I Suffer and I Like It
Lance Armstrong to his young son Luke: “What does Daddy do?”
Luke Armstrong: “Daddy makes them suffer.”
Sports Illustrated, August 4, 2003
This essay is about suffering. The kind of athletic suffering that makes you question your very sanity. The kind of suffering that makes you look at the next week’s long run and say, “Wow, we ONLY have to run 14 miles on Saturday. Shouldn’t be too bad.” The kind of self-imposed suffering that makes your wife say, “You need help.”
It’s been said that running long distances is partly psychological and partly physical. There’s the training and conditioning your body to handle long runs. Pretty simple enough. And then there’s the mental preparation involved in the same enterprise. In my mind, an entirely different proposition.
As I’ve become a more experienced runner over the last few years, with one marathon and two half-marathons under my belt, I’ve begun to learn that I’m in the 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical camp. Here’s a few thoughts on why. . .
Out of hundreds of training runs in my life, I’ve “quit” two of them. I can remember and describe the context of both and the fact that I didn’t finish them still pisses me off to no end. Both of them were years ago and, looking back on them now, I realize they were cases of mental weakness on my part, pure and simple. Huh?
In other words, I wasn’t feeling well physically and, instead of having the mental toughness to overcome it, I gave in and I quit. They weren’t very long runs, by any means. I was simply having a sub-par day physically and I let that overcome my will to finish the run.
Lots of endurance athletes know this feeling; your body is saying “no mas,” but it’s really not shutting down on you and you’re not in real physical danger. Instead of pushing through this wall, however, you give in and let the ease of quitting defeat the notion of pushing through and finishing.
Training for and running a marathon gives you the opportunity to see how tough you really are. Whether your burning desire to accomplish something that few can is enough to overcome your desire to stop.
Few athletic endeavors possess the “suffering” factor of marathon running and I believe it’s the sheer individualistic nature of running that makes that the case. Oh sure, you can be cheered on by the crowd or encouraged by your running partners and that can certainly play a role. But, in the end, it’s you, and you alone, who must force one foot in front of the other in spite of the pain and exhaustion and overwhelming desire to quit.
That said, the suffering pays off in the incredible sense of accomplishment you gain from overcoming the challenges of these long runs. There’s the endorphin rush that you get after the run; there really is something to that “runner’s high.” More importantly, it’s something you can carry around with you to get through other tough times. “If I can run 26.2 miles,” I’ve often thought, “surely I can get through THIS.”
So I run. And I suffer. And I like it. Really.
Luke Armstrong: “Daddy makes them suffer.”
Sports Illustrated, August 4, 2003
This essay is about suffering. The kind of athletic suffering that makes you question your very sanity. The kind of suffering that makes you look at the next week’s long run and say, “Wow, we ONLY have to run 14 miles on Saturday. Shouldn’t be too bad.” The kind of self-imposed suffering that makes your wife say, “You need help.”
It’s been said that running long distances is partly psychological and partly physical. There’s the training and conditioning your body to handle long runs. Pretty simple enough. And then there’s the mental preparation involved in the same enterprise. In my mind, an entirely different proposition.
As I’ve become a more experienced runner over the last few years, with one marathon and two half-marathons under my belt, I’ve begun to learn that I’m in the 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical camp. Here’s a few thoughts on why. . .
Out of hundreds of training runs in my life, I’ve “quit” two of them. I can remember and describe the context of both and the fact that I didn’t finish them still pisses me off to no end. Both of them were years ago and, looking back on them now, I realize they were cases of mental weakness on my part, pure and simple. Huh?
In other words, I wasn’t feeling well physically and, instead of having the mental toughness to overcome it, I gave in and I quit. They weren’t very long runs, by any means. I was simply having a sub-par day physically and I let that overcome my will to finish the run.
Lots of endurance athletes know this feeling; your body is saying “no mas,” but it’s really not shutting down on you and you’re not in real physical danger. Instead of pushing through this wall, however, you give in and let the ease of quitting defeat the notion of pushing through and finishing.
Training for and running a marathon gives you the opportunity to see how tough you really are. Whether your burning desire to accomplish something that few can is enough to overcome your desire to stop.
Few athletic endeavors possess the “suffering” factor of marathon running and I believe it’s the sheer individualistic nature of running that makes that the case. Oh sure, you can be cheered on by the crowd or encouraged by your running partners and that can certainly play a role. But, in the end, it’s you, and you alone, who must force one foot in front of the other in spite of the pain and exhaustion and overwhelming desire to quit.
That said, the suffering pays off in the incredible sense of accomplishment you gain from overcoming the challenges of these long runs. There’s the endorphin rush that you get after the run; there really is something to that “runner’s high.” More importantly, it’s something you can carry around with you to get through other tough times. “If I can run 26.2 miles,” I’ve often thought, “surely I can get through THIS.”
So I run. And I suffer. And I like it. Really.
posted by W.S. Wuori at 2:35 PM
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