Using the body check for long runs

I hit a new milestone this weekend. A big one. I realised it when I said to my husband on Sunday "Can you watch the baby I want to map out a 5 miler". Ha! A 5 miler! Me? Only 8 months ago I couldn't run more than 3 or 4 minutes at a time without panting for breath or worrying about peeing myself (god bless pelvic floor exercises post baby) and now I'm casually throwing the term 5 miler around like it's a trip round Tescos. For me - that is big and something I am definitely very proud of. What's even better is that I really enjoyed my 5 milers and I'm really looking forward to my second 10k race, The London Cancer Research Winter Run Series, this weekend.

One of the things that I think has really helped me reach this mile stone is the realisation that running is about 40% physical and 60% mental. For me this means employing a lot of mind tricks when I run. These have been written about lots of times before so I won't drone on but of course things like positive mantras (my favourite is 'feet fast, legs strong, I can do this all day long!') and also focusing at something in the distance, particularly when running uphill.

One of my new favorite mind tricks though is one I made up and would love to share with you. I call it my body check. When I start feeling like it's getting tough I do a mental scan of my body, covering any niggles and the main running areas and I give them a score out of 10 as to how they are coping. 1 being fantastic and 10 being worst pain ever.

So on Sunday in my head it sounded a little like this:

Left ankle (a trouble spot for me) - 6

Knees - about a 4

Breathing - 6.5

Temperature - 5

Legs as a whole - 6

I do this until I have covered all my niggly areas and by the time I'm done I normally come to the conclusion that actually I can work a lot harder. If I do pinpoint an area and rate it as a 8 or above however I try to modify what I'm doing, perhaps by slowing my pace, or stopping briefly to stretch or indeed, accepting that actually I shouldn't be running on a joint I score as a 10 on the pain threshold.
Pretty much every time I do this I find it takes just enough time that I'm normally peaking again.

Would  love to know if this works for anyone else - and also hear about any interesting time killing tips that get you through those long runs.

Happy running! :)