Every runner (and human) I know sets goals, objectives, and all the positive, optimistic, fluffy stuff that we were all taught in elementary school. But, I’ve never met someone who sets their fears.
Which is kinda crazy when you think about what actually decides your marathon. Not the number you wrote in your journal back in week one. It’s the twenty-something minutes somewhere after 32k (20 miles) when your legs slowly get heavier, and your brain starts negotiating with you to “just stop running and quit because this is CRAZY” like a used car salesman from the 1970s.
Enter Fear setting. Systemic contrarian bio-hacker turned mindful tech-bro Buddhist nerd Tim Ferriss made it a thing (his version is about quitting your job and moving to Argentina, not running races, but the fundamentals are the sauce).
It’s super easy – You write down the worst stuff that could happen. Then next to each one, you write what you’d actually do if it did. That’s the whole thing. Sounds like woo-woo journal nonsense right up until your gut goes “YOOO I’m Not Happy!” at 37k (22 miles) and you’re like “Why did I do this?!”
The dope thing about fear setting is that is this is how a lot of smart business owners think. Richard Branson has this reputation as a crazy dude in a hot air balloon, but the actual Virgin playbook is boring risk management. He talks a lot about protecting the downside. When he went from selling music CDs to flying airplanes and started Virgin Atlantic, he leased one 747 off Boeing and negotiated the right to hand it back after twelve months if the whole thing failed. The escape hatch was written before he needed it. (Which is not the same energy you’d expect from a dude who’s crashed his hot air balloon into the ocean… on purpose.)
And it feels kinda backward, but only because we as runners and general humans got it all types of backward. Psychologist Kahneman’s work says we feel losses about twice as hard as we feel wins, so we’re already scared of the downside. We just refuse to look straight at it, and instead we have vague dread with no plan. Which is the same exact thing I get kinda excited about when I prescribe this whole “fear setting” thing to the runners I coach heading into their marathon of the year (looking at you David, Marc, and Maurice).
Real-world example for you to apply this to your own racing
Let’s say that you’re going after a 3:39 marathon. You cramp at 35k (21.7 miles), and you walk a full minute to sort yourself out. You don’t end at 3 hours 50 minutes, but instead you run it in 3 hours 42 minutes. That’s only 3 minutes from your goal time, and you probably thought you were going 10x slower than your original pace.
You could also walk a few aid stations and shuffle a bit between them. Now you’re at 3 hours 44 minutes..
You could even run four minutes, walk one minute for the last 5k (3.1 miles), and you’re still coming through in 3 hours and 45 minutes, which for a lot of people might still get you that highly coveted Boston qualifying number.
The 10 minutes people lose out there isn’t the walking, but it’s the 3 minutes they spend walking plus the seven minutes of pure FREAKING OUT meltdown thinking they did it all wrong since “this wasn’t the plan”.
So write your three things that could go wrong and what you would do RIGHT NOW on your next marathon.
Not vague ones because “Cramping” isn’t a fear, it’s a word. The better thing to write is “Left calf locks up at 34k (21 miles)”. That’s a specific fear. Next, write down the exact move you do: “I’m going to walk 60 seconds, salt tab, restart 20 sec/km (30 sec/mi) slower for 1 km/half mile, then back to the planned pace.”
Then rehearse it two to three times in real long runs. Once in your head while running, then 1-2 times on a proper long training run, at the two-hour mark, stop dead and walk a full 60 seconds like you’re at an aid station. Restart at goal marathon pace. Then do it on another run.
It might feel a bit dumb (because it kinda is a bit dumb), but it also means the first time you ever practice it isn’t with 8k (5 mile) to go on that expensive race you trained for the last 6 months for.
