Motivation Part 3 - Pain

If you've been reading my posts about my accident (see When the journey really began and related posts), you'll know that I am no stranger to pain. In fact, pain and I have an interesting relationship.

For most of the past 8 years I have experienced pain on a daily basis, sometimes its just a niggle or two in my hip or back at other times it has been the sharp cutting pain of a fractured coccyx (tailbone) that took almost four years to heal or Plantar Faciitis (dozens of micro tears in the arch of the foot) brought on by excess weight and inactivity. In fact, I started running in part to overcome the pain (in particular the plantar faciitis). The results have been fantastic, even though I still have significant pain in my right hip every morning.

The strange thing is now I actively seek a degree of pain from my sporting activities. Its not that I train to the point of pain, but rather that endurance activities, by their nature, involve pain. Whether its the build up of lactic acid in the thighs as you near the top of a five kilometre climb on the bike or hitting the wall in a marathon, there is something satisfying about cresting that hill or coming out the other side at the 40km mark of a marathon.

Its not just reaching the point of pain and busting through it, I also want the pain to represent something positive, something that I am in control of and something that makes me stronger - the opposite of my accident, destructive, uncontrollable and soul-destroying.

I guess there is nothing new in the dialogue between pleasure and pain (Epicurus in the 1st Century BC and the Marques de Sade in the 18th Century had a lot to say about it a long time ago) and lots of endurance athletes talk about the grinding through the pain barrier. However, I am not sure that I have ever quite grasped how pleasure and pain work together - how can you experience ecstasy after just enuring so much pain. I guess I will learn more about this as the intensity of my training increases and as I compete in Challenge Wanaka  - the real pleasure (and pain) is still ahead of me.