COACHING
TRAINING
Higher Pain , More Gain
Teaching your body and mind to go through the pain barrier is part of the secret to running success , if you are chasing faster times .
– BY RAY ORCHISON , REGISTERED COACH
A
few years back I entered and trained for my first international marathon and felt confident that I could run a 2:48 PB . Unfortunately , after five days of doing the tourist thing , I lined up at the start with extremely fatigued calves , but I still set out at my initially planned race pace . Everything felt surprisingly good … until the 8km mark , when the fatigue caused by exercise I was not used to resulted in me tearing my soleus muscle .
At first I thought it was just a spasm , but after two stops to try and massage the spasm out , I began to wonder how I would get back to the start without any cash and surrounded by people who spoke only German . At that point I decided that I had not done all the training and flown halfway across the world to quit , so I pushed the pain out of my mind and eventually finished in 2:57 . However , the instant I finished , my body and mind were flooded with unbearable pain , making it near impossible for me to walk !
All in the Mind
I learnt an invaluable lesson during that marathon : We can endure far more pain then we think – and I ’ m not talking about doing stupid things like pushing through a marathon with a torn soleus , I ’ m talking about that familiar pain when we are pushing our own personal boundaries . Athletes who want that PB badly enough and are willing to push themselves through the pain of lactic acid and other metabolic waste build-up , are the ones who will ultimately achieve that PB .
Tim Noakes refers to the ‘ Central Governor ’ in our brain , which keeps an eye on all the systems and functions of the body and protects us from physically harming ourselves , using a built-in early warning system to stop us long before we reach our breaking point . Signals of pain are sent to the brain to slow us down or stop us , so that our bodies can return to what I call the comfort zone … but there are unfortunately no PB ’ s to be found in the comfort zone . Therefore , in order to achieve our best , we have to go beyond the comfort zone in progressive , planned training , because the human body has an amazing capacity to adapt to gradual increases in physiological stress , which teaches both the mind and body to handle pain .
However , I do not believe that teaching your body and mind to deal with pain requires only hard , muscle-breaking workouts . The sessions that have had the biggest impact in my own training are the ones I ’ ve stuck to as planned . Just getting through a hard session after a long hard day , when I ’ ve just wanted to collapse on the couch in front of the TV , has gone a long way to help me push through moments of doubt and hurt when that PB is slipping from my grasp .
Images : Fotolia
BODY SCIENCE
Catching Some Sun
As runners , we spend a fair amount of time in the sun doing what we love most , so we need to be extra careful , but never forget that running in the sun also does your body good – if you get the right amount of sun – and can even help you run better . – BY SEAN FALCONER
In this day and age , we all know that we need to protect ourselves from the sun , because prolonged exposure can lead to painful sunburn , age spots and long-term damage , or in worst case scenarios , skin cancer . Runners are especially vulnerable to the ultraviolet ( UV ) rays of the sun , and a study published in Archives of Dermatology found that marathon runners tend to have more abnormal moles or age spots , putting them at higher risk of skin cancer . The researchers also found that besides sun exposure , training for marathons and ultras over an extended time period can lead to the immune system being suppressed , increasing an athlete ’ s vulnerability to skin damage .
However , getting some sun is vitally important to the body , for both your mental and physical health . For starters , your body produces more vitamin D when exposed to UVB rays , and not producing enough can lead to depression , bone fractures , hypertension , autoimmune diseases and cancer . Added to that , research from the UK shows that the skin houses large amounts of nitric oxide , which dilates blood vessels to reduce blood pressure and lower the risk of heart attack and stroke , and sunlight activates the nitric oxide so that it can do its job .
34 ISSUE 103 FEBRUARY 2018 / www . modernathlete . co . za