I suddenly thought, ‘Oh, hell, I don’t want this bad enough. I don’t care. Take it.’

Even in training, Pre often struggled to meet the mental challenge of intense exertion. ‘Sometimes I wonder if pushing myself to the limits is really worth the pain I have to pay,’ he confided to his diary following a tough track workout in October 1971. ‘All I can say is it better be.’

That fundamental question—Is it worth it?—recurred again and again in Pre’s speech and writing. It betrayed a natural fear and loathing of the ineluctable unpleasantness of running hard. And yet Pre kept putting himself in situations where this question was bound to come up—because he feared and loathed the thought of being defeated by that unpleasantness even more. Pre’s sister Linda said of him, ‘He feels the same pains and fears that we all do.’ What made him different, she added, was that, ‘despite his pain and fear, he said, in essence, ‘Bring it on!’”