Pain

I read an article about pain in the new "Running Times" and it's a pretty good article. It discusses how the top runners in the sport deal with pain during a race and their different perspectives are pretty interesting. The Japanese runners use gaman which is the Japanese concept of enduring pain with dignity and grace. I know that most people don't like to deal with that amount of pain, but I guess the Japanese like to see how much they can endure. Other runners talk about breaking the race into segments so you just have to deal with the pain in shorter amounts of time thus making the race go by faster. The African runners talk about relying on their strength that they get from religion. Haile Gebrselassie (WR holder in the marathon) talks about accepting the pain rather than fighting it.

It's a pretty good article. Maybe I'll start thinking about Gaman instead of getting nervous and dreading a hard workout before I even start it. I have witnessed several swimmers on my team phych them selves out before a hard workout just because the set "looks hard." And I know that I've done this myself. I tell myself that it's going to hurt, and I give in to the pain and end up not having a good workout. If I could just not think about the workout, and do it, then I would be much better off, along with a few other people that I know.

Anyways, training has been going pretty good. My running feels really good as of lately. I have had a few faster paced runs which were unplanned. I would just feel good and pick up the pace for no reason, and finish the run feeling like I didn't try that hard. I did a 5 mile fartlek yesterday which was unplanned and I ended up running the 5 miles in 28:10 which I feel is pretty good for the time of year. My swimming has been hit and miss, but my bad days I'm still holding a decent pace that I couldn't have held in past years, so I know that I'm getting faster in the water, I just really dislike those slow days.

I hit just under 50 miles last week and will be around 55 miles for this week. My swimming yardage has been higher than usual, but it'll probably take a little hit over the next 2 weeks with a big swim meet at our pool this weekend, and Thanksgiving next weekend. But with these breaks in swimming, I'm going to start biking.

My first swim meet as a coach starts tomorrow. We are hosting our annual Autumn Classic this weekend and the kids are swimming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I'm looking forward to watching them swim. And several of them found my blog this week and wanted shout outs. Kelsey Mclaughlin, Caroline Jacobs, and Casey Ren are three of the girls that I'll be watching swim this weekend. Good luck girls.

T-Bird