Pain loses a lot of its power when you change its name. It sounds like a good way to cope, but you're actually surrendering control. Pain becomes something done to you instead of something you're doing to yourself. You need to be the master. It's similar to the tactic of going to the front at the start of a climb rather than just trying to hang on and let others dictate the pace.
All successful cyclists have their own gambits for coping with pain.
King concentrates on short-term goals such as getting to the top of the next climb or surviving another lap of a criterium. As you might expect from a topic as slippery as pain, though, there appears to be an exception to the disassociation rule. Studies suggest that ignoring pain may actually be best for intense efforts of, say, one minute or less, according to Brad Hatfield, Ph.D., sports psychologist at the University of Maryland. It's when pacing becomes important that disassociation becomes maladaptive. He cautions that this may not work for everyone, especially elite athletes whose extraordinary efforts require special focus.