Haruki Murakami writes in his book, What I Think About When I Think About Running:
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, “Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore.” The “hurt” part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself.
The ability to suffer comes from conditioning the mind. The daily work is when you learn how to suffer and commit long enough to expand.
As athletes, we yearn for the ability to continue to push when we feel we can’t anymore. But we also wish for it to come easy.
News flash: suffering does not come easy. We have to work for it AND in it.
We have to condition ourselves daily to withstand the suffering we intend to feel on race day. There’s a certain fight that comes with a finish line and the goals that really elevate us require an equal level of suffering.
We’ve got to learn how to suffer in training so our bodies and brains know how to suffer on race day. There are several ways in which suffering shows up:
Feeling unmotivated or unable to successfully complete a session (especially if it’s a difficult one!) and doing it anyway
Dealing with overall body fatigue from training or racing
Coping with expectations of self and disappointment from not hitting certain intervals or goals for sessions
Experiencing the physical exertion burn or lactic acid build up
Notice above how two are related to physical and two are related to mental - at first glance. In reality, all four are mental challenges.
Endurance sports are physically grueling because they ask us to push our bodies in crazy ways for hours on end. When was the last time you considered the same for your mind? Your body will only do what your mind tells it to, which means you are limited physically by what you are willing to experience mentally.
We are capable are pushing limits if we are willing to push those limits. When you open yourself up to learning how to push past preconceived limitations, you will watch the magic unfold within you and on the race course.
INTERESTED IN LEARNING MORE ABOUT WHAT IT TAKES TO HAVE A PERFORMANCE MINDSET?
