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The author is confusing pain and suffering --- they are not the same. When you push your body to its limits, you will suffer, such as forcing yourself to conti
by 762236 6y ago
The author is confusing pain and suffering --- they are not the same. When you push your body to its limits, you will suffer, such as forcing yourself to continue running despite fatigue, but without damaging yourself. If you are feeling pain, such as a hurt toe (like in the article), or due to a joint problem, then you have to stop to recover. Pain does not scale when you push your body to its limits, and can't be ignored. A typical off-the-couch athlete can successfully ignore pain because they'll go back to the couch and recover for weeks or so. An endurance athlete that ignores pain will just cause a larger injury that needs even more recovery time in the long run, and since the catabolic destruction of fitness during recovery is exponential, you come out at a disadvantage by ignoring pain. A couple days to recover vs weeks to recover. If you are in the middle of an event and suffer some type of injury, you stop --- continuing despite the injury is stupid (and so many people are taught that they are losers if they stop, which is so dumb --- continue and hurt your performance at the next event).
- skinkestek 6y agoIsn't pain the thing you feel and suffering what you do afterwards or something? I.e. once I hit my toe I cannot avoid the pain but I don't necessarily need to go around suffering all day? I.e. sometimes when I fry something hot oil hits my hands. The pain is immediate but I laugh at it instead of going around suffering under it. Or am I mixing up some words? (English isn't my first language.)
- vcg3rd 6y agoNot all pain is equal. As in anything else one learns the difference between discomfort and muscle fatigue/exhaustion and injury. I ran a half-marathon in freezing rain, and my feet started blistering badly about halfway. If I had been doing a marathon and my feet blistered that badly between 6 and 10, I probably would have dropped out, but it wasn't really bad until about mile 10, and I'd have had to have walked to the finish anyway, in freezing rain! Most elites will stop and accept a DNF (Did Not Finish) if they a are really injured, and most fitness/recreational runners get a good sense of when it's the mind and not the body really screaming quit. It's like getting your breath knocked out of you. It's scary as hell the first time, but it's not a heart attack. There's lots of good, sound research on endurance running: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance Running to the Edge: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed Natural Born Heroes: How a Daring Band of Misfits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance Life Is a Marathon: A Memoir of Love and Endurance Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself As an example of how running has impacted, not a CEO, but an international award-winning novelist, short story writer, and essayist see: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. And, related to the topic in general, see: The Beauty of Discomfort: How What We Avoid Is What We Need Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Resilience: Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment