You can try meditation techniques for clearing your mind or practicing mindfulness. For example focus on only your breathing. In nose for x amount of time out mouth for x amount of times and repeat.

try listening to music. other than that try to run 5-20 seconds faster per km. I find that puts me into runners high.

I like to concentrate on my breathing or thinking about hockey and lacrosse when i run. Thinking about something you may like, for example tf2, usually helps everyone I ask pass time easier

Try switching your music up. If you're listening to something you've never heard before your brain will have to focus harder to follow along, making you more concentrated, and making it harder for you to get distracted.

lmao all i listen to when running is the same 7 kanye albums on repeat i will listen to new music that sounds like great advice thanks cornpop :)

cardio is an exercise of discipline
if you know it's hard it should feel better when you complete your objective

make different routes around your town/city for a change of scenery, I am a road bike advocate for this reason

If music doesn't keep you engaged like me, listen to podcasts, comedy shows stuff like that. I don't think you can ever stop thinking about how much left you have to run, but one thing that I find helps is breaking it up into tiny portions, like just thinking about getting to the next block and then thinking, only "X" of those to go, wasn't so bad.

This is the biggest thing for me. Variety makes you pay attention to your surroundings and keeps you from becoming bored with your run. I highly recommend traveling to a park at least once a week if you only have road running available to you.

I also recommend running for time rather than distance and never doing a run that requires laps. It is significantly easier to justify in your mind that once you get halfway every step forward is closer to finishing than to have to do another lap when you are already feeling done with the run.

An even better solution would be to join your local running club or find a friend that wants to run with you.

daydream

two down bottom of the ninth kinda shit. or, i guess, pushing last in a golden cap. whatever you're feelin.

manufacture some adrenaline.

run with friends, they are a great distraction

Either run with friends, run somewhere with cool scenery, or run at a pace that's fast enough to cut out the thinking. Mix up your runs. Don't just do the same workout every day. Add in intervals, shorter but more up-tempo runs, and cross training (biking can be a fantastic recovery workout). Also, whatever you do, don't use a watch except for timing out intervals.