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Comfort and Competition
By Dwight Estey


Most people who associate sports with pain relate to having it inflicted upon them. The opponent makes you hurt. But in cross country, you inflict the pain upon yourself. You knew the pace was too fast! But in the important races, it is what you have to do. Everyone is talented. Everyone has done the training. Everyone wants it bad. Everyone will be hurting.

Today I plan to give some insight about pain tolerance as associated with running. It may take me a while to get to the point, but then again, cross country runners know something about pain and delayed rewards.

You're in a race; hypothetically speaking of course. If you were really in a race and reading this you'd either have a very durable laptop or be trailing an exceptionally long extension cord!

So you're in a race and you know how it goes. You survived the initial shock of the clamorous start and are tooling along with the frontrunners. The first mile is a little bit of a kick to the system. You probably went out a bit too fast. Only a few teams have found the secret of how to successfully go out slowly.

But for the rest of us, you and me especially, we're in a little early distress. Not too much, mind you or we'd never be running at this level. But we're breathing pretty heavy and are a little uncomfortable. Then as Chef Lagasse would say, BAM! We hit our second wind and running tastes sweet. All the benefits of those hundred mile weeks have been simmering and it's finally time to enjoy the product. Feet are flying, barely touching the ground, and it is pretty close to effortless.

But damn it! There are all these other guys around us that have been doing the same kind of training. It wasn't supposed to be like this! Looks like its time to start fighting over the main dish.

And fight we do! You throw in a surge and I've got to tell you – I'm a little ticked off about it. So I match you and raise you an uphill grind. I don't care that you were a preseason All-American. I averaged 10 miles a week more than you did and I'm hungrier! So try to stay with me! At this point I've got to apologize for all the exclamation points but I'm pretty steamed!!!!

 

But back to the race – and the point I hope! We're in the last 2K and now it's getting pretty ugly. I hurt, you hurt, we all hurt. We are about to enter the zone that far too many people will never understand.

Decision making time is upon us. As John Short said, “What counts in battle is what you do once the pain sets in.”

What you do at that point makes all the difference. Take it from someone who knows. Not me! Roger Bannister is the one who said, “The man who can drive himself farther once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.”

But the word “pain” is misleading to anyone who hasn't developed a partnership with it. Pain is an acquired taste and only a true connoisseur understands it.

The word pain means so many different things. Eskimos have 32 words for snow. (I know you think they have four hundred but that is an urban myth; or is it tudra myth) Every nuance of the texture of snow is represented by a different word.

English is the opposite. There is one word, PAIN, which covers dozens of physical and emotional conditions. That is one major reason why non-runners don't understand the sport. They consider runners crazy for inflicting pain upon themselves. They think pain is what they felt when they tore their anterior crutiate ligament (ACL) in soccer, suffered a hamstring pull running to first base, or fell off their bike as a child. Heck, maybe they think about that case of appendicitis or a nagging toothache. They don't get it at all.

The pain of cross country is different. I could try to give another name to it but it still wouldn't mean anything if it were never experienced. It is a prolonged agony that seems like it will never end, but that you'd choose to go through again because the result is worth it! Sounds a little like childbirth – like I would know!

So we're back to the race. You and I are starting to pull away from the rest of the pack after trading surges. It becomes just the two of us. It's quite possible that neither of us have run this far this fast before. But we have chosen to take a leap of faith concerning just how much our body can tolerate.

Pain is no longer an outside influence attempting to slow our progress. Pain has become our ally. Something we've decided we can work with to a level that others cannot. Emil Zatopek called it, “the borders of pain and suffering where men are separated from the boys.”

Pain tolerance becomes our tool. It's like money to a corporation. It doesn't hurt to use it if you have more of it than the other guy. Instead you consider the results of not using it. Lance Armstrong put it this way. “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”

Our race has become a shared experience. Now that it is just the two of us, animosity drains away. I realize, you “get it” too. You've gotta love the guy who slugs it out, enjoys the competition, endures the pain and is now driving you to the best race of your career.

We, you and I, look at pain differently than most. At worst, it's a mild nuisance. At best it is a weapon in our arsenal that we feel comfortable using. We don't react to it. It isn't something to be shied away from or avoided. It is a necessary element to success.

The pretenders have faded back. But, you and I, now its time to find out something new about ourselves. We suffer, but we aren't suffering. We have joined an elite fellowship of runners that can lay claim to the knowledge that comfort and competition cannot reside in the same body.