Enduring pain
Strength, stamina, fitness. These are the words that endurance athletes evoke, but these attributes play a much smaller role than one may think.
Endurance sports are about enduring pain.
It takes many hours of training to build up sufficient strength, stamina and fitness to be able to complete an event like a marathon or an Iron Man, but these will only take an athlete so far. Once you can run for an hour or two, you can run all day provided you can work through the pain.
And that’s what endurance training is about - facing the agony, defeating it mentally, and completing the distance. Beating the distance. The training re-inforces the mindset that pain is temporary and that it will pass (or at least move to another body part).
As my long runs get longer I spend more and more time in the Pain Cave but I’ve learned that pain is a fluid enemy. It attacks in waves but usually passes in a few miles. Most of my training is focused not on fitness but on teaching my mind that it can push through these agonising periods. And I get stronger each time.
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