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New research shows that motivational self-talk can counter brain drain.

Susanna Sullivan is no stranger to mental fatigue. From late August until early June, the 2:24 marathoner teaches pre-algebra to 104 sixth-graders—which, if you’ve ever dealt with middle schoolers, you’ll know can be exhausting.

“If a student asks, ‘Can I go to the office?’ I immediately have to make all these other considerations: Who else is out of the room? Do I trust the kid to go directly to the office? Are they distressed?” says Sullivan. “By the end of the day, my brain is toast.”

While her non-athletic colleagues may be able to go home and recharge after a long day, Sullivan needs to find a way to rally. Her coach, who is the head coach at George Mason University, holds practices in the evenings. Given that Sullivan is expected to make the American marathon team for the World Championships in August, these workouts matter... whether she’s mentally drained or not.

Much of the prevailing advice recommends doing your best to prevent mental fatigue. For runners like Sullivan, however, prevention isn’t a viable option. In that case, science suggests motivational self-talk might be the solution.

The Problem With Mental Fatigue

Anyone who has had a “long day” knows what mental fatigue feels like: you’re drained, you can’t concentrate, your self-regulation is trashed, and you probably have no interest in going for a run, never mind a hard workout. This comes from putting in the effort to pay attention to something while blocking out distractors—which research shows is tiring and kills your ability to self-regulate.

“There are a certain amount of effs you can give in a day. And if you give them all up, by the end of the day you’ve got none left to give,” says Shannon Baird, Ph.D., a certified mental performance consultant who works with the United States Army Special Forces.

Typically, Baird and others recommend finding ways to pause and recharge throughout the day to avoid creating a mental fatigue “deficit.” If you become mentally fatigued, the most common recommendations are to put off a hard workout or adjust your pace or intervals. Sometimes, however—as in Sullivan’s reality—mental fatigue is unavoidable, and you can’t reschedule. If you hit traffic on your way to a race, for instance, you can’t just move the race to a different day, and you probably don’t want to give up on your goals. In that case, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, try some motivational self-talk.

Why Motivation Is Important

According to Gleber Pereira, Ph.D., an associate professor in the physical education department at Universidade Federal do Paraná in Brazil and the lead author on the study, motivation is a key contributor to whether or not you’re willing to continue exercising, particularly at a given intensity.

“We have two reasons to explain how you stop or continue exercise: potential motivation, or your willingness to keep exerting yourself in exercise, and motivational intensity, which is how you perceive effort during the exercise,” he says. According to this model, a runner will slow down or stop when their perceived effort matches their level of willingness.

Mental fatigue has a double-whammy effect when it comes to potential motivation and motivational intensity:

First, researchers theorize that it may decrease your potential motivation before you ever start exercising. 

Second, it makes you perceive the effort as more difficult sooner than if you were mentally fresh.

Therefore, Pereira and his colleagues hypothesized that if they could manipulate athletes’ motivation levels, they could offset these performance-impairing effects of mental fatigue. They decided to test an intervention that is freely available to every athlete: self-talk.

Testing Motivational-Self Talk

The researchers took 12 men who typically exercised three to five days per week and had them perform three identical cycling tests to exhaustion several days apart. In the first two sessions, participants spent 30 minutes prior to the cycling test either relaxing in a comfortable chair (the control condition) or performing a mentally fatiguing activity called the Stroop task. 

During this task, participants identified the display color of words that appeared on a computer screen while ignoring the color that the letters spelled out. (So if the word “red” appeared in green ink, the participant was supposed to press the green button.) The researchers then used a brainwave-measurement technique called electroencephalography and asked participants to self-report their level of fatigue to confirm that, in the mental fatigue condition, they were in fact mentally fatigued.

In the third session, participants were trained how to perform motivational self-talk—essentially redirecting negative thoughts by using short motivational phrases such as “Let’s go!” and “You can do it!” They then performed their final cycling test, which used the same setup as the mental fatigue (Stroop task) condition; this time, however, they were instructed to use motivational self-talk cues whenever they had negative thoughts, felt tired, or otherwise wanted to stop.

It Works!

When the subjects were mentally fatigued, their endurance performance worsened (i.e., they quit sooner) by approximately 19 percent compared to the control condition. However, when the subjects were mentally fatigued and practiced self-talk during exercise, their endurance performance remained similar to the control condition—meaning that despite being mentally fatigued, they were able to maintain their effort for longer.

