The mental tricks used to break the 2-hour marathon

0:02On the 26th of April, 2026, 59 ,830 runners took on the London Marathon.

0:21The conditions were perfect. And yes, what a beautiful day to run fast. It is a perfect day. Amongst the elite were some of the fastest runners on the planet. The track medallist Yomif Kajelce makes a highly anticipated marathon debut this morning. It's been indicated that the Ethiopian is going to go with the front pack. Sawe looking to cement himself at the top of the marathon rankings. And several hours behind them was me running my first ever London marathon.

0:58And around the time that video was taken of me, something incredible was happening 13 miles up the road. Come on Sebastian, you can get this. History in the making, under two hours, nobody's ever done this. They said it couldn't be done. Sebastian Stalway is going to break the two hour mark. He's going to win the London Marathon in incredible style. An historic performance, 159.30. Absolutely incredible. I've never seen anything like that. What a finish. Now, I want to be clear that this achievement is almost entirely down to the physical strength of Sebastian Salway. But I believe that he also used a few nudges, a few mental hacks to get one or maybe 2 % faster.

1:49Today on Nudge, I look at the psychological tricks Sawei used to break the world record, and I share a few of the tips I used to beat my PB. All of that coming up in today's episode of Nudge.

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2:52In Endure, Alex breaks down the hundreds of studies that have been conducted over the past century into long distance performance. Each of these studies aim to unpack what makes people endure for longer. I loved reading this book. I found it incredibly helpful when training. A number of the tips Hutchinson makes in the book I actually used for my training, and look, it's just a sample size of one, but I really think those tips work. I'd been running for eight years, and the London Marathon was probably my most enjoyable and probably my best race, and I think part of that was down to the tips in this book.

3:28So today I want to cover some of the insights in Alex's book. Each of these insights involves not our physicality, but our mentality. Each suggests that our brain can unlock extra energy or a greater reserve if we follow some potentially unconventional strategies. So I'll start with a specific moment in the London Marathon. It is Sebastian Sawe, just six and a half minutes before finishing the race, doing something which many onlookers thought was a bit odd.

4:14Now it is odd to take a drink six minutes before finishing a race because there is no chance that that drink could be absorbed by the body. fluid and carbohydrates have to empty into the stomach pass into the small intestine and cross into the bloodstream before they can help and meaningful absorption of glucose as usable fuel generally takes between 15 and 30 minutes so you won't rehydrate and you won't top up your energy stores if you have a drink within the final six minutes there are no physiological benefits but sarway perhaps knew about the psychological benefits hutchinson mentions a couple of studies that highlight these psychological benefits in his book.

4:55Firstly, there's this amazing 2004 study from the University of Birmingham that tested the benefits of swishing a carbohydrate drink around your mouth, but not even swallowing it, spitting it out right after you swished it around your mouth. In the study, nine endurance cyclists, so seven men and two women, rode on a fixed bike for a time trial that lasted an hour. They rode as fast as they could on two occasions. On one occasion, They rinsed a carbohydrate drink around their mouth for five seconds every 10 minutes of the trial, and then they spat it out. They didn't swallow anything. On the other occasion, they just rinsed plain water.

5:33Again, they didn't drink the plain water, they spat it out as well. And what they found was that when you swish carbohydrates around your mouth, it produces a faster time. The study's author, Carter, concludes that the improvement came from an increase in central drive or motivation rather than any energy the body actually receives. It doesn't make you physically stronger, but it provides a psychological boost. In 2009, to prove that this wasn't the placebo effect, Chambers, Bridge and Jones repeated the study in an MRI machine. When swishing the carb drink in the mouth, the motivation and reward regions of the brain lights up.

6:09This explains why Sawe swished a carb drink around his mouth six minutes before finishing. It didn't help his body, but it helped his brain. Now let's move on to tip number two, something that I noticed an awful lot while running the marathon. It was, of course, the crowd.

6:31That was my dad cheering me on, but of course he wasn't the only one cheering. It's just an incredibly well-supported marathon. One of the questions I get asked a lot, I compete in the London 2012 Paralympics, and people say, what was it like with 80 ,000 people cheering for you? Honestly, the London Marathon recreated that experience. Sawe, after the race, spoke about how great the crowds were. I think the crowd cheering for us, you feel strong when even you are in a battle of getting tired. The crowd's calling my name. Sawe is feeling strong and also feeling good. In Endure, Alex talks about how seeing a crowd cheering you on can increase your effort, even if you're not even consciously registering the crowd.

