Winter is good for the mental game

Winter is a time for building strength, endurance and determination. 

It’s also the best season for mental toughness. 

I hate summer, but even I’ll admit that it doesn’t take much mental toughness to get out the door when it’s 75-80 degrees and sunny. Winter, though, is icy, freezing cold and snowy. The sky is usually gray where many of you live. It’s dark for much of our waking hours. Everything looks dead. 

Colorado’s had no winter this year, but I know many of you have struggled with its usual mix of bitter cold, ice and snow. And so here’s the hard truth about winter: It’s good for you. 

Mental toughness isn’t something that comes naturally to us. The only way we can get it is by putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations and learning how to deal with them. But that is increasingly harder in our society, unless you make frequent visits to your in-laws. 

We live in a society that values comfort over anything else. We complain if a room is off by a couple degrees. We have cars with heated seats. If we are uncomfortable in any way, there’s a solution at our fingertips, whether that’s hunger, the temperature, a hard chair, boredom or thirst. We have to not only seek out discomfort by heading out the door for a run, we have to reject all the comfy things tempting us along the way. 

Even our own brain works against us. Our brain wants us to survive, and sitting on the couch eating peanut butter out of the jar ensures our survival. When we put ourselves in uncomfortable situations, all our brain wants to do is tell us to stop. It’s such a jerk.

Winter, though, will test us immediately, from stepping into a puddle of icy water, to brushing off our car to the way our face hurts when the icy wind rakes across it. Even a few miles in that crap is worth double in the spring. Winter forces us to be tough. 

Mental toughness is how we finish long races. There will be times when you’re uncomfortable in an ultra, and as the miles go on, you’ll be increasingly uncomfortable until coziness is a distant memory. The mental toughness you build now by facing winter’s cruelty is what will get us to the end.