Pereira and his colleagues speculate that motivational self-talk works in two ways. First, it helps you maintain or increase your potential motivation, i.e., your willingness to exert yourself.

“Mental fatigue may decrease your potential motivation from before you exercise,” says Pereira. “But when you use motivational self-talk, you might increase your willingness to exert.”

Second, it affects your perception of effort. The researchers found that while mental fatigue increased participants’ ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) and feelings of displeasure at the outset of the test (compared to control), the participants reached their peak RPE and feelings of displeasure—which would lead to slowing down and stopping—later in the test when they used motivational self-talk than when they didn’t. 

Put another way, motivational self-talk helped them to delay feelings of maximal exertion (“This is so hard, I can’t keep going”) and displeasure (“I hate this, it isn’t worth it”), which improved their performance.

How to Develop Motivational Self-Talk

According to Baird, motivational self-talk is all about manipulating your internal environment.

“Your body is crying for attention because you’re pushing your body. But you don’t have to listen to the thoughts. You don’t have to board that train.” Instead, she says, “you want to facilitate your brain to be an asset, not a detriment.” One way to do that is through motivational-self-talk.

ID Your Negative Thoughts

To replace debilitating thoughts with ones that will enhance your performance, start by identifying the thoughts that are your most common detractors from performance. Maybe they have to do with physical sensations (“This hurts”), boredom (“When will this be over”), or despondency (“I’m a terrible runner; I’m never going to achieve my goal”). Wherever your brain tends to go, you want to be able to quickly recognize these thoughts when the arise.

Choose Motivational Phrases

Once you are prepared to recognize your negative thoughts, write down several motivational self-talk cues that resonate with you. Some examples from Pereira’s study include “Do your best,” “Go to your maximum,” and “Keep going.” He recommends keeping the sentences short and referring to yourself as “you” rather than “I.”

Sullivan finds her motivation in comparing the task at hand to other hard things. “You only have to run for two more minutes” or “Just make it up this hill” works because, as she says, “That seems so much more manageable than 104 sixth graders. A hill is nothing compared to them.”

Practice

Finally, it’s time to practice using your phrases. “Every time your thought goes to some wish to stop or decrease the pace—that’s when you need to use it,” says Pereira. “If you can do it in practice, you can be ready to do it in a race.” 

Jakob Ingebrigtsen brought his remarkable 2026 season to a fitting close on home soil, winning the men’s street 1500m at the inaugural Runfest Norway in Sandnes on Friday.

Competing in front of an enthusiastic hometown crowd, the Olympic and world champion took control of the race from the early stages and maintained his authority through the finish, stopping the clock at 3:40.7.

Andreas Fjeld Halvorsen followed in second in 3:43.3, while Sigurd Tveit completed the podium in 3:47.8.

The unusual street race added another dimension to the occasion, with 273 runners taking part on the same road and sharing the course with one of Norway’s most accomplished distance runners. For the recreational participants, it offered a rare opportunity to compete alongside Ingebrigtsen in an event that brought elite athletics and mass participation together.

The victory also provided a fitting final chapter to a season that began with significant uncertainty for Ingebrigtsen. After undergoing major Achilles surgery in February, the Norwegian was forced to miss a substantial portion of the summer campaign as he worked his way back to full fitness.

His return, however, quickly developed into another championship-winning chapter. In Birmingham, Ingebrigtsen captured European 5,000m gold before adding another major title at the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest, where he won the 5,000m.

Those performances transformed what could have been a disrupted season into another year defined by championship success and a determined return to the highest level.

Now, with the Sandnes victory added to his 2026 record, Ingebrigtsen closes the year exactly where it began in spirit — overcoming adversity, rebuilding his form and once again competing at the front.

From Achilles surgery in February to major championship victories and finally a 1500m win before his hometown crowd, the Norwegian has given his 2026 season a memorable final scene.

Olympic 100m hurdles champion Masai Russell has announced her engagement to longtime partner Robert “Robbie” Springfield, adding a major personal milestone to the remarkable journey of one of America’s leading track and field stars.

Russell shared the news with her followers, revealing that Springfield had proposed and that she had accepted. Reflecting on their relationship, the Olympic champion described him as her best friend and expressed her excitement about spending the rest of her life with him.

