About Pain & Discomfort
I got a couple of tattoos this week, but that’s not the point. The point is that the 2 days with long sessions gave rise to reflect on pain and discomfort a lot. Here’s what I found.
Getting tattooed I clearly classify as pain. It’s very specific, typically locatable and caused externally. Although I would usually want to avoid this pain with every cell of my body, it is still a sensation I can somehow isolate. Most of the time, I can step back from it and look at it from the outside. Figuratively speaking. Almost as if the pain were not a part of me. Getting tattooed surely puts my body under extreme stress, but mentally I can handle it quite well. Even during long sessions up to 8 hours. I have to stay very focused, though, which is exhausting. But more like positive stress. Like working in a flow states for many hours. That’s it for getting inked.
The pain I experience during a race is an entirely different one. In fact, I find the word pain very misleading. Yet still, it’s quite often used in the context of running, like "Pain is temporary, pride is forever", "going to the pain cave", "no pain, no gain" and other goofy motivational slogans, which do not work for me at all. Unless I twist my ankle or get hit by a hiking pole (hello, @running_ida!) I would not speak of pain. The word that much more applies to me is discomfort, or even extreme discomfort. Fortunately, this sensation only appears when running very fast. Or for very long. Or very fast for very long, for that matter.
But here’s the thing: I find it very difficult to handle this feeling of extreme discomfort. In contrary to the pain described above, I cannot step back and look at it from the outside. Most of the time it feels like a chokehold that I can’t get rid of. A situation that triggers severe mental stress in me. Maybe it’s because the discomfort is self-inflicted. Or perhaps because it’s not locatable or specific. Or because I’m not the type of runner who can just "suck it up". I really don’t know.
I love racing. But knowing that I will most likely end up in this chokehold of extreme discomfort really puts me off every so often. On the other hand, it’s a nice field of work on the mental side of running. Maybe I’ll come across something that works for me one day.