7:17In this 2014 study, 13 volunteers pedalled on a stationary bike at a fixed workload for as long as they could hold. The twist was hidden in the screen in front of them. At intervals, it flashed images of either happy or sad faces for just 16 milliseconds each. That is roughly 10 to 20 times shorter than a blink, well below the threshold of conscious awareness. The result was really interesting. Riders last significantly longer when they were primed with happy faces about 178 seconds longer on average which works out to roughly a 12 improvement and critically their rating of their perceived exertion was lower when they saw the happy faces than when they saw the sad faces so they weren't just gritting through more discomfort the same physical work genuinely felt easier seeing happy faces in the crowd seeing people cheer you on might be doing the same thing it might be subconsciously giving you that little boost.

8:13I think the crowd really may have helped Sawe beat the record. And the crowd also did something to help me in particular. As I'd run past people, I'd hear the crowd noise swell. But in particular, I'd hear the crowd shouting words of encouragement, words like, you're looking strong, great running. People held up signs saying, you make this look easy. That felt nice to hear and read at the time. But Hutchinson's book suggests that that might have actually helped me run faster. In 2012, two groups of experienced runners ran on a treadmill at 75 % of their VO2 max for 10 minutes. That's really quite hard.

8:48One group got positive feedback every two minutes about how efficient their form looked. So people just basically telling them, you're running really well, your form looks fantastic. But this feedback was fabricated. It was not based on any real measurement. They might have been running awfully, they were still going to get told that their form looked great. The control group, they were told nothing, so they weren't told their form looked good or bad. What they found was that the oxygen consumption of those who were given positive feedback dropped progressively in that group, so it got easier, while those in the control group, their oxygen consumption stayed flat.

9:22Being told that they looked more efficient made the athletes genuinely more efficient, burning measurably less energy at the same pace with no change to training or form so perhaps all that positive feedback helped me as well now it's one thing to be told you look relaxed but it's another to actually look relaxed and Sawe well he did look very relaxed he looks really really relaxed they all look really relaxed and it's hard to read at this stage we still need to get another 20-25 minutes down the road before we really start to see where they're at that's a clip from well after the halfway point as well and just two kilometres from the finish, Sawe essentially looked the same.

10:01Our challenging, the fastest time ever. How does he look this relaxed? Both of them? Well, more Sawe, but they both, it's incredible. It's something Alex Hutchinson noticed too. Here he is talking about Sawe on the Marathon Handbook podcast. I noticed about Sawe, it looked like he was barely conscious. You know, he was a zombie, just kind of staring. He was very serene. Staring at the back of the guy in front of him. Even Sawe himself said that he felt relaxed. We're feeling so relaxed. And there genuinely might be some benefit to looking relaxed. Studies in 2014 measured how frowning and clenching your jaw can make endurance exercise harder.

10:43Here, 33 volunteers did continuous incremental cycling all the way to exhaustion. So cycling on a bike and going faster and faster until you are exhausted. throughout the study the researchers recorded emg from face muscles simultaneously they also tracked heart rate and the riders perceived exertion the result was essentially that as the cycling got harder activity in both facial muscles climbed and so did perceived effort and heart rate hutchinson suggests that by relaxing your face even if the effort is hard it might make that effort seem easier. He cites Strack's 1988 study which found that people rated cartoons funnier when they were forced to smile by sticking a pen between their teeth.

11:27So he basically says that if you relax or smile it should nudge that perceived effort down which is why coaches say to relax your face and perhaps that's why Sawe looks so relaxed and perhaps that look helped him break sub two. All right let's move on to another tip. See after the race Sawe said something really interesting. The first man to run a marathon in under two hours. How are you feeling right now? I'm so happy today in London running a world record. I'm so excited. I didn't believe but I was well prepared and the training I've done the results have come now. He says he didn't believe he could do it before the race.

