Mindset to go after adventures
Mandy Miller has developed a strong ultramarathon mindset in her races and adventures from all around the world.
She played all the sports she could when in high school.She says that even though she was very athletic she was a bit of a chubby kid. And after college, while she was in law school, it seemed like she was gaining more weight from sitting and studying. So she went on what she describes as an “ultra” diet and lost 60 pounds in a mere 11 weeks.
After she lost so much weight she started running. She bought a pair of pink Saucony running shoes, that was in 1984 in Chicago and the next year she ran her first marathon. The marathon became her sport of choice until she got burned out on it and then switched to IronMan triathlons.
Running in the Sahara desert
She eventually lost interest in the triathlon and so she signed up for her first ultramarathon, Marathon de Sables, where she would spend 7 days in the Sahara desert in 2000.
In this race, they give you campsites and set up tents, but you have to carry all your food for 7 days. There are mandatory kit requirements from the race, but runners often bring more than they need. She finds it hilarious that on the second day of these races, you see people throwing things out of their backpacks that they don’t need. And then there are other races like the Desert Rats she did last year which is in Utah. They provide wonderful food, and you can bring your own tent or you can sleep in their tents. so you only need a day pack, you don’t need to carry all your stuff.
Mandy is drawn to the challenge of planning and strategizing for stage racing. The desert heat requires being acclimated or try to get acclimated to the heat. The game is to keep your body together and your feet in one piece the whole time, and there’s a lot of trial and error involved. New runners tend to start too fast in the first couple of stages and then they’re toast for the rest of the week. You also have to really watch what you eat because you have to eat as much as you can. You’re going to lose weight no matter what.
The mental game, according to Mandy, is to stay in the moment and not be thinking ahead, not letting the magnitude of the distance, the terrain of the pain overwhelm you. And that’s even more important in a stage race, because once your mind gets discouraged, it’s very hard to keep going.
Once she got caught in a sandstorm on the long stage of a race and got lost. She and several others got lost in the desert because someone had stolen a trail marker flag and there were 4 or 5 of them that were wandering around lost in the night. She was with 2 English guys they were laughing their heads off because they were so lost. Laughing was their way to not be so afraid. She says she has a penchant for getting lost, even getting lost on a one mile looped course because she was having a good time and took a wrong turn.
Self-supported ultramarathon in the Yukon winter
She tried to do her first 100 and failed. That was the Rocky Raccoon, and she thinks it was probably in 2012 and she had no idea what she was doing. The first 100 she finished was the Yukon 100. This is a self-supported trek through the Yukon in 50 below (fahrenheit) temperature, pulling all your equipment in a sled. A woman she met in one of her stage races was an experienced runner. They decided to do a 100 miler together, but to do something different.So running in the Yukon in January was what they decided to do.
Mandy says the hardest thing about winter racing is keeping the water from freezing. The water froze and they had nothing to drink except the snow they ate. Since then she learned a trick about sprinkling vegetable oil in the bottles and they open a lot easier in the in the freezing cold. For food, they needed to carry fatty things because otherwise they freeze and can even break teeth. So she makes brownies with protein and puts a lot of butter in them so they stay soft or she had Milky ways because they have a lot of Caramel in them and that soft nougat. She would just put them in her pockets and hold them close to her body and then pull them out one by one.
In the race they can have their own team and she prefers to have her own so she has a team that I have used more than once and they are a lot of fun and it’s a group of girls that she is friends with that she met running in different camps.
Mandy tells us that it has happened to her that her mind thinks it’s only 5 hours away, which is the most ridiculous thought there is, and then you think that was just a while ago, but a while ago was 3 hours ago, so it seems like time doesn’t really pass. He also says that he is very clumsy and that he concentrates a lot on not falling and that’s one of the reasons he doesn’t talk and it’s because he really has to concentrate and he doesn’t lift his feet very far off the ground.
Mindset for dealing with pain and discomfort
Mandy and I met at the end of her Javelina 100K run. I ran with her for the last few miles. I was running the Javelina Jackass, a 20 mile loop. During our conversation she never mentioned that she had broken her ribs early in the race. She caught a rock on the trail and fell hard, almost landing on a cactus. She said it was quite painful, but she was focused on doing her job, keeping her body, keeping her focus, andher concentration. She says she keeps doing all the things that you need to do to be able to finish and then she takes a certain amount of pleasure in the pain, which can be a strange thing, but she’s able to do that to embrace the hard times. She doesn’t ignore it, she doesn’t try to block it out, she doesn’t try to resist it, but she doesn’t focus on it either, so she winks at it.
She has done a lot of research to get there. She has a Phd. in psychology and explains that using cognitive dissonance is a way to manage pain. If you do something that is dissonant with what your body feels, you can change your mind, you can change your thoughts and perception of pain.
As for plans for future adventures, she would like to run the Comrades Marathon in South Africa again. She’s in the lottery for Leadville again. Also the Fire and Ice stage race in Iceland.
She wants to try to do the Camino de Santiago in Spain, but says it is a big time commitment and would need some planning. Also as she hasn’t done any races in Scotland. She would like to do the West Highland Trail or the Scottish Ultra or also Cape Wrath, which is a much longer stage race, she thinks it’s 225 miles or so, over quite rocky technical terrain in the north of Scotland.
Facebook: Mandy Miller
Book: States of Grace
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