A couple of my former adventure racing teammates and I have had an interesting discussion going, sparked by an article written by Matt Fitzgerald on the research of Samuele Marcora. In short, Marcora believes (and has done interesting research that supports his hypothesis) that we make a conscious choice to quit based on our perception of effort. He argues that we rarely reach physical exhaustion, but rather that we mentally give up. It is a fascinating – and, of course, controversial position – but it is definitely worth a read: www.mattfitzgerald.org/html/PDFs/YouAreAQuitter.pdf

I should preface the rest of this post by saying that I am not a researcher and I do not support (because I do not really know) one hypothesis over another. But it fascinates me, and I find it a compelling argument that our mind is a huge part of our performance, within the realm of our physical abilities. Think about it a little as you read the article. As my buddies and I have bounced this topic back and forth, several interesting thoughts have come up:

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