12:18He said something similar in a follow-up interview as well. We were at 35 kilometres distance. That's where I realised the race was so fast. And we kept pushing. And finally, I was not thinking of running as up to until I reached the finishing line. and that's why I saw under sub 2. And I was happy and I tried to push and finally I ran a world record under sub 2. It was only at 35k, just 7km from the end, that Sawe started to push. But he even says that he wasn't thinking about breaking sub 2 until he could see the finish line. And that really might have helped him. There's evidence to say that if you deceive yourself about how much more you have to go, how much more you have to give, well that can help you go faster by refusing to think about the sub two target until he got to the finish line saway might have been deceiving himself in a in a similar way so here's the study in 2018 11 athletes each rode three 5k time trials they chased a dynamic on-screen avatar that moved at what they believed was their own baseline pace so they're looking at the screen on the screen has an avatar of them and it supposedly shows how they performed the last time they did the time trial in reality the avatar was secretly set to one of three levels one group was the honest control group that was set to 100 and there was another group which showed the avatar going slightly faster 102 so two percent faster than the norm and it turns out when you see an avatar that you believe is you going at your pace going two percent faster that you actually cycle faster as well chasing the slightly faster avatar made riders raise their power output and muscle activation and genuinely beat their baseline genuinely beat their pb this deception worked cyclists cycle faster if they think they're chasing their previous best time and i think saway benefited from something similar he didn't think about breaking sub two he just thought about getting his best time and this deception probably helped him he didn't allow himself to get overwhelmed by the the greatness of the achievement because he didn't think about it at all.

14:33Okay, now that is all the tricks that I think I saw Saway use during the Sub 2 marathon. After the break, we'll cover four more tips. These weren't used by Saway as far as I know, but they could be used by you. One of the best things I've done as a business owner is to build a proper network. It takes time, but it's worth it because it can be a bit lonely working for yourself. Something that really helped me build my network was joining the Federation of small businesses. They run hundreds of events across the UK, including networking meetups, expert-led workshops, and online webinars that can be watched live or on demand.

15:10Many are free and open to everyone, not just members, and there's likely something happening near you. Plus, they invited me to speak at one of their events about behavioural science and marketing, so it must be good, right? So if you're interested, visit get.fsb.org forward slash nudge to sign up for a membership, and use code nudge to get 10 % off your membership. The Ross Simmons Show is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. I've been following Ross for a while. His podcast is great. And an episode I'd highly recommend is called Mastering Time, Prioritization Over Productivity.

15:44He gives some really well thought out tips on how to prioritize your time, including something I care a lot about, which is how a small percentage of your efforts can drive the majority of your results. So go and listen to The Ross Simmons Show wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, welcome back. You're listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. Now, do you have a lucky charm or a superstition? My favourite superstition from a sports star was the old England striker, Gary Lineker. His superstition was that he never took a shot during the pre-match warm-up as he wanted to save all his goals for the match.

16:20So he didn't bother warming up doing any shooting because he thought, well, if I score in the warm-up, I won't score in the real thing. Great superstition, but lucky charms and superstitions, they might actually be quite important. In 2010, researcher Damish gathered 28 students and had them take 10 golf putts from about a metre away from the hole. As the experimenter handed over the ball to the participants, half were told that the ball was lucky. They were told that everybody who's been using this ball up until now has been putting really well. The other half, I should say, weren't told this at all.

16:53The control group were just handed the ball. The lucky ball group sank markedly more putts than the control group. In the reported data, they sank 65 % of their putts versus just 48 % for the control. That is a 33 % relative improvement. I ran the London Marathon with a small lucky bracelet on my wrist, and that might have helped me run faster. Believing I had something on me, which was lucky, may have tricked my brain into running faster. And I'm sure many at the London Marathon used a lucky charm. But I know far more leveraged a very different trick. Everyone gets behind the London Marathon.

17:27It's all anyone's talking about on the media. And so it's leading into this because of the mass participation element and the massive amount of money that's raised for charity and everything that goes on. In 2026 alone,£87 million was raised for charity. And surprisingly, that may have helped runners run faster. There's this great study in Endure by Kurt Gray at Harvard. Here, participants were given a dollar and they were told that they could either keep the dollar or donate it to charity. They then had to hold a five pound dumbbell for as long as they possibly could. What's really interesting is that those who donated the money to charity could hold the wait for noticeably longer than those who couldn't.

