The two most difficult factors endurance athletes must overcome are pain and boredom. The best anecdote I’ve found for both are what I call “brain games”. These are going to become critical as we head out of Moscow on our journey toward Mongolia.

Yesterday morning we pulled into our Moscow hotel, having completed our running shift on the outskirts of the enormous Russian capital at 3am. Since this would be one of the last big sites on our route for a few weeks, Brynn and I decided to forgo some of our sleep time to venture into the center of town. It was well worth the trip – seeing red square, the Kremlin, the Bolshoi, and stopping at a fancy grocery store to buy a couple of Nescafe iced coffee drinks and a bar of Lindt Intense Mint dark chocolate (my best morale fuel, providing instantaneous boost to the spirits when consumed, even in the smallest of quantities).

After the quick stop in Moscow, we all started to slowly digest the fact that we would be spending the next 20 days running on the major highway that goes through southern Russian and Siberia. When Brynn and I first looked at the map – I mean really looked at the map – to see where the Blue Planet Run route would take us, we made a startling discovery: Russia is bleeping huge! We are now about to see and feel how big it really is. We are also going to see how good we are at the “brain games”.

Brain games are ways to trick your mind – making the time seem to pass more quickly. Everyone has experienced the phenomena where time seems to pass progressively more slowly as you become less comfortable. The 1-hour root canal certainly seems to take longer than the tennis match. You get the picture. As a run gets longer or less scenic or more painful (because of pushing the pace or injury), it becomes more important to “speed up” the passing of time.

I have some great “tried and true” techniques that I like to use to get through tough runs, but I also like to experiment with new ones. Today, as I pushed my pace, I used the music from my iPod to help with the brain games. I forced myself to wait through 10 songs before looking at my watch. As the songs passed, I focused on their lyrics and rhythms, but I also kept track of the number of the song in the back of my mind. It was a delicate balance – forcing myself not to obsess over the song number, but also making sure that I didn’t suddenly lose track. When I hit the end of the 10th song, I looked at my watch: 38:47 completed. I then started to play with the numbers, calculating the average song length, figuring out how many more songs I’d have to listen to in order to complete my 10.4 mile leg given the average pace I figured I was running, and so on. After distracting myself with the math for almost 2 complete songs (making sure I kept track of the song number in the background of my brain), I decided to let myself look at my watch again after the 16th song, knowing that I would then only be about 1 song away from the end at that point. Overall, this music-math game worked quite well and I was able to push through to one of my fastest leg times.