Monthly Archives: January 2023

Endurance Running – My Relationship with Pain

When I talk about my running distances, I am often asked puzzlingly – “Doesn’t it pain?”.

I often joyfully respond – “Oh yes, it does. Every part of body. Parts you didn’t even know existed pain.” With a gleeful smile.

Is it always a Joy? No. The journey is often filled with hours and hours at a stretch of whatever you call the opposite of Joy is. Filled with mental chatter that is good enough to write a 1000 page book.

Yet day after day, slowly but surely the joy dwells up.

Any given day, any given run, there is atleast one part of my body operating at less than 50% and there is constant pain there. Soon in this beautiful sport of endurance and long distance running, you find out that sun rises, there is pain, sun sets and there is pain.

This is a very long and understandably complex subject interlaced with an ocean of medical and scientific intricacies. However, in my experience it is equally important to simplify this subject first. I approach pain with an attitude of “Inevitabililty”.

Inevitability

There will be pain and there is absolutely no getting away from it. That is the attitude I start every run of mine with. When I take a step and land my feet on the ground, whether I am walking or sprinting, there is some pain somewhere in the body. Often that pain is within my ‘threshold of bearability’. Sometimes, the pain exceeds my threshold and it causes a bit more of a sensation through the body. Either below the threshold or above, pain is present in every single moment.

A recognition that there will be pain in every single moment is fundamental to how I then proceed to deal with it. It takes away the mental fight of flight to comfort. It is truly fascinating how our human mind and body is constantly looking for comfort in every moment. There must be a evolutionary benefit to us humans to do this. However, in endurance running, that instinct to search for immediate comfort is major hindrance.

I know there will be pain – physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual. And I know I have to problem solve that pain. There is a great strength in knowing I am bigger than the pain and I can solve it. I can act and address the problem. Even if sometimes that solution is just patience and to let time pass.

I find physical pain when not embraced, morphes into mental agony and it when not embraced and dealt with, deepens into emotional and further spiritual suffering.

As I run, I deeply accept the pain as an inevitable part of me. I often even rejoice the moments I start a new part of body with pain.

As gurudev would say – “Pain is Inevitable, Suffering is Optional”

In endurance running, pain is in every single moment, fiercely inevitable, while suffering is far removed.

True bliss of running is that total acceptance of Pain !!!

Endurance Journey – 2023

New Year, new goals and a new training plan!

As the new year dawns, I get ready to begin the 6 month training cycle heading up to the August 100 mile race in Berlin. A training cycle is journey that includes the physical, the mental and the spiritual aspects. There is a lot of planning, to the day and sometimes to the hour as to what I need to do. Yet, the mental and spiritual side of the training is also dealing with the unknown and the unplanned. There will be days and weeks that won’t go per the spreadsheet. There will be injuries, life events and who knows what else, that will need problem solving.

Endurance is to be ‘planned to the T’ and yet be prepared for it all to go haywire. To have that confidence that I will problem solve whatever that will be thrown at me. And yet, I have to start with the mindset of not missing 1 minute of my planned training. Discipline is a given. Chaos is the catalyst that will take the discipline to the next level.

The 200 day training cycle will being in full earnest on 24th January, 2023.

1136 Miles of training runs, 80 days of weight training, countless hours of recovery and a continuous mental stream of focus on the goal!