There is no quick fix ...

Writen By: Simone Kay

Dr Lorimer Mosley from Neuroscience Research Australia says of pain:

"Pain is an unpleasant conscious experience that emerges from the brain when the sum of all the available information suggests that you need to protect a particular part of your body".

Week 3, Day 4, today I feel pain!

And I'll take my pain, mental, physical and emotional, and use it to help me build the resilience and strength I need to achieve my goal.

3 weeks in and the Coach set me a goal of 8 min/km for laps of a 1.2km hilly trail run on Tuesday.  Totally doable and after a slow warm up I achieved this for 3 of my first 4 km of my run.  Then, a throbbing message from my little toe on my right side told me it was time to slow down.  I had stubbed my toe on my run last week, and whilst it was still a little swollen there was no pain and it did not appear to be affecting my performance in other areas, hence I set out for my run.

I slowed down a little and changed my route to take out some of the intensity of the downhill running, but after less than another 1km my willing and eager mind could not override the innate wisdom of my body telling me to slow down now so that I don't have to stop completely later.

Today the physical pain means that my body simply needs more time to heal.  The tissues in my little toe are damaged, as indicated by the swelling and light bruising, and to put them under maximum load in uphill and downhill running right now would be foolish.  Definitely short term gain for long term pain.  My vision goes further than that.  This week I will focus on my strength and train hard inside the studio.

The mental pain is a different ball game.  

Focused on my strength and fully committed to giving my all to my training session I still found myself 'hindered' a little by the dull moanings of my little toe.  Exercises that would normally be a fun and enthusiastic challenge, suddenly came with the potential risk of further injury to my already sad little toe.   I was certainly stronger than in past workouts, and able to do more faster.  The mental challenge is that with 100% of my brain ready to go hard, my body was at 85%.  The consequence if I tried to match the two to the higher number could be dire, so mental challenge accepted, give 100% of that 85% and be satisfied.  Can it be done?

There are many different types of pain and equally as many interpretations of pain when one is training.  More than simply identifying the pain in training, it's important to be curious about the mesage it is giving us.  Dr Mosley also suggests that pain comes from our brain, the response to the assessment of all information available to determine whether something presents a danger and we should withdraw.  I know only that pain is a real sensation and curiosity around its meaning is critical to it's being benficial.

If you have pain, consider these questions:

Is the pain sharp, acute, demanding of your immediate attention?  What is it trying to tell you?

Is the pain constant, achey and dull, never letting you forget for a moment that it is there?  What is the message of this pain?

Is the pain intermittent, aggravated by certain movements or activities?  Do you have a habit that needs to stop?

The question of what pain is, what causes it and what can be done to remove it is not the intention of this blog post.  Rather I want to mention it to let you know that pain happens and pain has a purpose.  Sometimes it is to keep us safe physically; sometimes it is to help us defend our intellectual and emotional beings; sometimes it is simply to distract us from something that we just can't get excited about doing.

I'll take my pain, explore it's purpose and return stronger for the next leg of this so far very interesting journey.