Learning to Suffer

Sprints, when you race at your limit, are a short session of very intense pain.

One way to get a feel of whether or not you are racing at the limit, is during every event (swim, bike, AND run)  you should be going at about the effort level where you feel that you could barely hold the pace for another mile. Then, when you get to that next mile, you tell yourself, "OK, I just gotta hold this pace for 1 more mile.

Rinse. repeat.

If you have truly gone at 110%, then, you when cross the finish, you should barely have the strength to walk out of the finish chute.

I found this funny because I posted nearly the same thing over a year ago, except it was in reference to 5Ks and 10Ks. 

So...

Dig deep.

Don't stop short of pushing yourself past a certain level of discomfort.

Staying above LT is very uncomfortable so it really is determined by now much you can tolerate mentally.

It is supposed to hurt.  And don't be afraid to let it hurt a little bit more.

Here's a quote for you:

"If I am still standing at the end of the race, hit me with a board and knock me down, because that means I didn’t run hard enough" – Steve Jones

Short answer, yes.

I've been training with the fastest guys in my age group, and I've learned that I train just as hard as they do, but their level of effort on race day is on a different level.  They're pacing themselves to either finish fast or not finish at all. 

It takes a lot of drive to be able to dig in to that point, but it's been my primary focus for this year.  I can do it on the bike, but the run after is where I begin to falter.

The body can only do so much physically either for intensity or duration. If you go passed that point, it shuts down. Then you know. The mind is always the hardest challenge.

I know that I do not like being in the pain zone. I know that is where most of my improvements will come from. It always blew me away back in the day of Mt. bike racing watching Ned Overend. His competition would talk about his ability to suffer was legendary. That pulling up next to him on the starting line was almost demoralizing. They knew that in order to have any chance to win that day, they would have to suffer more than him. That always amazed me. The mental aspect of physical competition.

These are simply fantastic questions, and they address our primary limiter.

How does one learn to access their current physical capabilites? 

In my opinion there are two predominant processes to access the limit of your physical capabilities:

1. Intellectual or cognative processing: This is the process of gathering data such as our max heart rate and anaerobic threshold. With this data you can know empiracally what your physiological capabilities are. It's data- a math problem. Black and white. You can only process so many milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute (your VO2 max), you can only maintain that work load as long as your glycogen stores hold out. If your concious brain were taken out of the equation, this is the work your body has the mechanical/biological capability to perform. It's your limit.

Now, this data can be changed through the process of training and adaptation, but at any given moment, it is a finite set of values. Knowing those values is important since it provides a calibration of what our capabilities are. We push against those. They keep us honest.

2. Emotional/psychological motivation. This has been a mysterious area, but with biofeedback experiments and psychological testing of athletes it has become less mysterious. We're starting to understand what enables one athlete to easily access all of their physical capabilities consistently, while others seem to struggle with inconsistent performances. Athletes who can consistently perform at or near their physiological limits have acheived what psychologists refer to as an "optimal state of arousal". Athletes are neither too nervous nor too relaxed. They are free from extraneous anxiety, "in the moment" and focused on the task at hand. No more. No less. Optimal attentiveness, optimal arousal.

One huge limiter for most recreational endurance athletes is anxiety. Athletes cognatively and subconciously use portions of their brain to process concerns about embarrassment, failure, drowning or other negative ramifications of a performance. Elites don't do this while they are performing. They maydo it to a degree before hand, but it is the old cliche we hear so often after a great performance, "Once the gun went off, I just did what I do and it all fell into place."

Using some type of proactive strategy such as visualization, meditation, sports psychology or other active means of moderating anxiety is the greatest thing a recreational athlete can do to improve both their performance and enjoyment of the sport. Forget disk wheels, power meters, coaches and aero bikes. If you can have a once-a-month session with a formally trained sports psychologist the benefits will be enormous.

What really happens if you push it too hard? 

If you are healthy, the physiological "circuit breakers" trip and shut you down. You have to slow down- you are forced to. You can't process oxygen and waste gasses fast enough so your vision narrows, your cognitive processes diminish and you involuntarily slow down.

There are instances of athletes "swimming into the hole" so to speak. At a Navy school in Coronado, California one requirement is for candidates to swim 50 meters underwater holding their breath. It is not uncommon for determined candidates to "swim into the hole" and black out underwater, only to be pulled out by one of the instructors. These candidates usually go on to enforce a physiological adaptation that, if they are close to having the physical capability, they eventually pass the test. They have learned to cognatively push beyond their physiological boundaries where they will, by virtue of the laws of physology, shut down. They are free from anxiety and limitations imposed by their mind. They can push to- and into- their physiological limits to absolute failure.

How many races/years does it take to learn to push beyond our mental limits?  Must one be prepared to fail in order to improve?

