The answer is: remarkably little and, somehow simultaneously, absolutely everything.

Brendan Leonard, 45, a writer and illustrator, described his thoughts as bouncing “from my legs and feet, to the person or people in front of me maybe running just a tiny bit slower and should I pass them or not, to the port-a-potty situation”.

He said he thinks of all the “grand things” he will do when he gets home, such as painting the living room ceiling, taking Spanish lessons or writing the rest of a book.

Indeed, the mind can go in some interesting directions.

Here’s what some 50,000 runners may be thinking when they take to the New York City Marathon on Sunday.

Starting line to 21km

The mental race begins far before the physical one. Nervous energy springs most runners out of bed, if they got much sleep at all.

When Clayton Young, 31, who finished ninth in the men’s marathon at the Paris Games, lines up at the start on Sunday, he said he most likely will be repeating the mantra: “You belong. You have a shot.”

In the first half of the race, runners start distracting themselves.

Lindwurm might concentrate on the pendulum swing of the ponytail of a runner in front of her. Young will try to keep his eyelids half-shut, an effort to zone out while tucking in behind other runners.

Sashea Lawson, 43, of Brooklyn, recalls from marathons past taking note of interesting architecture and the shoeless guy next to her. What’s that building called, she remembers wondering, and what does it feel like to run barefoot when streets are soaked with Gatorade?

Deena Kastor, 51, who was coached by Vigil to a bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, has been known to picture her dog, a 63kg English mastiff named Duke, sleeping at home and “totally clueless to what I am putting myself through”.

Dan Ubilla, 39, a software engineer, calls these kilometres the “happy phase of the marathon”.

He starts thinking about food. “I know there’s a bag of potato chips that my kid saved for me that’s waiting,” he said. “I know there’s a beer waiting at the finish line.”

21km to 32km

The bargaining, if not panic, can begin after 21km. Sure, runners are halfway done, but that’s something of a mirage.

“At its worst, the marathon is a negotiation not to listen to the devil on your left shoulder but the cheerleader on your right,” Kastor said.

As the race progresses, Ubilla said, he tries to keep himself occupied with math. When he passes a mile marker, he’ll multiply the mile number by his goal pace: 6 minutes and 20 seconds per mile. But, he said, it gets harder with each added mile “not just because the math is harder, but also because it’s hard to do math after running for a couple hours”.

To help himself stay alert in the second half of Sunday’s race, Young might look for an opportunity to tuck in behind Conner Mantz and stare at the back of his head. Mantz, 27, is his longtime training partner who finished eighth at the Paris Olympics.

Young laughed. “I know every tuft of hair, every cowlick, the moles on one side of his shoulder blade,” he said.

This is also the point of the race where it can be especially important to keep hydrated and to keep downing calories to get you across the finish line.

When Amby Burfoot won the Boston Marathon in 1968, he said there were no fluid stations on the course and, feeling increasingly dehydrated, he fantasised about root beer floats. Now 78, he still runs Boston, repeating the mantra, “Every mile is a gift”.

Amanda Stumpf, 35, a college adviser at New York University, said she tried to take an energy gel at 27km at the Chicago Marathon this year and immediately threw it back up. She recalled thinking, “Well, don’t love this for me,” before giving herself permission to walk. “Just keep going,” she told herself. “Just don’t stop moving.”

When Keira D’Amato, 40, set a since-broken American record in the women’s marathon in 2022, she kept hearing the Taio Cruz song Dynamite playing in her head. Sometimes in a race, she thinks about how aliens would find it odd to see people running in circles. Or she tells herself a corny joke (eg, there are two words that have opened a lot of doors for me: push and pull).

“You’re doing anything to distract your mind from your body,” D’Amato said. “I never ask my body how it’s doing. Because the answer is going to be, ‘Terrible.’”

32km to 38km

When Bethany Ulrich was running her first marathon, a bad night of sleep caught up with her around 32km.

“At one point, I closed my eyes because my eyes were so tired from not sleeping, so that felt good,” Ulrich, 32, a graphic designer, said, laughing. “Then I was wondering, ‘Can I run and sleep at the same time?’”

Now is a good time to break out mantras.

Kristina Centenari, a runner and coach, reminds herself that “your mind is the captain and will be the one thing that sinks the ship if it steers the wrong way”.

A surge of energy in these kilometres can prove invaluable. Some runners try to have their family and friends in position to cheer in these trying kilometres, and some runners find themselves feeding off the crowds.

At the Paris Olympics, Lindwurm got a boost when an 11-year-old boy ran near her on the side of the course at the 35km mark, calling her name. Such encouragement from spectators, Lindwurm said, feels “almost like a quick burst of Advil. Nothing hurts. You feel fresh again”.

38km to the finish

For many runners, 38km is when they realise they may survive after all.

At 40km of her last marathon, Stumpf said, she told herself: “You can do anything for a mile.”

At the end of her last, Lawson started thinking about how she might be chilly at the finish line and wondering whether there would be long lines at nearby restaurants.

With 1.9km to go in his last marathon, Ubilla reminded himself that “running is a gift, as painful as it felt at the time” and to smile when he crossed the finish line.

Mantz said he had sometimes panicked in the final 3km of earlier races and, in a tactic familiar among elite marathoners, counted every right foot stride to 40 or 60 or 100.

“Anything to take my mind off how much pain I was in,” he said.

But he closed strong in Paris and, as a contender in New York, he plans to follow this mantra: “Run your own race. Don’t worry about anybody else.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Jeré Longman and Talya Minsberg

Photographs by: Ping Zhu

©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES