How to Not Quit an Ultramarathon: 5 Mental Tactics from a Western States Finish (2026)

Every ultrarunner hits the moment. Somewhere past the point where the day stopped being fun, your brain starts building a very reasonable case for why you should walk it in, sit down, or drop. The runners who finish are not the ones who never hear that voice. They are the ones who have a plan for it.

Joe Corcione has finished a lot of hard races, including a Western States 100 he calls the best of his life even though it was not his fastest. On a recent episode of the For The Long Run podcast, he broke down the mental tactics he actually used at mile 90, when everything hurt. Here are the five that travel best from his race to yours.

The first tactic is understanding what you are up against. When the pain gets loud, your brain does not hand you a weak excuse. It hands you a brilliant one.

As Joe describes it, your brain makes the most compelling case it can for slowing down. You have ten miles left, you might be doing real damage, so conserving now protects the finish. That argument is logical, it is caring, and it wants to spare you pain. It is the kind of lawyer you would want defending you.

The move is not to win the argument. It is to notice that it is an argument. The voice telling you to stop is not reporting a fact about your capacity. It is making a case, and you get to decide whether to take the bait. Relabeling the thought, that is my inner lawyer and not the truth, is often enough to loosen its grip.

This is the most practical thing in the episode, and it works in a road marathon just as well as a 100-miler.

When your brain wants to walk, do not ask it to run the rest of the race. It will refuse, and it will be right to, because ten more miles sounds insane. Instead, shrink the ask down to something almost silly. Run to that tree. Just the tree. Your brain will entertain a tree.

Then two things happen. You are running again, and you usually discover that running hurts about as much as walking did, so you may as well hold the pace and cover ground faster. If the tree still feels like too much, pick a closer target. A mailbox, a rock, a single aid station. You turn an impossible distance into a chain of things you can actually say yes to.

Here is the uncomfortable part. Giving your true best effort means accepting that you might not make it.

Joe is honest that draining the tank is a gamble. Push the pace and you might blow up early and pay for it. But running so conservatively that you avoid all risk quietly guarantees you never find your ceiling. The fastest runners commit to a pace they are not even sure they can hold. There is no version of a real personal best that feels safe while you are running it.

His deciding question at Western States was about regret. Would he be more upset conserving just to collect the finish, or more upset knowing he never took a real shot at a race he had chased for years? He decided he would rather aim at a huge goal and fall short than sit on the sidelines and wonder. That framing turns a scary risk into an easy choice.

One important caveat. Taking a competitive risk is not the same as ignoring a medical emergency. At mile 90 Joe was in enough pain that he wondered whether he was in rhabdo, and he is the first to say he does not recommend running through it. Severe muscle pain paired with very dark urine can signal rhabdomyolysis, which is a genuine medical issue. Push through discomfort and doubt. Do not push through red flags that belong in a medical tent.

Willpower runs out. A reason does not.

When Joe hit his low point at Michigan Bluff, what turned him around on the climb toward Forest Hill was not gritting his teeth harder. It was a question: what is the example I want to set? His whole reason for running is to be proof for someone else, the runner chasing a first 100 or coming back from a DNF, that the hard thing is possible. Framed that way, quitting was not only his to give up. He asked the question, and his answer changed his race.

You do not need a podcast or a roster of athletes for this to work. Your example can be for your kids, your partner, a friend who is struggling, or the earlier version of you who could not do this yet. Point the effort at something bigger than your own comfort and it gets easier to give.

The last tactic reframes what not quitting even means, and it is the one most runners get wrong.

Joe draws a sharp line between moving forward and draining the tank. In his first 100-miler he walked most of the final 20 miles. He kept going and he crossed the line, but with two miles to go he was suddenly clicking off nine-minute miles, which meant the gear had been there the whole time. He finished without giving everything.

So the real goal is not just to reach the arch. It is to arrive genuinely empty. That is why Joe grades a race not by the clock but by two questions: did you love the process that got you here, and did you leave everything on the course? By that scorecard his 20:50 at Western States, well off his sub-18 goal at one of the coldest editions on record, still counts as the best race of his life. He was hobbling onto the track because there was nothing left to give, and that was the whole point.

For The Long Run is a podcast hosted by Jon Levitt about why we run and how the lessons of endurance carry into the rest of life. Since 2019 the show has explored the idea that this is running, but it is also not really about running. Joe Corcione hosts the Everyday Ultra podcast and coaches ultrarunners through Everyday Ultra.