If you aren't healthy, if you have a physical or physiological problem, there could be serious medical ramifications. People die. They have strokes, they have other catastrophic medical events when something simply "breaks" in them and forces a genuine medical epsode. I had a stroke during a run due to a birth defect in my heart. After nearly 300 hundred triathlons I had learned to access the upper limits of my physiological capabilities rather easily. One day something broke.

How many races/years does it take to learn to push beyond our mental limits?

One race.

If you make the concious decision to perform optimally you will. The problem is, this in an ellusive concept. It takes most people time to learn the concept and practice it to optimal result. As a culture, we tend to focus on external things; gadgets, another athlete, perceived limitations, the quality of a given course. We don't focus on our own capabilities within ourselves. If we focused on what we can do internally, we would be more apt to do it- to access our resources.

Bottom line: acknowledging limitations does not contribute to advancing your capabilities within a finite task. Only acknowledging your capabilities advances your performance.

Must one be prepared to fail in order to improve?

Since we're human, we have a tendency to fail occasionally. We can limit that through different strategies and tactics, but we are ultimately still fallable.

The greatest athletes have shown some form of coping mechanism for failure and adversity. It varies from athlete to athlete, but the common thread is they proactively decide to recover, to reengage, to do better. They decide. They don't let setbacks beat them.

Do we need to fail? I'll argue absolutely no. Do we fail? Well, yes. Do we need to develop the resilience to absorb and adapt after failure? Yes, absolutely. And this metric or ability frequently determines how well we perform as an athlete and in life.

Great posts above.  I don't have much to add, but a coworker of mine has an email signature I really like:

"You cannot succeed until you aren't afraid to fail".   One could write volumes on that, imo.

My simple thought is I try not to listen to muscular pain, joint pain and cardiac arrhythmia gets recognition. Compete till you puke at the finish, certainly.

At the finish, if I feel that I left 100% of my energy on the course,(I am not going to get into 110% no such thing), I did what my body will let me.  You have physical ability(training/genetics), energy reserve, and your ability to handle pain.

All other nonsense exist in peoples minds,  when you reach muscle failure that is all you can do.  I can always improve when I hit cardiac and muscle failure limits by pushing those limits in training. 

If you bonk, it's a strategy issue.

At my first tri, I saw some guys really pushing the finishes, and the guys really racing to win have amazing depth in their fitness and energy stores, but if they are able to kick it in the last 300M of the run, why did they not expend the energy earlier in the course?

Maybe I don't have enough tri experience to comment but I did compete a lot as a youth(swimming & running in HS, rowing in College), I learned to compete with myself at the top of my level regardless of who I am racing against, and if it gets me hardware great if not, train harder, but you only regret your finish if you have something left. 

I have competed since age 6 thru age 22, never had that mental snap or what ever that allowed me to finish unusually fast considering my past times. I have dropped times, but mostly with a direct relation ship to my training regimen.  I had a round of golf where I was in the zone, but I don't think that translates the same.  I have seen some people do it in an endurance/speed competition and it is an amazing sight. 

Well said.

If you "kick it in", then start it at 2 miles from the finish and leave nothing on the course.

If you've got the energy to kick at 300m, then you probably weren't going fast enough.

I agree with what Scout said and Tom implied:  don't think of shutting down due to fatigue as failure.  Think of it as learning.

But here's the thing:  I believe that many many AGers do not push nearly as hard as they can.  I believe that many AGers 'shut down' before they really need to.

I don't have any good evidence for this belief, just casual observation of others and my own experience (it took a while to learn that what I thought was 'the limit' is not even close).  When I watch the finish line at races, it just seems to me that many people have not really pushed.  Of course, maybe that's not their agenda, which is fine.

One relatively safe way to learn what true 'shut-down' feels like is to do intervals (swim, bike or run, doesn't matter -- swim is safest).  Do hard, short (like 100m repeats in the pool) intervals with only a little rest.  Choose an interval that you are confident you can hit for at least 5 repetitions.  Then continue until you simply cannot make the interval.  This takes a lot of mental strength and determination.  If you don't find yourself struggling physically AND mentally, you didn't go hard enough.  If you do it right, you will, I bet, discover that you can complete more than you thought.

Then the trick, of course, is to figure out how to get to that point just as you cross the finish line...

Sometimes strategy plays a role, especially if, for whatever reason (the win, or just because) one person has decided that beating another is more important than time.  I have a pretty good finishing kick.  Unless I know that a competitor whom I wish to beat also has a good kick, I may choose to run with him until I'm ready to kick.

ETA:  oops -- cross posted with Scout's post above.  I would amplify the physiological point -- the kick is largely anaerobic, and you can afford to go anaerobic at the end of a race, not so much in the middle.

Interesting. I think each person may differ here. And I may be really wrong in my approach so far. 

What I been told and read in was to have a high cadence and short steps, reduces fatigue and injury. I always kind of weighed my current energy vs distance left and tried adjusted my cadence accordingly.  

