measure

How do you quantify pain, how do you explain suffering?

What words do you use to describe what it feels like to do intervals on a trainer, indoors staring at a wall or the sweat puddled floor?  You don't have to say words or try and explain what it is or how it feels to someone who has experienced a trainer interval.  You do have to find words to tell your mystified co-workers around the cubical, what it means to drain your existence out with every pedal stroke.  To tell another cyclist is easy.  We have all been there, the over-used "pain cave".  "Dude, I was in the 'pain cave' last night"  It's getting lame the way we over use words, I mean ridiculous how everyone says "it's ridiculous".

Time seems to go slower when the effort is compounded to the point that you can count the seconds it takes for one second to the next.  At what pedal RPM and Wattage does the average cyclist unravel the space time continuum and time slows down?  It might even go in reverse a little?   I counted the swirls of the woodgrain in the floor, I stared holes into the clock on the wall, I blacked out and tried to go to a "happy place" but ended up in the porta-john of misery.  You have been there it's like the pain cave but worse, it's stinky, hot, and nobody replaced the toilet paper.  Once you get to a certain level of physical self-abuse your senses become heightened.   I think that I was able to see the different cells in my epidermal layer in my right thigh while doing a 10min threshold interval last night.  I could hear every valve in my heart open and close, I could even see stars through the walls and ceiling.

"Words all fail the magic prize.."  There really is no good way to paint a picture of how one feels during an extreme bout of physical self loathing.  Someone once told me that racing bikes is "pain management" the more pain that you can handle the better you will be.  The longer you race and train the more pain becomes a friend or more like a relative that has overstayed their welcome, but you get used to the suffering.  And just when you think you have this whole "pain cave" thing under control...Pain brings his friends fatigue and injury over for a party.  Yeah!

Remember:  when you are sitting on the couch there is some crazy pain junkie out there on a trainer doing intervals.