Quote of the Day — What to Do in Crucial Racing Moments
“In every race there is a crucial moment when the body wants to quit. You need imagination and mental tenacity to survive the crisis. Otherwise the penalty is defeat.” — Derek Ibbotson, former 1 Mile world record holder
Pain, and our reaction to it, is both a trainable quality and limiting factor in endurance sports, like running. Getting fitter doesn’t automatically increase your pain tolerance. How you get fit matters — you have to willingly suffer in training to build a high tolerance to those feelings of discomfort on race day.
Pain is fundamentally a subjective, context-dependent phenomenon. In difficult situations stress, fear, and anxiety activate a wide array of brain chemicals that dull or almost completely block pain that would otherwise overwhelm us in normal circumstances.
And according to early research, it does appear top endurance athletes have the ability to push themselves to a darker place, and stay there longer, than most people are willing to tolerate; thanks in part to their mind, but also to the levels of punishment they subject themselves to regularly in training.
Remember, it’s OK to strain when you train, as long as you don’t overtrain.