If I am reading you right, changing stride length at a known distance from finish where ~you feel you've got no more left~ may actually tap some muscle stores that may not be close to failure? Do you have some sort of method to train this(probably fartleks/Indians?)  Do you train for this or does it always just work that way for you?

I know I could not extend my legs for that final sprint if I tried. Did I do it wrong, or was it incorrect/ wrong/not enough training?

I have to think a little more on my strategy/training.  

Does having that ability(saving the energy store) to output an anaerobic burst mean that you have made the correct decision or erred in your strategy of a distance race?  Is the end of the race more important than its duration?

Say if i have perfectly paced myself, expending all that I think I had, knowing that a bonk is coming up at the finish, would the anaerobic pocket of energy be there, and I just haven't had the pain threshold to access it?

I am not trying to argue with anyone, this is of interest to me.

It depends. And opinions vary.

In bicycle racing it is common for U.S. races to end in a field sprint. In Europe it is quite rare except for very flat races or other events that organically prevented breakaways.

In Chris McCormack's new book, I'm Here to Win he talks about doing his racing out on the course- not leaving it to the run, not conserving- but racing guts out. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails- and McCormack is testimony to both in Hawaii. The lesson of his racing doctrine is that, for the most part, an assertive race strategy does work.

My opinion is it is better to leave your legs on the course with a hard effort than to keep something in the tank for the finish. Finishing fresh limits your options tactically. Exerting control of the race on the course forces your adversaries to react to your strategy and tactics.

Now, realistically, in U.S. age group racing I frankly don't know where I am or how I'm doing in a given race. The dude 10 seconds in front of me has some black stuff smeered on his right calf I can barely read. He may be in my age category, he may not. I can't tell until I see the results. So I can't take the chance. If it is a male within 20 years of my age I have to catch him. Simple.

The last race I did I crossed the finish line first overall- first finisher in (it was a super small local race). I was third overall but won my age category. On the run, out front I was just thinking, "Well, I better keep the power on because some guy in a wave behind me may be beating my three seconds right now..."

Not sure if I know what too much is, but I know when there is no more to give.

Last year at the Philly Marathon I had trained for a Boston qualifying time. This was my turning-50 goal. Had two great training buddies pace me. We ran at 7:50 for the first 12 miles and I had to hit the porta-potty. Spent a lot of energy catching back up and skipped water and gatorade stations through mile 16. At mile 18 I bonked, first time in my life, and I've been running since 18. Now I know how it feels, and it isn't fun. Pace dropped to 9min and I watched a 3 minute cushion start to vanish, quickly. Walked the next station to down gatorade and eat a gel, and assess. Told myself  "If I can hold 8:30 I can still do this. The last 4 miles are home turf, you've run this a hundred times".

I can say at that point this is where the race becomes 100% mental toughness. If I would have thought about how I felt physically there was no logic in continuing. I managed a weak sprint the last 1/2 mile to run down the chute and BQ by 2 mins.  About 10 mins later I was entirely cramped up and in incredible pain due to my own stupidity.Fortunately I have great running friends and one of them got me a bottle of gatorade and bananas. It still took 30 mins to walk the 3 blocks to my house!

Note: As I was coming out of the chute a paramedic stopped me and asked if I was OK. I said sure and walked on. ANOTHER paramedic stops me and asks the same question. I'm like "what's going on?" I find my running club friend who is giving out the medals. He looks at me and goes: "Do you realize you have blood running down your chin?" I bit my lip and didn't even know it! My response was "Get a picture."

Thanks you all for the excellent answers! Good links and very enlightening thread on race strategy.

I had misinterpreted "Bonk", which what your describing is something that is pretty close to heatstroke in symptomatically, but maybe not at the cell level. 

I was using it more in a way meaning I have nothing left to give at this point other than a waddle to the cooler. Not sure of the term I should use now for maximum physiologically safe effort.

Bonking or 'hitting the wall' usually refers to running out of muscle and liver glycogen. You can suffer through that, you do not ever mess with heat stroke.

I agree that if you don't know where you are in the race, you just go for optimal pacing.  There's really no reason to do otherwise.  OTOH, if your goal is to win, what is 'better' is what works.  I've been in situations (example, a 5K a couple of months back) where I knew exactly where I was in the race (in the example, battling for 1st masters, not overall) and believed based on what I was seeing that I could not simply outrun the guy, but could quite possibly out-kick him.  So I focused only on keeping him reeled in and then kicked and won by 2s.  I'm happy with that decision.  Of course, maybe I was wrong and would have won by 10s had I just gone harder from the point (around half way) at which the situation became clear.

Of course, we are all familiar with more spectacular examples of elite races that are 'jog-and-kick'.  It can be a legitimate racing strategy in the right circumstances.