Forums >Racing>How do you push through the pain?
I noticed in your log that you were doing more speedwork back then which obvioulsly produced the results in Oct. Not to mention, the pain is never nearly as bad as when you were properly prepared. I haven't done consistent speedwork since summer/fall of 2013, but when I do stick with it for at least a few months the improvements are pretty drastic. For 2014 I focused more on my first 50 miler, so while I did some tempo runs it was mostly easy running all year for me. Once I back off the speedwork I find I lose the speed faster than I lose the endurance that I've built up over years of running. Good luck on your upcoming races.
Thinking it through after the fact I just feel like I could have pushed harder.
I wish I had a dollar for every time I've experienced that.
- Joe
We are fragile creatures on collision with our judgment day.
Same here, however, now I try to pretty much assume I pushed as hard as I could have, and if the results fell short it was probably due to my preparation (or lack thereof), or weather. I know from experience that I seem to struggle more than others in heat, so I have to adjust my goals appropriately when temps are on the warm side.
I'm usually a pacer for 3 or 4 marathons a year. The morning of the race people in our group assume that they will somehow magically run better just by being in a group. I think it can help, but it ultimately comes down to training. As a pacer, the biggest benefit I provide is good pacing in the early miles to ensure the group goes out slow. After that, I certainly encourage the heck out of the group those final miles, but I feel people pretty much succeed or fail based on how prepared they are coming into the race in those final miles.
For 5K and below I find that I just cannot even approach the best I can do on only one race. I have to race shorter distances often to get 'good' at it. My times will drop the more I race them in a short time period (say, over the summer). Even with similar or the same fitness my times will follow a downward trend. It might be just getting used to the effort as I'm pretty sure I ever 'push through the pain' as I feel I'm pretty wimpy in that regard. Try to race more or do more time trials.
This. Anticipate the pain. Know it is coming. Know that you can endure it and focus on it. It is a mental challenge that we all undertake each and every time we hit the starting line.
For some of us, pain is part of the joy of running.
To see how much suck you can endure.
Ready, go.
If you figure it out, let me know too!!! Anything less than a 10K 50K race now seems super fast to me. LOL.
Lots of great advice here. What I do is I think a pretty common trick. When the going gets tough, just try to trick my perceptions. Focus on a landmark not far ahead, a bench, a mark in the road, whatever, and think of it as the goal. And say to myself, "easy". It's always easy just to get to the next nearby landmark without slowing down. And that's all there is to it. Yeah, once there you have to reset to the next goal, but then you can also think "I'm now in essentially the same state I just was, it hurts about the same, but I've ratcheted off another chunk". Which is very reassuring, and helps reduce the anxiety others have pointed out as the problem.
Parts of our brains that are involved in figuring out how much we should want to quit are really pretty stupid, it turns out, and you can often outsmart them like this. When it works well it's like having a continuous finishing kick. Sometimes I have to consciously rein in the pace when I turn on this mode. The first (small) marathon I won, I used this trick to run the last mile at about my 5K pace, passing the leader, and winning by 7 seconds.
But from another perspective... this isn't really a trick at all. The reality is that we only have to handle the Now. We have to ignore our brain trying to think about The Whole Goddamn Rest of the Way.
MTA about anticipating the pain... I guess I'm not so good at that. I don't like pain. Even thinking about racing a half marathon makes my guts churn. There are moments late in a race when I embrace and even relish the pain, but those are very rare.
Good insights. I'm suddenly reminded of the Godzilla analogy from this classic Oatmeal comic. That is all.
I'm just going to echo some of what's already been said with the following quote from RAer Jeff. I read these words of his a couple years ago and they have genuinely made a difference for me. Just two simple sentences, but they go through my head every time I race. Easily one of the best things I've learned around here...
The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff
A list of my PRs in a misguided attempt to impress people that do not care.
Thanks for all the comments. Several tidbits to think on for sure. No magic pill, but I'm pretty sure I already knew that...
Did a solid (for me anyway) 6 x 800m interval set with 400m jog recoveries. Split paces were 6:51, 6:58, 6:51, 7:01, 6:50 and 7:09. Really thought that last interval was faster than that, I guess I was tired! Of course it probably didn't help that I did a hilly 14 miler just 2 days earlier.
I was sharper going into my 10K back in September, but that was at the end of a couple months of speed work so I'm not terribly behind that. My last 6 x 800 interval set before that race was on 9/4/14 and those splits were 6:46, 6:38, 6:47, 6:37, 6:46 and 6:40. 6 weeks earlier I wasn't able to complete the set. I've got time to get about 2 or 3 more good interval sets in before the next 2 mile race so we will see.
Age: 50 Weight: 224 Height: 6'3" (Goal weight 195)
Current PR's: Mara 3:14:36* (2017); HM 1:36:13 (2017); 10K 43:59 (2014); 5K 21:12 (2016)
Very nice, very timely article here from Science of Running... The Calm Conversation. I can't say that I have gotten there yet with racing but have definitely experienced this in other aspects of life.
Best Present Ever
The reality is that we only have to handle the Now. We have to ignore our brain trying to think about The Whole Goddamn Rest of the Way.
Ignore the WGROTW is my new motto.
MTA: Though I think I will modify it to WGROTFW
Consistently Slow
LOL Sweet! The main reason I finished the Pistol 100. Imagining the amount of training I would have to continue for another 10 weeks was unbearable. .
Run until the trail runs out.
SCHEDULE 2016--
http://bkclay.blogspot.com/
This reminds me of something I read in high school by Alan Watts. I think it was in The Wisdom of Insecurity. A chapter on pain, if memory serves, made the argument that trying to escape the pain, or the eagerness to escape it, makes it seem worse. Letting it be there and acknowledging it, but not resisting it or rebelling against it, makes it easier to live with it. For me it worked for short term pain. Not sure if I was in chronic pain I'd feel the same way about it though.
And, yes, the article by Magness is worth reading to help answer the original thread question.
mta: clarity
Thanks for the helpful input on this everyone.
Still not sure I have figured out much, but I did improve on my performance and ran a 13:40.6 on a tougher course this weekend.
Got my HR up a little higher, and with the finish to this race being on a pretty steep hill at least got pretty close to my max HR at the end. (I hit 190 and I've only hit 191 before as my max).
Still think I could have probably cut a few seconds off as I just didn't have any close competition to push for other than the Clydesdale course record which I ended up beating by 15 seconds. The kid (literally I think he is 12) in front of me was over 30 seconds ahead so I couldn't catch him so I really didn't have anything to push me during the middle part of the race. Finished 6th out of 102 in an obviously slow field.
I did run some intervals in the few weeks coming into this race, but didn't hit any of them out of the park by any means as far as individual workouts. McMillan says I should be able to run a 12:57 based on my 10K PR, but unless I really work on some speed I don't see it happening.
Switching back to focus on half marathon and longer now, so probably won't be running any more 2 milers for a while.
Some of them mental tricks might come in handy if I decide to try to run the 50 miler I'm debating about though!
Clearing out old Bookmarks and stumbled across this.
Pain - Deal with it