Mara-noia (n. Noun) Mar-uh-noi-uh
– A psychological disorder characterized by delusions of persecution or grandeur surrounding a marathon.
Now I know I’m not the only one that might suffer from this? It normally occurs 8 weeks out from a marathon and can last right up until the start of a race. It can be aggravated by weather, busy work periods, injuries, colds, flu, etc etc
It can be eased through mindfulness, relaxation, critical thinking and reasoning.
So I am 56 days away from the challenge of #project345, and I am starting to develop a case of Mara-noia. It is very mild, and I am able to keep it at bay with the some positive thinking strategies that I wish to share with you… It is very person specific.
- Try to understand the thoughts and place realism around how you manage them
The Maranoia comes from irrational thought process surrounding the actual reality. For example-
Irrational thought – you believe that a common cold will cause you to miss a few training sessions and your fitness will drop and then you won’t be able to complete the marathon and all that hard work that you have put in is wasted…all done for nothing, I won’t even get the t-shirt or the medal.
Reality – the common cold takes 3 – 5 days normally to come and go. This is not sufficient time to reduce your cardiovascular system. Further more resting 3-5 days out of 112 days (16 week plan) is equivalent to missing 3-7% of your overall training load which leaves around 93-97% of your programme to be completed. I know — I never thought of that before…
Suggestive outcome – Think about W.I.N. What’s Important Now. The most important thing is to manage the symptoms get well and return to training when appropriate. Thinking W.I.N can help with lots of different parts of your running, but what’s important now is that pesky cold.
2. Replace Pessimism with Optimism
Example –
Pessimistic thought – That training run was rubbish, three of my km splits were off, they were above my marathon pace, that whole training run was rubbish and I’m going to write off that whole session.
Reality – The average pace was still on track for the marathon pace, the km splits that were off were up hill, I hadn’t fuelled well during the run.
Suggestive Strategy – We as humans are drawn to the negative but rarely focus on the positive. Make a Positive sandwich. Have two positive outcomes for every negative outcome. For the same scenario as above a different way of looking at it is : I felt really comfortable at pace near the end after fueling, I should have fuelled earlier in the run to allow the energy for the hilly part of the run where my km splits increased, but 3 kms out of 21 were slow and “X” were above or equal. Whats Important Now.
3. Sleep Deprivation
Sleep has so many benefits. If you don’t have good sleep hygiene then the quality of your training will be reduced. We feel more sensitive when sleep deprived, so the points 1 and 2 above are really hard to manage because of this sensitivity. Making a small change can really help your mental health, mara-nota and pessimistic thinking. Before a marathon the night before the marathon doesn’t matter as much as the night before the night before. Bank sleep on this night, you will feel the benefits of this. Also during training if Maranoia takes over look at your sleep hygiene, can you help your sensitivity?
4. Stop measuring yourself on someone else training
I am very guilty of this. Even in a recovery run I like comparing where I am with others that I know are running the same distance as myself and comparing.
Example – Two people, different ages, different genders, different goals, training for different marathons at different dates… and the thoughts of “they have ran 20miles today I need to run 20miles today too…and at the same pace at what the other person did because they are aiming for a goal similar to mine”…when you type it, it sounds such a stupid thought process but why is it not a stupid thought process whilst running/reviewing performance… because we like to compare to others. There are too many variables to make it a sensitive or sound objective marker… you wouldn’t use a thermometer to tell you the time just because it has numbers on it.
The important thing is not to measure yourself using someone else’s ruler. The parameters, experience, injury history, training plans are different. Remember what’s important now during YOUR training and how do you compare to where you are meant to be.
The great thing about marathon training is that there is so many people to glean knowledge and helpful advice. When it comes down to the running you have to understand you, another lesson I have learnt through the #project345 process.
Please tag or share with a runner friend who suffers from Mara-noia and remember it’s a manageable process aided by understanding your thoughts.
Thanks for reading
James
