With so many new members of Cypress Running Club, and so many training programs beginning in July, August and September, we’ll be passing along occasional tips and insights that may help new or returning runners survive the initial shock of training.
One of the side benefits of athletic training is an increase in your ability to tolerate discomfort. A recent study by researchers at the University of Heidelberg found that endurance athletes “have consistently higher pain tolerance in comparison to normally active adults.” Interestingly, training has no discernible impact on pain threshold, which is the point at which a stimulus is perceived as painful. Thus, other activities that we associate with pain – a trip to the dentist, for example – may become more tolerable thanks to endurance training.
When you’re watching the Olympics in July and August, bear in mind that the athletes you are watching are not experiencing less pain, they have simply learned to master the pain or ignore it. A quote I’ve been carrying around the last few weeks reinforces this point: “Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory.”