make it stop

Where do you go when you take the body past what you perceive to be a limit?  What allowes you to handle pain?  Suffering?  It always seems like there is somebody in front of me pushing harder than I can manage.  Fitness can get you so far, but pain management is the road less traveled.  The definition of Endurance is, and I'm paraphrasing here, the ability to withstand hardship or stress, power of withstanding an unpleasant or difficult process.  So really, Fitness is Pain management or in work-out terms Endurance.  Therefore training is just putting oneself into a deep dark place so that the next time you can go to deeper darker places, No not like Detroit -but similar.

I see you are scratching your head.  Yes, you hurt yourself so that you can hurt yourself even more the next time, because this time was just not good enough. Tolerance.  The body is a peculiar thing, you can push it and push and push, and for the most part it will take it and tolerate.  Sometimes it will push back, or it will go on strike.  The most cruel thing the body does to oneself is it will waste away if it is not constantly pushed to some extent.  I have heard that "fitness is a cruel mistress, hard to attain, difficult to maintain, and easy to lose."  Like every relationship known to mankind, pain is involved.  In fact pain is front and center in the relationship with fitness.  They say love makes the world go 'round, I say it is pain.  Pain is work, love is what people write stories about.

A man was hitting his head against a wall. I asked him why he was doing this?  He replied, "because it feels so good...when I stop."

Have you heard your name from out of the blurry crowd lining the street?  Did it make your pain go away?  Did you dig deep, move up, work together?  Did it inspire you just a little to have your Mom, Dad, Sister, Brother, Uncle, Aunt, Wife, Husband, Daughter, Son there yelling for you?  Yelling at your suffering, trying to make it ease a little so that you can push back ever so slightly if just for another moment.  The moment right before the body pushes back and you meet a limit.  I always think to myself, in the instant when the body sends the memo that it is about to check out for the day, "hey if this were easy everyone would do it."

I witnessed an awesome display of fortitude this weekend with a teammate of mine.  He cracked.  I've been there, you have been there.  It is a horrible experience, your nutrition is off, you are sick, you've pushed too hard, you are cooked.   I was there and I was not going to let him quit (I know I'm a cruel s06).  I did everything I could to keep him turning over the cranks, I tried motivation, I yelled, I tried jokes.  Even in spite of everything I did...He Would Not Quit.  I raced a crit the next day.  My teammate was there, and when I saw him I knew no matter what happened that day, I was not allowed to Quit.