Tl;dr - have some faith in yourself
There is a certain psychology in running, for me. It probably affects most runnists, but I wouldn’t want to speak for us all, as I am certainly no expert (can you IMAGINE? 😂)
If I know I’m doing a 5k, by 4k my little fat legs are giving me the side eye 👀 and by 4.95k my lungs are wheezing like broken bagpipes. The moment the Garmin beeps the full 5, it’s a hard stop, tools are downed, and that’s all folks.
It’s the same with any distance, really. I have a distance in my head, usually negotiated via IRW. It’s a bit like bartering, she goes in at eleventy bazillion km at speeds that would make Eliud Kipchoge pause; I respond with one shiny km at the same speed my Nan plays golf and walks the course, and we meet somewhere in the middle.
I then mentally plug in the distance, and off we trot.
Another psychology-related thing I have noticed, is that a lot of us runnists use running to keep us sane. Be it head squirrels, anxiety, depression, associated mental health problems, running seems to give us the essential coping mechanisms, helping us to put that foot forward, one step at a time, and just keep the fuck going.
For me, personally, a lot of it is poor self esteem. I have an internal voice, not dissimilar to an army sergeant major, designed to break you. I am constantly internally told I am not good enough, I am a crappy mother, I am a risible friend, I am a useless employee, I am not good enough at anything. And it is easy to get sucked into this mindset.
But running, being a runnist, and making so many new friends through this, has helped me flip the internal voices the bird, padlock them in a box, row the padlock key to the middle of the ocean and drop that SOB into the murky depths. Because it has given me a confidence in myself.
One has to look internally for things to be proud of, to shut the internal critics out. And so, at the beginning of May, not having really run any distance to speak of since the Vitality Big Half on 1st March, I ran a solo half marathon. And I don’t mind telling you I was not just a tiny bit proud of myself. It was only my 3rd half. It was faster than my first but slower than my most recent. But as I said, considering I hadn’t run any significant distance just prior to doing it, the fact I managed it meant so much to me. I mean, I had a bit of a pep talk and various inner wankers were prodded, but I mentally plugged in 13.1 miles. And 13.1 miles I achieved.
Tl;dr have confidence in yourself, fellow runnists. If I can do it, you bloody well can