The masochist philosophy has always appealed to my senses. It’s the taking of pain – and not the sadist’s dishing of – by which you can measure yourself against all those you compete with. I’m thinking particularly of sports.
I have never enjoyed a sport that didn’t either largely depend on dealing with pain, or dealing out pain. Though, when I was younger I didn’t always actively pursue the pain.
I had one good x-country race when I was a (HS) Freshman. I went out hard – hard enough that there was no choice but to keep going hard until I could go no more. And I eventually slowed, but not before I destroyed the kid I was racing.
That was an unusual race for me. In practice I would train like a dog, I jumped into the team’s hard workouts with aplomb – dreading them for sure, but loving them all the same. But most of my races I would go into with the intention of running comfortably – comfortable to the point that I could run without breathing hard. I’m not sure why, other than being young I somehow was more taken by the idea of looking like I was barely working (and getting my ass kicked) than doing well but looking like I was reaching my physical limits.
So for most of the season, I went out at pedestrian pace. And because everyone else went out fast I played the role of cherry picker (if such a role exists, it sounds appropriate either way). At the end I’d sprint the last two or three hundred yards dead out and placed top 5’s mostly even so.
But my coach had told me before this particular race that the other school’s fastest JV runner was good; “He’s good,” he said. “But you’re better”. So when we were lining up at the starting line, me as our team’s only JV runner, against this kid and his 5 teammates, I was set on doing whatever it took for me to place first.
We set out at a hard pace, and I immediately maneuvered past his teammates and put myself alongside him as we came around the first bend. Whether because his teammates were egging him on to drop me and take it to me, we continued to drive the pace faster – each hoping to drop the other. It took me ½ mile to break him; I spent the rest of the race catching a glimpse of him at every turn I took but he never recovered enough to make up any ground on me.
That’s how I’d have liked to have raced all my races. And when I get the chance on my bike, that’s how I race now, and is how I will race when I pick up running again in a few years.
Most recreational riders who I meet don’t understand the competitive nature of cycling as a sport. They see me tear myself apart to reach the summit of a climb first and think it’s this childish desire to always be first. And I’m sure to some extent it is. “Don’t you ever just ride for fun?” they ask. Only, their idea of fun is my idea of torture. The most agonizing rides for me are the ones where you’re not punishing yourself. That’s not to say that I don’t occasionally enjoy taking someone out who’s in worse shape than me -- because honestly, there’s something enjoyable in introducing people to new rides and routes. But if I go out by myself and just dick around and pedal easy – if I’m ever climbing and putting out less than 300 watts with my pulse less than 170 – I’m either injured or seriously depressed.
Occasionally, my friends and I actually do agree to take it easy and just have a good time. But we never do. And if we started to I think we’d all stop riding.
Of course easy days are an essential part of any training regimen, so I do several short, easy, and flat rides every week. But they’re never fun and always require a great deal of discipline to get through.
So all this has taken me somewhere different than I was intending to go – and that is: is pain what makes the sport fun and the challenge worthwhile?
I played basketball with my co-workers last night. For some reason, people have always assumed I must love and be very good at basketball because I’m tall (but not bball player tall). Really, I’ve never liked basketball. Or football, or any other popular sports. My talent was hockey, at which I only ever met my match with a couple of players from the minors who were 6 years my seniors. But I never played basketball enough to enjoy its pain.
So I’m wondering why I enjoyed it last night, when I’m worse at the sport now than I would have been in HS. And I think it’s the pain factor. I went out and played in my puma h-streets, which if anyone has ever tried should know how much like wearing slippers they are. And so I have these huge blisters blah blah blah. But the pain of playing while feeling them form was terrible … and enjoyable. And the game itself worked me harder than I would have expected. So why was it never like that in PE?
I wonder if our HS basketball team had had anyone on it worth knowing, whether I’d have experience something of this like towards basketball sooner. Realistically, prob. not – there’s only so much time to spend on sports and I will always choose hockey, running, or biking over anything else. But maybe.
Lately though, I’ve enjoyed pretty much all forms of strain – from studying to learn new technologies, to new sports and their pain, to the old and tried pure forms found in my day to day biking.
In fact the only pain I absolutely despise is the pain that tells you you’re injured. That deep set, oftentimes dull pain that throbs and tells you you’re doing more damage with every pedal stroke. And with this, I’m convinced it’s purely psychological warfare – your body’s way of convincing you to quit even when you show it you don’t mind the pain; it’s there to remind you you’re making it worse. And from there it’s simply a matter of connecting the dots and understanding that any bit of pain you take in now, means potentially weeks in the future where you experience none because you’re off the bike and physically unable to ride. Screw that.
And dentists. Screw them and their drills too.