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The hardest part of endurance training isn't the physical work, it's the mental marathon

21 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment of Andy Neary’s discussion on endurance training, he and a fellow athlete (Speaker B) explore the mental challenges that often eclipse the physical demands of an Ironman. Andy introduces the idea of a "fourth sport"—the internal dialogue and self‑questioning that occurs throughout the race. Speaker B shares personal anecdotes about cold‑weather weekend long runs in Iowa, the heightened injury risk (including a foot injury) from training below 20 °F, and the psychological strain of a massive training volume—880 miles of running for a 40‑mile race. Both emphasize that the mental marathon, including motivation, self‑doubt, and strategic decisions about training conditions, is the hardest part of endurance preparation.

When I used to do Ironman, people would always think of the physical swim, bike, run, but I'm like, there's a 4th sport no one talks about. And that's what you're saying to yourself throughout the race.
Yeah. Even part of the mental part was, you know, training even pre-race and just doing some of those long runs on Saturday. The amount of times that we had stuff on the weekend that you had to get up a little extra early and it was cold because that was one thing I probably won't do again is do a spring run because I had to train throughout Iowa. January, February. That was another thing that I learned. Like, I'm not running outside anywhere below 20 degrees. Because it was cold, increased opportunity for injuries, which I dealt with a foot injury. But yeah, just that mental part, because even in the Rana app, like, it was like, all right, here's your training program. You're gonna run 880 miles leading up to your race. I'm like, okay, that's a little off because I'm gonna run 880 miles just for a 40-mile race.
Like, why am I doing this?