Lesson 1: The Pain

In class the other day, someone asked me how many hours a day I workout for the Track Team. I thought about it for a second, then said 1. 1 hour. The pondering soul nodded, turned their head, and resumed what they were doing.

Of course this is a lie. It's way over 1 hour a day. But it's easier to answer this way. It avoids the inevitable tilt of the head as the non-runner tries to understand what I had just said, realizing that they don't quite comprehend it, which subsequently leads (97.6% of the time) to them feeling the urge to follow up Question 1 with any number of inane other Questions or cheesy humor lines:

"THAT much?! But...you're so skinny! You would die!..har har"

"Your mile time is WHAT?! I don't think I could bike that fast!..harhar"

"Did you do it because you couldn't do a REAL sport??...harhar"

To the 4.3 people on the internet who stumble across this Blog who DON'T run, let me try to explain:

If I could, I would have you sit in a chair in your room, in the most comfortable position possible. Lay down even. I would attach some contraption to you that would let you feel what I feel. To experience what I experience in every way. My thoughts, my smells, my taste, my emotions, and most importantly what I feel.

I would then go out and run a blistering speed workout.

If you, just one time, could feel that Pain. That Pain that brings you to your knees, that wrenches at every ounce of your sanity, that pushes you to the brink of your own limitations and back again, that Pain that makes every thousandth of a second feel like a Turtles slogging step...you would only catch a glimpse of my life. My life as a Runner.

At the end of the day, running for therapeutic purposes is all well and good, but this running and my running are not the same. This microcosm of the sport is but 1/1millionth of what we do.

The Pain. The unbearable pain. There is no secret to getting fast. The secret is defeating the Pain. And you cannot defeat the Pain.