Can you please write an article about dealing with pain during a race, to get the most out of a given race?
It’s well documented that we all experience pain differently. What’s intense and severe for one person might be considered a mere annoyance by someone else. Pain is vastly more intricate than nerve receptors detecting chemical changes; we know that thoughts, emotions, beliefs, previous experiences, genetics, sex, fatigue and a whole host of unexplored factors contribute to each persons pain experience.
So with that in mind - rather than giving an algorithmic approach of, “if A occurs, think B, etc” - I’ve run through what runs through my mind after years of development and refinement with Adam and Chris, my coach and psychologist respectively. Hopefully you can see that I don’t have it perfect! As I said, pain is unique and some races I handle it better than others.
For those of you who are newer here, this does reference some previous articles. I’ll attempt to link them throughout but also feel free to go back and read in your own time.
How do I deal with pain in a race?
Well truth be told, I often don’t. My best races are those where I sit below threshold for most of the way, and if I’m in luck and I’m just fit enough I have a turn of speed right at the end that helps me cross the finish line first.
So a better question one might pose is, how do I deal with the pain of improving my lactate threshold? Simply, I love it. The pain is what lets me know I’m alive. To experience pain is to know that I’m human. To hurt is to know that I feel, which in turn lets me know that I am alive. And while that might seem like a load of tripe and codswallop, my lowest points find me numb and completely switched off to the pain. No highs, no lows, just surviving.
So then, to be in a position where I can control my pain, well, I consider myself lucky! Controlling my pain, day in and day out, well - that is nothing short of miraculous.
See, so often the pain of life is out of my control. I’ve gone from watching my mother die, to my father lose battle after battle with addiction; I’ve seen family members lie in a hospital bed having lost the will to live, and have noticed the flinch in someone’s eyes when they tell me they don’t love me anymore - all these pains I have no answer for, all these pains exceed my emotional threshold and there is nothing I can do but wait it out and let time wash it away. Now you’re telling me that there is the option to voluntarily experience a manageable amount of pain and have people acknowledge it? Sign me up.
Training day after day, micro-dosing manageable pain, and having a purpose to it, improves the capacity to enjoy race day thanks to physiological improvements.
Ok Isaac, enough of the poetic waffle on. So what you’re telling me is that training well holds you competent throughout the race and that no matter how uncomfortable you feel you know you have the competence to execute your race appropriately.
Yes. I suppose understanding, knowing and training my physiological limits helps manage my psychological limits, which assists in making pain more manageable. I might be uncomfortable early on in a race, but I know where my training is at. I can control the pain.
And don’t discredit the training that I’ve done that teaches me how to hurt appropriately. I’ve learned how to hurt, training refines it. The Andy Buchanan’s of the world have a finely tuned needle that lets them know when they’re tipping into the red, and an even better gauge of when that’s needed.
Alright then. What about the races that don’t start as expected? How do you manage pain if you start the race too fast and it’s been taken out of your control?
At the start of a race, I attempt to have my thoughts and focus internalised. How is my breathing, am I managing the pace, how are my legs feeling, is there anything I can do to make myself feel more comfortable?
And then - the discomfort peers up as a periscope would, quietly alerting me to the vessel of pain that waits for me under the surface. I repeat the mantra I said to myself in my hotel room mirror:
“You are fit. You are fast. You are strong. You are loved. You are enough.”
“It’s too early to feel like this!”
“You are strong.”
As the race progresses, and the pain follows suit, my thoughts begin to shift more externally. Cover a move, listen to people cheering, watch a competitor's shoulders.
And then when the pain gets more intense, the thoughts shift even more externally and away from the event. How hard I’ve worked for this, my mothers words of encouragement, the support I’ve had from others, how badly I need this.
An internal thought might re-appear, like, “wow my legs are heavy,” or, “I think my toenail just came off” but I compartmentalise them and put them away - they’re neither important nor helpful and I would rather think about how impressive my run will look on Strava, or the meme I am planning on posting to instagram if the result goes my way.
And then?
And then sometimes a move is made and I just don’t have the legs to cover it. I put the clutch in to move from fifth gear to sixth, but realise I’ve been driving in sixth for some time, unknowingly. Damn, that must’ve happened around the time I shifted my focus more externally. As I watch my competitors run away I have to take that feeling and use it to get me through the next training block.
But sometimes I drop back to fifth to get the revs up, then slide back into sixth, dig deep and see what we’ve got. I feel the energy of the people at the finish line welling up and moving me faster and faster and I don’t have any thoughts going through my brain other than that I just need to, I have to, run faster.
As my focus shifts to the person in front and I feel the momentum pulling each step closer to them, there is no pain being processed - until I cross the finish line and it hits me like a tonne of bricks. I can justify it then though.
We hear it so often that sport and performance are more mental than physical, but they are intertwined so closely that you can’t really pull them apart. The experiences and challenges that life has forced me to tackle head-on doesn’t mean that my pain disappears when the final kilometre rears its head.
It means the running is fun in comparison; the pain is chosen and controllable.
A big race, 2015
wow, this man has a way with words
Damn. Might have to reread a few times to properly process it before Fitzy's