Fast stuff hurts. Fast stuff hurts more than the long stuff. With long stuff, the pain creeps in slowly and you have time to adjust to the burn. With fast stuff, it hurts from the sound of the gun, and there is no break. Discussions of endurance sports always bring up the subject of suffering and/ or pain. How can you push yourself harder, faster? Do you even want to? A fair number of people race for the social aspect, or for fitness, or to achieve personal goals. I think I fall into the third category, racing for personal goals. In a long distance event, a marathon or Ironman, it's fairly easy to take off a chunk of time with lots of hard work in training. With a short distance event, a 5k or a sprint triathlon, it becomes more and more difficult to take time off. Sometimes even seconds are hard to gain. But willingness to hurt goes a long way toward reaching goals in any event, but particularly the short ones.
I have been thinking about pain a lot this weekend. A good friend of mine unexpectedly lost his 20 year old son, Brian, on Wednesday. He is suffering beyond what I can even comprehend. Today, Tom Meyerhoff raced his first triathlon, in Sally Meyerhoff Foundation gear. It's been only a few short months since his daughter was taken from him. He survives one day at a time. These losses will never be replaced. Tomorrow, another friend is taking her two year old daughter to undergo surgery to fix a birth defect in her spine. While I pray that the surgery will be successful, I know that my friend has suffered over the last several months waiting for this day to arrive.
I grew up going to church every week. And while I don't go regularly anymore, I do carry my faith with me wherever I go. (Actually I think I talk to God more while running than I ever did sitting in a church pew.) One of the most powerful sermons I ever heard during my years of attending church was about suffering. We all experience pain (emotional or physical). In this sermon, we were encouraged to offer up our suffering as a sacrifice, so that someone else might be spared. I think of this often when I have a migraine headache, or back when I had a running- related injury and felt the emotional trauma of being unable to run. I try to offer up a few words of prayer and ask that someone else be spared pain today while I am managing my headache.
Today, I raced Nathan's Sprint Triathlon. I decided I would go hard from the gun. My heart rate has never been so high for so long. I hurt. Every pedal stroke burned in my quads. By the time I got to the run, I felt like I was crawling. Not one person passed me on the bike. And only one person passed me on the run. Every time I thought about letting up, I thought about my friends who don't get the choice to let up on the pain. They just have to endure. And I kept pushing hard. All the way to the finish. Out of 181 women, I finished second.
When I train, Sally's motto (Be Relentlessly Positive) encircles my wrist on a little pink bracelet. Today, with a red wristband, I raced for Brian. I raced today for the experience that he doesn't get to have. I hurt today to take away even a moment of pain from my friend who is lost without him. I was strong today for my friend so that tomorrow when it counts, she will be strong too.
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