18:06So those who donated, they held the wait for roughly 52 seconds on average versus 46 seconds for those who kept the money. So that's a a good deed can help you endure for longer. Now, a lot of these studies that with small amounts of people, many of them have been replicated, but you never know how well they work. But I think if you combine a number of these different ideas, you might be able to improve your performance. And to end today's episode, I want to share some clips from a different runner, not Sebastian Salway, but Kipchoge. And it's specifically during his Q &A at the Oxford University.

18:41For those of you who don't know, Kipchoge was the only runner before the 2026 London Marathon to break the sub two hour time he has less than 200 meters to go elliot kipchoge let's keep an eye on the clock into the final 20 seconds elliot kipchoge he's got his shoulder 140 140 the unofficial time elliot elliot kipchoge storms into the history books in Vienna. 1.59.40, the unofficial time, the first man to run a marathon in under two hours. But as you heard, it was an unofficial time. It was unofficial because it was not an official race. However, Kipchoge is still regarded as one of the greatest runners of all time, so I thought it'd be worth listening to his Q &A to hear how he endures.

19:31And what was really interesting about this Q &A is he mentions time and time again about how important it is to frame things positively in his mind.

19:44He says a positive mindset is key. He uses this mindset to overcome pain.

20:01And he even goes as far as saying that mental training is as important as physical training. Physical training and mental training, both of them are important. But you can be physically fit, but psychologically poor. And you cannot do anything. Kipchoge makes it clear that he needs to train his mind as much as his body, that his mental state has just as big a role in his performance as his physical state. So how can you bolster your mental state? Well, probably the most widely cited tip is positive self-talk. This is a 2014 study called Talking Yourself Out of Exhaustion. Here, participants cycled to exhaustion at a hard fixed intensity, so 80 % of their peak power.

20:52They held on until they couldn't cycle anymore. And then those cyclists spent two weeks learning motivational self-talk, while the control group did nothing. The self-talk group learned to match phrases of self-talk to different stages of the cycle. So they would say, upbeat cues really early, like I'm feeling really good, I'm still feeling fresh. And then when it was getting harder later on, they would change to, you can push through this, you've done this before, you've got this, all of that sort of motivational self-talk. They practiced doing this during their cycles over the course of these two weeks.

21:24And then two weeks later, both groups rode to exhaustion again. The self-talk group lasted 18 % longer the second time and the control group didn't see a change in performance at all. It was the same physical work but it felt easier so they hit their limit later. This was the first study to show that positive self-talk lowers perceived effort and boosts endurance. And the big plus about this study, unlike many of the tips that we've covered here, is that this is one all of us can do ourselves and it is almost certainly something Kipchoge and Sawe used to run under two hours. That's all for this week, folks.

22:04Thank you so much for listening. This episode, it's a bit of a short one. It's also been a bit of a passion project for me, really. I love running. I loved running the London Marathon as well, and I really enjoyed the book Endure. So thank you for indulging me during this episode. I know it's not strictly business or marketing related, but hopefully it's still intriguing enough and potentially useful enough for some of you listening. So please do go and pick up a copy of Alex Hutchinson's book Endure. There is a link to the book in the show notes. If you liked today's episode, you will love that book.

22:32And before leaving, I just wanted to give a small plug to my newsletter. The Nudge newsletter has now reached 12 ,000 subscribers. That's not quite the number of people who ran the London Marathon, but it's still a big number. And it's amazing that really 12 ,000 of you read my top behavioural science tip every Friday. So each week I spend around 18 hours combing through studies and papers and books, and I turn the best insight that I've found into a really easy to read newsletter about psychology, business, marketing, that sort of thing. So if you'd like to sign up, just click the link in the show notes of today's episode or just go to nudgepodcast.com and click newsletter in the menu.

23:09It is totally free. You can unsubscribe at any time. I don't even really have any ads on there as well. So if you've enjoyed the show, if you enjoy Nudge in general, I hope you will enjoy the newsletter as well. Anyway, that is all for me, folks. As always, I'll be back next Monday with another episode of Nudge. Thank you so much for listening. Cheers.