Alan Culpepper specifically incorporates the discomfort into his pre-race visualizations. For him, this is about addressing the fear of pain, about knowing and accepting that it s going to hurt pretty early on. If it s not hurting, you re not working as hard as you re supposed to be. Before a competition, he will create a counter-message focused on his physical training miles run, difficult workouts completed that reminds him why he can achieve the goal he has set for that day. Then, when his body inevitably tells him to stop, he trumps that message with his mind s assessment of what he can accomplish.
Some athletes turn their pain into a weapon.
Adopting a sort of reverse psychology, they will use their own discomfort to gauge what the runners around them must be feeling and then push harder to make them hurt more. Similarly, Plumer recalls longtime coach Brooks Johnson telling her, Pain is your friend. To her, this meant that when race day rolled around, You want to throw down the gauntlet and challenge everyone else to deal with it the way that you do. The Warrior Spirit To best understand how to deal with pain, our natural tendency is to look to those who have experienced the most success. In distance running circles, that means studying the Kenyans.