What's the best focus?

There's a famous saying in Ultra running - "the winner is the person who slows down less". This got me thinking, we spend so much time working out how to improve our key metrics so we can get faster and faster, and with more efficiency. But what about if we spent more time focused on simply, not slowing down as much?

I watched a video with the great coach to the elites, and elite runner himself David Roche in the build up to the 2025 Western States 100 miler, and he said "in ultras the strategy always tends to be go out hard and just accept the second half will be slower than the first". Now take this with a pinch of salt because 'going out hard' is subjective, and what he really meant was as hard as you can whilst staying below your LT1.

Negative splitting a route isn't really a common thing in Ultra racing, at least not unless the course profile is so much easier in the second half. This means fatigue is going to hit you at some point and it becomes a fight for who can maintain as much speed as possible when the going gets really tough.

So for us mere mortals where a typical hobby/amateur ultra runner will do drills focussing on max efforts for Vo2 Max gains, Tempo runs to elevate our Lactate Threshold and Endurance runs to increase the pace we can run at whilst prioritising the oxidate system. Maybe adding some focus on the strength of our mind could pay dividends.

It's probable most of us spend less time on those things that cause us to slow down. I don't mean being tired, that's a given, but speaking for myself here and select athletes I've discussed this with recently, it's typically general pain, muscle fatigue, lack of desire, blisters, gastro intestinal stresses etc that really cause us to slow down and not so much our energy levels. In simple terms, many of us slow down because the feeling of discomfort overrides the desire to keep pushing.

Now I'm not suggesting we should all go out for a run straight after eating a huge meal, or stick rocks in our shoes and nettles down our shorts etc to replicate feeling sick, having blisters and the dreaded chubb rub. But working on the mental side of running long distances to make peace with the suffering or pain cave as the great Courtney Dauwalter calls it. To accept it for what it is but not to let it dictate our running might be time well spent, to strengthen our mind to bring those times down - if times matter!! I'm well aware 'time' is somewhat arbitrary in Ultra running for the most part vs placement in the field.

And maybe in a race down the line when that feeling of "I just can't be arsed to run anymore" kicks in, you'll be able to summon the will to overpower that and ultimately 'slow down less' than the person ahead of you.

I'll admit to being a bit of a hypocrite here as two areas I'm also qualified in are Meditation and Pranayama (breath control). Both of which are excellent tools to centre the mind and detach yourself from things such as those discussed above. Yet I don't actually focus on them as part my own training, so I reckon I'm going to change that moving forwards because I'm yet to finish an Ultra where at some point in the race I haven't lost my shit and let that attitude slow me down. I'm sure there's many other tools out there we can use and skills we can develop too.

Anyway ramble over, just thought it was an interesting angle.