Lesson 6: Dealing with it.

Everyone has their own strategy for dealing with pain. Not The Pain, but pain in an immediate sense. Pain in a 3rd-lap-of-the-mile sense.

Everyone has their own way to deal with it. To focus your entire entity on forgetting how much you hurt in that moment.

Now, there are common ways people cope. Archetypes of coping, you could call them

1 LAP GIVE ME 1 LAP

Just 2 more minutes, please just two more minutes

Don't let him go. Don't you let him go. HANG ON

For your TEAMMATES, for your COACH, DO IT FOR THEM

I've tried all of these. They've all worked to various degrees. At least, enough to give me moderate success in the sport.

But for me, there's another way. One a little more cruel.

All of the foregoing ways to deal with the immediacy of pain assume that the pain will end if you just stick with it to the finish line. Just put yourself through it now, and when it's over you'll be better for it.

My high school often quoted the famous running motto - Pain is temporary, pride is forever

But I think the best way is to do the opposite.


I run as if the pain will never end.


Put a time goal down, and start running it. I'm going to run 5:48s for these 10 miles.

As the miles peel away, I make sure I am on pace. I give myself a little buffer, running a few 5:43-5:45s to give myself a few seconds if I slip up in future miles.

But mentally, I don't count mile 4 as being 6 miles from the finish, or even mile 9 as being 1 mile from the finish. I have before, and I've crumbled that way. Focusing on the end only reminds me how far I am from it.

I've come to assume that the run won't end, so when it does I'm pleasantly surprised while still not drained mentally from focusing on the end point.

These mental games have developed over the past 7 months as I've been running alone in the night, 90% of my runs lighted only by streetlamps and the soft glint of the moon.

When you can't physically see the endpoint, eventually it fades away mentally as well. And then you're in the moment, just running to run.

Why focus on the pain if it's going to be there forever? Might as well get used to it. Make it friendly.

I told you it was a bit cruel.

Adaption

I don't remember the last time I ran under 10 miles.


Well, let me qualify that. I've done workouts and tempo runs that have been shorter, obviously. But I haven't done a base run under 10 miles in god knows how long.

I remember doing 7mile runs with a teammate then tacking on a 2 mile loop at the end the rare times we ran together in DC.

But I'm back home in Seattle now for the next few weeks, and it looks like my winter holds many 64min runs in store before I head down to SoCal (For some reason, all of the 10 milers here have taken 64min & change).

I'm confident in my strength, I'm just going on 7months of training completely alone (save a few key workouts with a group in DC I'd meet with for workouts every other week), and that plays tricks on you.

I hit mile 6 on a hard 10miler. 5:41. I laugh as the thought occurs to me that all of this is to beat 2 athletes who finished ahead of me in conference last year. Fuck it, if I can run 3:50, then they're going to have to run 3:49 to beat me. And I don't think they can run 3:49.

The only break in my extended base monotony has been harder 10 mile runs (exciting, I know), 4 mile tempos, and the occasional ladder track workout.

There's nothing I want more right now than to lace up my spikes and get after track season. But, wiser heads always prevail and when talking to my coach, he reminded me that I still have 5 months until NCAAs.

sigh, A couple more months of this. It better pay off, this over-distance shit is fucking hard.

Who knew that the way to get better at distance running was by running longer distances?? Someone should have warned me when I was 16. But after that first time under 4:40, I was hooked.

And here I am, almost 5 years later. I wonder what I would say to myself on that cold day I shocked myself and ran 4:38.

Probably to quit.

But more likely, to train harder. I'm a bit of a sadist.