Mud Run, OCR, Obstacle Course Race & Ninja Warrior Guide

Preparing for 48 Hours of OCR: Mental Strength

Evan Perperis

The Conquer The Gauntlet Pro Team and friends join Evan for the final 4 miles of OCR America.

Last week I covered what I am physically doing to prepare for Endure The Gauntlet, but that is only half the equation or less as you. I touched on mental strength a little last week with “motivation”, but if you haven’t faced similar challenges, you are going to need a lot more motivation to overcome some of these problems.

This week we’ll talk about the most important aspect of Ultra-OCR, mental strength. However, mental strength is built in a day, a week or a month, but is actually years in the making. Here are some tips that I’m using that you can apply to your own training/racing to push yourself onto new levels of fitness:

Day 6 of OCR America at Dirt Runner.

  1. Breaking Down Problems Into Manageable Issues– The problems I will face here include things the endurance (grip, back, legs), strength (grip, back, legs), foot care, hand care and dealing with the weather. I covered all these as individual problems in my last article “Preparing for 48 Hours of OCR: Physical Strength”. If I can solve each of those small problems and make them less significant, when they are all added up it will have a smaller effect on my overall issues
  2. Experience being uncomfortable– While you don’t need to specifically go sit in a tub of ice, torture yourself or take cold showers for a month to experience this. You do need to have a baseline of uncomfortable experiences under your belt. The undefeated king of Ultra-OCR Ryan Atkins in my new book Mud Run Guide’s Ultra-OCR Bible said

“You don’t need to go out and try to make yourself uncomfortable. If you are training consistently, those harsher weather conditions will find you and you don’t have to search them out or conduct specialized training sessions.” – Ryan Atkins


Not surprisingly, I agree with him. For me personally, my experiences in the military (both in training and in combat zones) and a lifetime of endurance racing with the last couple of years focused on OCR, I feel like I have enough deposits in the suffering bank to deal with most situations.

  1. Setting Long-Term Goals– As a general rule, I know my major goals for the next 3-5 years. Sure I make small adjustments even mid-year, but the “headline” is still the same. This ability to set a long-term goal and plan for the future is what I’ve been doing for this event, which I first thought about in 2016. While you don’t need to run for 48 hours, you should have long-term plans that are suitable for your fitness level and training. To ensure you can reach those goals, you are going to need intermediate goals and short-term goals, which leads to…
  2. Baby steps that continue to build aka Progressive Racing/Training– Asking me to do a 48 hour OCR a couple of years ago was a bridge too far. So I’ve been chipping away at the goal by doing things like:

While this is the extreme version of goal setting, the principle can be applied to your goals. Maybe it looks like this:

You can join me to run a lap or laps with me over the weekend of Endure The Gauntlet. Sign up for the event here. If you can’t make it, please donate some money to the great cause Folds of Honor through my site, which provides scholarship money to children whose parents were wounded or killed in US military service. I’ll be doing live event updates through several social media channels including Mud Run Guide’s Facebook page but also a post-event recap through the Link Endurance podcast.

So how do you finish a 48 hour OCR? Although I managed to fill several pages and two articles worth text, the answer is disappointingly simple: One step at a time.

Pictures provided by Amy Perperis of Strength & Speed

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