I’ve never climbed the Galibier, the Tourmalet, or the 21 switchbacks of Alpe d’Huez. And as I watch the suffering of the Tour de France, I can’t wrap my head around doing it day after day.
That said, I’ve felt that pain.
That deep tissue burn. The taste in your mouth as you will your body to keep going. Often, when I’m running and I feel that, I let myself off. I walk. That’s the joy and my weakness in running, I guess. That at any moment, you can walk. It allows me to relieve the suffering.
While on the bike, it doesn’t happen like that. Part of it is because it is usually when going up hill. You can’t just shut it down. So, I do as Jens Voigt does…I tell them, “Shut up legs.”
It’s that moment when mind trumps body. You keep spinning the pedals. You open the mouth and call for more air. You get out of the saddle and dig deeper. It’s the pursuit of learning to suffer.
I haven’t mastered it yet, I’m still working on it.
But, every day on the bike, the voice in my head gets louder. My body gets a little quieter. My mind doesn’t need to shout it, quite as loudly.
And I guess that’s what training is all about, quieting the body, strengthening the mind, determining which one is in control.
Right on. Your mindset can determine your success running. Hill running I try to have a positive outlook and tell myself that I like them. Most of the time it carries over. I get a little smile when the pain comes because I know my legs will want to stop. I often have different mantras that run through my head. Sometime it is “run tall, relax, run forward… breathe”. Sometimes it is “one day I won’t be able to do this, today is not that day”. Other times it is exactly oddly enough “shut up legs, I am in control”. At the top I often proclaim that I want some more, I want some more, or “thank you sir, may I have another. Most of the time I think I believe it.
I find it fascinating that you embrace the suffering on the bike, but the run gets you. The strength of mind is there, you just have to convince your legs that the mind is strong on the run.
Paddling upriver provides a lot of great opportunities and motivation to keep going past where you want to stop. If you take a moment’s break, the “hill” will sweep you back down to where you started and you have to fight your way back up.