I feel it during training sometimes and especially in this weather. I did a 15 mile run last Friday morning in the cold and dark and basically just getting home was the only motivation I had.

Honestly, I am sooooo competitive, I never feel that way during a race. The only time I've felt it during a race was back in mt MTB racing days in really bad conditions when I knew I was going to take a digger at some point. That's when you ask yourself is it worth it....

To answer your question on workouts, if it gets bad mentally, I break things down into really small chunks --- finish strong up to that corner, now lets see if you can pick up the pace to the next turn, imagine that hill is the end of the race and power up. I just set mini goals to get me home...

I agree, but sometimes it's the conditions and not the body. I feel you need to work on mental toughness in these types of conditions to better prepare yourself for possible race conditions. However, I agree with the overtraining hypothesis if it was nice outside, daylight, etc...

"Listen? You smell something?" I'm smelling some fried circuits!
Sounds like a little overtraining like everyone else said...take a few days off.
Years ago,(1978 or so)when I lived in Colorado,I had a chance to go to a talk given by Frank Shorter. He said that there are days when it just doesn't go your way...but try it...head out the door but in 10 minutes if you just aren't feeling good about it, stop. Walk home. You'll be doing yourself a favor. Sometimes forcing yourself through a workout can have some really nasty side effects.

I use a lot of mental techniques in training. I'm too lazy to retype all of this, but here's a post to my blog from last year about this exact thing:

Practice Success:
http://ironmom.blogspot.com/2006/11/practice-success-someone-recently-asked.html

well yeah have those thoughts (and really lost out to them at my last marathon) but it's just as a previous poster said you just starting working to shorter goals and try and distract your mind from the negative stuff.

I will occassionally feel this way during a training session, but I file it away with a "putting money in the bank." The pain and monotony of a long training session makes race day that much easier.

On race day? Those thoughts never pop up. I dont let em, I'm too busy running my race.

Sometimes..I think mental toughness depends on the individual. Some folks are just not wired that way. The mental toughness you need for sprints or 5k's is far different than what you need for an IM or a 100 miler. Some folks are wired for short stuff. Some wired for Looooong things... others can do both. Find your niche.
You can train yourself...but I think only to a point.

22 miles? Oh...that's NOT a long run! ;)

Take the day off, or take 2 days off. Mentally it will be tough, but I'll share something with you . I was a competitive bodybuilder for many years. For them most part I loved it, still do, love the pump, the look, the strength, everything about it, but every once in a while I didn't feel like being in the gym. I would force myself through the workout. It took me years to learn that I won't shrink if I take a few days off to refresh, and I always came back into the gym stronger. You're probably overtrained anyway, as previous posters have stated, and over a lifetime of workouts, taking a few days off won't hurt you, it will do your body good. There is also something called delayed satisfaction. Tell yourself, yeah, this is tough, but visualize yourself crossing the finish line, visualize your body, you are in better shape than 99% of the human population. You started this for a reason. Go back in your mind to your first tri. Remeber the fun, the adrenaline dump, getting kicked in the face in your first open water swim. It was great, wasn't it? We do this because we love it, and we also get the ancillary effects of health, fitness, and the admiration and respect of our friends, peers and loved ones. Jim Fixx wrote in his book there would be days where you have what he called "ugh" runs. Sounds like you had one today. No biggie, don't beat yourself up. Take a few days off and come back strong and fresh!

i do, ocassionally have those thoughts, but rarely. i enjoy every aspect of training and racing. when my body isn't cooperating, and im in pain, i remind myself that what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. and, i think, it is only when we are challenged that we are truly alive. i know it sounds cheesy but i believe that.

Physically drained, yes. Mentally, not necessarily. It is entirely possible to push your limits and still be sharp upstairs. This is where training and preparation come into play. Leave those headphones at home, dont train with big groups, come up with a plan for race day, and execute that plan.

Nobody, it's the feeling great mentally (among other things) that enables ME, at least, to push myself to the physical limit.

The paradox of stellar athletic performance is that you need to be focused yet relaxed; tense yet loose. Only when you achieve this "flow" state do your best performances come together.

Sometimes when I'm banging out yet another "death" interval on the bike (my pet name for my coach's recent workouts) and I'm having trouble achieving the wattages, I consider whether I am inhibiting a flow state. Often times I am, and if I consciously instruct my body to relax, the power comes and the effort feels right. It's still hard, don't get me wrong--but there is a huge difference between working hard enough and working TOO hard. If I am not able to relax myself enough to get into my groove, then I am pretty sure that I am experiencing the effect of outside influences, for example, putting in a 60-hour work week or fighting off a virus.

I highly recommend the book "Flow in Sports" by Susan A. Jackson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, for anyone seriously wanting to work on their mental game. I have spent the last 2+ years working on this myself (there are other great books, too), and it has paid dividends over and over. Improving in this sport, especially at my age (50), requires a tremendous amount of work. I don't expect that work to be "fun," but I do expect it to be "appropriately tolerable." If you've been in the game long enough, at some point you understand your physical abilities, and often you can improve yet more by working on the mental.

Newbies to triathlon, especially long-distance, have to learn the skill of identifying when they are on that edge vs. overreaching. It's a mental skill achieved by learning to become very aware of oneself, both physically and mentally, and since this is not a skill that is conventionally taught in schools or considered necessary for survival (unlike learning how to eat properly or swim technique, for example), many people never become self-aware and continue to struggle with life challenges, including the identification of whether they have achieved the perfect challenge-skills balance.

People who are brain dead don't function too well physically :)

I worked for years on 'conditioning the will' using exercises and techniques that result in a disconnection between sensation and perception. Some are pure mental--for instance, to voluntarily inflict a horrible amount of relatively injury-free pain to yourself (having a partner dig their elbow into your calf or thigh and place all their weight on you) while focusing all your attention on the stimulus itself until you only experience it mentally and not physically; another would be to take ice cold showers (even in the winter), which, over time, has the effect of figuratively (and literally) numbing your body to uncomfortable general physical complaints such as aches and pains; and a technique for helping overcome mental-endurance issues would be to force yourself to not sleep for 24 or 48 hours (My personal record is 5 days without sleep, which, along with a diet of less than a thousand calories a day put me in the hospital). Most of the techniques I used have their root in military or martial-arts training, but work incredibly well for any athlete who wants to increase mental resistance to the body.

With that said, my issue with long-distances is definitely overreaching and burn out (along with possible malnutrition from rarely being hungry/not eating). I make the mistake in training and end up injured and then kill myself in races. With the help of a friend and Ironman finisher I'm learning how to put long-term goals in front of short term desires.