How not to be your own worst enemy. Have you ever been your own worst enemy? Without knowing you… of course you have. Because you have been involved in all your major decisions. Hi, my name is Heiko and thanks for joining me on Advanced Endurance Coaching, where we are all about improving the mind… especially for those runners’ over 40. It’s here where I want to share you with you my passion for training and developing mental skills, whether you are a runner looking to develop consistency, or you want to go for a new personal record, this is the place for you… and if you are a bit sceptic, hang in there as there might just be that nugget, that piece of information, that clue, that missing link… you have been searching for. Oh who am I ,,,, not only have I been a passionate runner for about 35 years, be it trails, a 10K or a multiday run challenge. Here in my coaching it’s all about using legal methods to improve your mental capacity. Running is a mental sport requiring unbelievable self-discipline, motivation and drive. I remember so often I would not want to attend the training sessions at school. My decision. I would find all types of excuses not to train, but of course I wanted to be part of the team and race…. But the coach had drilled us, Monday’s training wins… and, well if you didn’t train… you won’t be on the track team. Simple. Maybe it’s easier talking about someone else. That friend, family member that’s not taking his running seriously enough. You can see that she has speed, that he has power. That colleague you run with who never joins the training runs, when it says hills or interval training… and is hoping for a Personal Best that you can sense will never come. I went down a YouTube rabbit hole this morning. I had been there before, just stopped short jumping down…. but somehow on that given day, I wasn’t in the mood or it didn’t catch my attention enough. I was searching for a how to video, and you know on the right YouTube suggests or coming up next… there it was….. “Marathon Cheaters”. Which lead to a site…. The site is called marathon investigations, and well best is you take a look at it. It uncovers runner that have cheated on their marathons. Now you might think hmm…. Sound boring, why or who might be interested in that… but remember I said it’s a rabbit hole… and actually the site contains amazing stories. The person behind the site, or who runs the site, usually receives tip offs, and then uses an algorithm, and of course investigates whatever data he can find on the various social media channels. Now it seems absolutely crazy for me to imagine someone would cheat, take a decision, plan to cut a part of the course, run less, cheat. First, I thought it would contain content as in “a shorter distance was run, due to an error”. Like here where, I live close to my home town, there is a famous marathon, which also used to invite some elite runners to participate in the marathon. And one year, there was a mistake by the lead vehicles. Somehow the runners, all came heading back towards the start line which caused massive confusion. But no, that’s not what this is about… the runners’ mentioned on this site, plain well cheated. They had a plan to run less miles and get a medal without putting in the effort. And the marathons they cheated in are pretty big names.