Mental Fatigue

                I’ve learned that racing makes me tired.  A no-brainer, right?  I always expected that running would make me physically exhausted.  What I didn’t expect is the mental fatigue that comes from endurance racing.  And this is something that’s very difficult to train.  The only way I’ve found to practice overcoming mental fatigue is actually racing. 

                What do I mean by mental fatigue?  Allow me to paint you a picture.  At the beginning of a race, I’m prepared.  I’ve done the training.  If things are going well, nothing hurts and the weather is favorable.  I have a goal time in mind and all of the tools to get me there: a good sense of my marathon pace (without using my Garmin), enough energy gels to get me through the race (Chocolate Outrage Gu, please), and my lucky pace band.  Mentally, I’m fired up.  I’m nervous and confident and over the top with excitement.  It’s this excitement that can lead to the demise of a race.  It’s easy to go out too fast when you’re so excited.   Running too fast at the beginning of a 26 mile race makes for a long and miserable morning.  In any case, my confidence is very high at the beginning of a race.

                As the race goes on, doubts creep into my mind like a forest fire gaining fuel:  Can I really do this?  Four hours is a long time to be running as fast as I can.  My knee hurts, should I walk for a while?   That person is in much better shape than I am.  The more physically expended I am, the worse the mental fatigue gets:  Why do I run these races?  This hurts so much!  I can’t make it one more mile.  When will it end?  I want to drop out.  I’m never going to do this again.  This is the worst idea I’ve ever had.  I can’t do this. 

                The mental battle is always worse than the physical one.  My body is trained to race 26 miles.  I put in the miles and the effort and my body knows what to do.  My mind doesn’t have that luxury.  It learns on the job.  Losing a positive attitude can ruin a race. 

                The other night at the hospital, I noticed my thoughts were taking a lot out of me.  I felt defeated and it reminded me of the dark side of marathon running.  I was exhausted.  On Wednesday morning, Leap Day, my alarm went off at 4:15 a.m.  We had to get mom up to the hospital in West Allis before 7.  It’s about an hour’s drive from my parents’ place.   It was a long day of waiting, worrying, and feeling helpless.   She was brought up to her room at 3:30 and was mostly out of it.  Between her bouts of nausea, she couldn’t keep her eyes open.  We roused her every 10 minutes to remind her to press her morphine button, but she learned how to do that without ever really waking up. 

                I insisted on staying the night and sent my family back home to Kenosha.  The recliner was comfortable enough and I didn’t have trouble dozing off, but the nurses and my pregnancy conspired to keep me awake.  It was during one of my many trips down the hall to the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning that I noticed my mind was swimming in negativity.  It was a perfect storm that left me a victim of my emotions:  extreme tiredness, a very stressful event (the undesired reshaping of my mother’s body), and the sensitivity of pregnancy.  I needed to get out of my thoughts, so I put on a movie.  I watched The Big Year on my computer and finally fell asleep for a good hour or two.  When I woke up, light was creeping in through the blinds.  I felt noticeably better.  Rest is a wonderful healer. 

My family the night before Mom's surgery.  Daughter is holding the remote for the camera.  She took this photo.  

                 I stayed at the hospital throughout the next day, catching a couple more hours sleep in the afternoon.  My brother took the night shift for Mom’s second night.  If I wasn’t pregnant, I would have insisted on staying again, but I was worried about baby not getting enough rest.   I slept the whole way home in the car that night.  Back at my parents’ house, I went through my bedtime routine, washing my face and brushing my teeth while I was half asleep.  I crawled into bed at 10 and finally broke down.  I grieved for my Mom.  Grief seems like the right word . . . Like when someone close to you dies, but you forget first thing in the morning when you wake up.  When you remember, the grief floods in painfully.  Mom looks entirely different now.  She has severe scars where her breasts used to be.  She was well-endowed (naturally, not by choice), so the wounds are significant.  I grieve for her loss. 

I can’t imagine Mom’s mental fatigue.  Right now, she’s struggling to get her health back.  Somewhere along the way, she’ll have to face the mirror.  She hasn’t taken a shower yet.  That will be a big shock for her, I’m sure.  She hasn’t taken in her new body yet the way I did when I helped her out of her hospital gown and into her post-mastectomy camisole.  I expect her emotional recovery will be much more difficult than her physical one.  Yes, she’s having reconstructive surgery, but that’s a process that takes many weeks. 

I have no doubt that Mom is going to get through this and be happier when it’s all over.  (She always wanted to be smaller.)  Much like a marathon – we’re always happiest when it’s all over.