The couple’s relationship dates back to their college years at the University of Kentucky, where both were student-athletes and competed in track and field. Russell established herself as a standout hurdler, while Springfield competed in the long jump, giving them a shared understanding of the demands, sacrifices and pressures that come with pursuing success in athletics.

Springfield has since transitioned from competition into coaching. A former collegiate long jumper, he is now part of the coaching staff at Morehead State University, where he works with the programme’s sprinters and jumpers.

Their relationship has developed alongside Russell’s rise to the top of the sport. The defining moment of her career came at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where she captured gold in the women’s 100m hurdles, securing her place among the sport’s Olympic champions.

Away from competition, Springfield has remained a familiar part of Russell’s journey, sharing in the demanding periods of training and competition that accompanied her pursuit of Olympic success. Their connection has consequently grown from a college athletics relationship into a long-term partnership.

The engagement now marks another significant chapter for Russell, this time away from the track. After reaching the pinnacle of her sporting career in Paris, the 100m hurdles champion is beginning a new phase of her personal life alongside a partner who has been part of her journey since their university days.

From competing on the same collegiate stage to building a future together, Russell and Springfield’s story has evolved alongside two careers shaped by track and field. The Olympic champion will now balance this new personal chapter with her continuing ambitions in athletics

The women’s race at the 2026 TCS Amsterdam Marathon is shaping up to be one of the most competitive editions in recent years, with a deep international field set to take on the fast Dutch course on Sunday, October 18.

At the centre of the contest will be four Ethiopian athletes who have already broken the 2:20 barrier, creating the prospect of a fascinating battle for victory and a possible assault on the course record of 2:16:52.

Defending champion Aynalem Desta will return to Amsterdam looking to retain her title after producing the biggest performance of her career at last year’s 50th edition. Desta won in a personal best of 2:17:37, establishing herself among the leading marathoners in the field and setting the benchmark for this year’s contenders.

Standing in her way will be fellow Ethiopian Meseret Belete Tola, a former Amsterdam champion who knows exactly what it takes to succeed on the course. Belete Tola captured the 2023 edition in 2:18:21, and her return adds another layer of experience and proven quality to an already formidable lineup.

The field also includes Mestawut Fikir Truneh, who arrives with an impressive marathon pedigree. Truneh finished runner-up at the 2024 Berlin Marathon in 2:18:48, demonstrating her ability to compete at the highest level on one of the world's major marathon stages.

Completing the quartet of sub-2:20 Ethiopians is Buze Diriba, whose personal best of 2:19:34 places her firmly among the leading contenders. With four athletes possessing credentials below 2:20, the race is likely to develop into a tightly contested battle from the opening kilometres.

The depth extends well beyond the leading quartet. Desi Jisa Mokonin, representing Bahrain, Yeshi Kalayu Chekole of Ethiopia and Nazret Weldu Gebrehiwet of Eritrea have all established themselves as serious marathon competitors with performances approaching the 2:20 mark.

Another major name to watch is Abeba Aregawi, the former 1500m world champion representing Sweden. Aregawi has successfully transferred her talents to the marathon and made headlines earlier this year by setting a Swedish national record of 2:23:12 on her debut. Her presence adds another intriguing dimension to an already high-quality field.

Amsterdam’s marathon course has consistently provided an opportunity for elite athletes to produce fast times, and this year’s women’s lineup has the depth to turn the race into a genuine test of both championship racing and outright speed.

With four athletes already inside 2:20, two former Amsterdam champions returning to the start line and several other accomplished marathoners ready to challenge them, the battle is expected to remain open deep into the race.

The ultimate target will be the Amsterdam women’s course record of 2:16:52. Whether the leading contenders can threaten that mark remains to be seen, but the quality assembled for October 18 ensures that the record will be firmly in the spotlight when the race reaches its spectacular finish inside the Olympic Stadium.

The 2026 Valencia Half Marathon is shaping up to be a thrilling contest of speed, endurance and tactical brilliance, with some of the world’s finest road runners set to converge in Spain on October 25.

Kenya’s Daniel Ebenyo and Alex Matata will be among the leading contenders, facing a formidable Ethiopian challenge spearheaded by Jemal Yimer and Tadese Worku. The field also features Rodrigue Kwizera, who boasts the fastest personal best among the leading entrants at 58:16.

Ebenyo arrives with a personal best of 59:04, placing him firmly among the athletes capable of sustaining a demanding pace over the 21.1-kilometre distance. Matata, who owns a 59:11 best, adds further Kenyan strength, while Andrea Kiptoo brings another sub-60-minute credential to the race.

