For them, it's about mind and body

A six-mile run around campus is nothing more than an invigorating stroll through the park for the members of the IU men's cross country team.\nMany people jog daily to stay in shape or to feel good, but inevitably, motivation wanes as fatigue sets in. This is where headphones and loud, fast-paced music come in. \nHowever, those distractions are what distinguish driven runners from the rest of the pack.\n"When you're racing, all you're thinking about is racing," assistant coach Stephen Haas said. "In cross country, there's a point where it's going to start to hurt and you know it's never going to feel any better. But as far as training, you're going to be strong enough that even though you're body is saying no, you know you can do more."\nRunning is one of those sports that does not merely require dedication; it demands it.\nJordan Kyle, a freshman on the IU men's cross country team, said he believes real motivation comes from refusing to accept self-doubt.\n"I've often heard people say cross country is a 70 percent commitment and 30 percent how you can play mental games in your head," he said. "It's something where you have to be so positive that there's no doubt in your mind you can run how fast or how well you want to run. It's got to be not even a thought process."\nHow do they do it? In a sport where mind is more dominant than matter, these athletes have found the necessary balance.\n"You have to train your mind as well as your legs to be able to handle it," sophomore Mark Fruin said. "In running, you have to be competitive to stick with it throughout the times."\nThough Haas, Fruin and Kyle said they have never run songs through their heads during a race, they said mental preparation and self-assuredness play a big role in their ability to compete well at such a high level of performance.\nKyle said the ability to turn off your brain is key for runners.\n"People say, 'Well, how do you do that?' But we run so many miles that you have to learn how to turn your thought process off," Kyle said. "If you're running a 10K race, which could take 35 minutes, you can't think because if you think that whole time, you're going to spend a lot of mental energy and you won't be able to run as well."\nThe mind-set of a collegiate runner is all about flushing out the extraneous details and getting down to what is most important: making all of the strenuous training pay off, right now.\nDaily practices and intense training has made them faster and tougher.\nHaas said the conditioning side is a lot more important than actually competing. If you know you have confidence in your training, he said, you do not have to back off and you can still push through.\nNot only are these guys extremely competitive, but their self-motivation keeps them going when both their body and brain says to stop and take a break.\n"It's different from every other sport in that you have to believe in yourself more than how fit or how in shape you actually think you are," Kyle said. "When I run a race and I'm completely exhausted ... I think of all the training I've done. You don't want to let the team down -- that's a piece of motivation that kind of plays in my mind"