Mastering maranoia 🧠
You've done the work, you're ready to rock. Or are you? A dark force lurks on the periphery ready to rob you of your confidence. Maranoia needs teaching a lesson.
All day long I think of things
But nothing seems to satisfy
Think I'll lose my mind
If I don't find something to pacify
Can you help me
Occupy my brain?
Normally accompanied by thrashing guitar and a rapid-tempo rainstorm of heavy metal hell, these lyrics have absolutely nothing to do with running at all. But they oh-so-easily could.
When Ozzy Osbourne first belted these words out as one part of the Midlands maelstrom that was Black Sabbath, I don’t think running could have been any further from his mind. And yet, as great swathes of my running circle have been taking on major spring races over the last few weeks, I can’t help but feel that this raw blast of noise from 1970 could so easily be about one of running’s darkest and cruellest tricks that has been wreaking havoc with my circle’s collective mental health.
The song is called Paranoid, for those not au fait with angry music from more than half a century ago(!), and the trick I referred to above is a delightful play on the root of that word. It’s the sinking feeling that you are underprepared. That all of your training is not going to be good enough. The punch to the stomach that drags your sunny day into darkness when you feel a niggle in your knee. An overwhelming and oppressing sense of dread that something just has to go wrong in the biggest race of your year.
This phenomenon has a name – maranoia – and it affects all runners in one way or another when a big event that’s been a speck on the horizon for months and months finally kicks the door down and announces its arrival. Even if you have a completely clean bill of health and your fitness has never been better, those nagging doubts somehow start to creep in. Often illogical, sometimes ridiculous, always impactful, maranoia can threaten to derail even the most steady of marathon training locomotives as negative thoughts enter your every waking moment. So, what can we do about it? How do we tackle this devil in the detail of running marathons? As Ozzy puts it…
Can you help me
Occupy my brain?
Mind over matter
The above subhead is a well-used mantra, which can be one of your main weapons to help you overcome the ghoulish suggestions of maranoia. A good mantra can work wonders for your running on race day, but it can also be useful for mental preparation before a race. It actually pays to come up with a separate one to use in those moments when doubt starts to creep in.
Anyone who knows me knows that one of my favourite sayings is that “running is 75% mental, and the rest is in your head,” – nothing brings this into sharper focus than the intrusive thoughts brought on by maranoia. “You’re not going to be able to do this”, “you’re going to fail”, “you’ll crash out at 18 miles” – none of these thoughts are true and who knows what deep, dark part of your brain they are coming from, but that’s the most important thing to remember: they are coming from your brain. This means that you can control them, quash them, and vanquish them with your conscious thought. How could you possibly crash out of a race at 18 miles when you have comfortably run that distance (and more) multiple times over the last few months?
It’s easy to say all this on cold, hard pixels, but putting it into practice is a very different thing, especially if you are an overly anxious person (oh, hey there). I have had some fairly obscene tussles with maranoia myself, one of which I shall share with you in the hope that it makes you feel a little bit better about yourself should it ever start to overwhelm you.
My first bitter taste of maranoia occurred in the early spring of 2016. I was happily churning out miles and ticking off milestones on the road towards my first-ever marathon in London at the end of April. My emotional roller coaster had taken me from shock (at getting a place), to fear of not being able to do it, to excitement about the day itself, to steely determination as I cruised through my training plan with the kind of consistency and discipline I have never again managed to achieve.
I was basking in the glory of a new half marathon PB when I noticed my foot starting to ache a bit. Hey, it was a big effort, it was bound to take a little longer to recover. When that foot pain seemed to linger and even feel a bit worse after a few days, I was worried. The doubts that had been dripping onto my impenetrable shell of marathon training bravado became a tidal wave. This was it. I’d pushed too hard. I’d f***ed it up.
No doctor nor physio could see anything immediately wrong with my foot and there were times when it actually felt fine (usually when I was distracted by work or something similar). Could this be maranoia taking shape in the guise of a phantom injury? I had no way of telling, I’d never been this close to a marathon before. Not just any marathon, but the marathon. I had to go ahead with things.
I have a visceral memory of hobbling around the London Marathon Expo the day before the race holding back the tears. There was no way this was going to happen. My foot was telling me no. But the signs were inconsistent. It wasn’t constant pain, I could bear weight on it in every direction, and I had managed to walk around London with no issues. In all honesty, by this point the negativity I had plunged into stopped me from thinking logically, from utilising the things I now know having done several more marathons. Fast forward 24 hours and I ran (still) the best marathon of my life. My foot didn’t even so much as squeak, I ran strong, and my last three miles were the fastest of the entire race.
As the weeks and months passed afterwards, I started to realise that whatever minor issue had occurred in my foot was obviously not an injury of any kind (how could I have run an entire marathon with no issues if it was?), but perhaps over-exaggeration of one of my worst fears at the time. I concluded that one of the ways in which my version of maranoia manifests itself is through phantom injuries (I’ve had several other instances since that I won’t bore you with). I have learned to get more in tune with my body to know what is serious and what is nonsense created by my brain. I have also learned to let the conscious part of my brain be the one that stays in the driving seat. A splash of cold, hard logic and some positive thoughts and mantras can be enough to slay the wretched beast that is maranoia.
In a wild move, I’m going to flip from referencing 70’s Brummie metal bands to referencing an American sci-fi literary legend:
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer.”
Don’t let fear be in the driving seat, whatever race you’re planning for. Most of the time, it’s just doing it to f**k with you.
A disclaimer: if you suspect you have an injury in the lead-up to a race, it’s always best to seek medical advice. Don’t be a stubborn idiot like me and push on through if you think you have a genuine injury. Also, I’m not a running coach or a medical professional, I’m just writing about my own running experiences for your entertainment (hopefully).
Do you have an interesting story about your own running? Would you like it immortalised by a modest-sized Substack newsletter? I’m the man to help you. I’m always on the lookout for runners of all abilities to tell me their stories about why running is important to them or how it has changed their lives. If that sounds like you, hit me up and let’s chat. I’ve already shared stories of amazing run streaks, people who pace marathons, those who grew their love for running from behind a lens, and more.