Yimer has already established himself as one of the fastest athletes in the field with a 58:33 personal best, while Worku has clocked 58:35. Kenya’s Owen Korir, with a best of 58:58, further underlines the remarkable depth of the men's lineup.

Valencia Half Marathon 2026 Entries

1. Rodrigue Kwizera (Spain) — 58:16

2. Jemal Yimer (Ethiopia) — 58:33

3. Tadese Worku (Ethiopia) — 58:35

4. Owen Korir (Kenya) — 58:58

5. Daniel Ebenyo (Kenya) — 59:04

6. Alex Matata (Kenya) — 59:11

7. Andrea Kiptoo (Kenya) — 59:11

8. Thierry Ndikumwenayo (Spain) — 59:42

9. Said Mechaal (Spain) — 1:00:24

10. Adel Mechaal (Spain) — 1:02:30

Kwizera, who finished second in Valencia last year, leads the field on paper and will be seeking another standout performance on the famously fast Valencia course. With several athletes carrying sub-60-minute credentials, the race has the ingredients for an aggressive battle from the opening kilometres.

Beyond the headline names, the men’s field is deep and highly competitive, bringing together a strong collection of experienced international athletes with proven ability over the half-marathon distance. With so much quality packed into the lineup, the race promises an intriguing battle in which tactics, endurance, positioning and finishing speed could all play a crucial role in determining the eventual champion.

Yet personal bests will count for little once the gun goes off. The title could ultimately be decided by patience, positioning and the ability to respond when the pace begins to rise in the closing stages. Every surge, every tactical move and every second saved could prove decisive on the road to the finish.

With Kenya, Ethiopia and Spain represented by athletes of exceptional quality, Valencia promises a high-octane men's showdown in which the leaders are likely to be separated by only a handful of seconds. The final kilometres could provide the defining moments of a race packed with speed, ambition and anticipation.

On October 25, the question will be simple: who has the strength to command the streets of Valencia and claim the coveted half-marathon crown?

 

April 19, 1982. The Boston Marathon unfolded under unusually warm, sunny conditions, and by the closing stages, the race had become a private battle between two very different American runners: Alberto Salazar, already one of the biggest names in distance running, and Dick Beardsley, the Minnesota runner who had emerged as a serious marathon contender.

For roughly nine miles, from the Newton Hills toward the finish, Beardsley did much of the leading, with Salazar tucked close behind. Neither man could shake the other. They ran deep into Boston locked together, trading surges and refusing to surrender an inch as the crowds along the course grew louder.

Salazar finally made his decisive move with less than a mile remaining. He opened a small gap, but Beardsley refused to disappear. The Minnesota runner chased him through the final streets, closing again as they approached the finish.

Then came the final sprint.

Salazar held his form and reached the finish first in 2:08:52, with Beardsley only two seconds behind in 2:08:54. It was an extraordinary result: both men broke 2:09 in the same Boston Marathon, and both shattered the previous course record.

The race became known as the “Duel in the Sun,” and it remains one of the most celebrated head-to-head battles in Boston Marathon history. Beardsley had not won, but his performance established him as one of America's elite marathoners.

For Salazar, however, victory came at an enormous physical cost. Immediately after crossing the finish line, he collapsed and required emergency treatment, including several litres of intravenous saline. The combination of heat, dehydration and an all-out effort had pushed his body to the limit.

Salazar's marathon career would never again produce quite the same kind of performance. His celebrated 1981 New York City Marathon victory had produced what was initially considered a world record, although the course was later found to be short. His Boston triumph therefore became one of the defining victories of his career.

Beardsley's story would take an even more difficult turn. Injuries disrupted his career, and after returning to the highest level, he suffered a devastating farm accident in 1989. Further accidents, surgeries and severe physical pain followed, eventually leading to a long battle with painkiller addiction.

He eventually overcame that struggle and transformed the darkest chapters of his life into a story of recovery, resilience and redemption.

That is what makes the 1982 Boston Marathon more than a two-second victory.

For one extraordinary afternoon, Salazar and Beardsley produced a marathon duel in which neither man was willing to give way. One crossed the finish line first. The other finished only two seconds behind him.

Two seconds separated them at Boston. Decades later, their legendary duel remains one of the greatest chapters in marathon history.