The Problem of Pain

I was tired. It was a hot morning and, as I reached a drink station toward the end of the Royal National Park Triathlon, one of Sydney's more difficult events, I was happy to exchange insults with the crew manning it to divert my mind from what was happening to my body. "Here's a man who likes pain," said one of them. "He's still cracking jokes."

Well, I don't know about that but there are different types of pain and they affect people in different ways.
A couple of years ago when my wife, Lynne, and I were out training for a long triathlon, we had almost completed a 120 kilometre ride when I fell.
I left a fair amount of skin on the road but, as part of our purpose was transition training – that is, accustoming the legs to running after a long, hard ride – I decided to run first and dress the abrasians later. I pulled on a pair of Nikes and only six or seven minutes after crashing was out on the road again for my normal eight kilometre circuit.
I hadn't expected to do well and was pleased to find that I ran the course two minutes faster than usual. It shouldn't have been surprising, given the obvious input of adrenalin, but I wonder if it points to an oversight on the part of triathlon organisers?
Would competitors appreciate a "crash area" at the end of the cycle leg where they could hurl thselves to the asphalt in painful seclusion to stimulate their adrenalin flow and get hyped up for the run?

Lynne rides the rollers – the electric fan is a must!

When Lynne was recovering from the accident described in "Bicycles, Bumps & Bandages" she regained her riding fitness on a set of rollers set up in the lounge room doorway.
Most people find this a boring way to train but they didn't have the kind of entertainment she enjoyed. The kids soon discovered that she was building up a significant charge of static electricity by cycling above a nylon carpet and took turns to sneak up behind her and zap her on the leg. She yelled a bit, even swore a bit, but never lost her rhythm or balance.
In a darkened room you can actually see a spark jump between leg and finger. Try it some time – if you like living dangerously.

My most troublesome injury came from running—and stupidity!
We planned to compete in the Great Lakes Ironman Triathlon at Forster and while training for it I ran three marathons in three months. I ran a personal best time in the first then shaved a whopping ten minutes off that in the second. During that race I injured my foot but decided to keep training. Consequently I struggled through the third event and the pain became a permanent training companion.
The Iron Man was cancelled that year due to lack of a sponsor but I kept working that foot till the end of the triathlon season before going to see a doctor. So much for stupidity!
Following x-rays and a bone scan there was no clear indication of what was wrong so the sports specialist I consulted recommended physiotherapy and put me on crutches for a month.
Next morning I arrived at work to the hilarity of my friends who, for years, had been anticipating just such a situation. In response to their questions I remained silent and showed a card on which was written, "The bearer of this card is a deaf mute and doesn't have a clue what you just said." My workmate then came in for questions but he wrote out a card of his own. It said, "Yes I do know what's wrong with his foot but I have laryngitis." Somehow we both survived the day.

One of the interesting things about keeping the weight off your feet is the variety of methods available to move about. Hopping is a bit strenuous and can be fairly attention-grabbing but it will do at a pinch. Certainly I was forced to hop up the three sets of stairs at Central Railway Station. I'd hold the crutches in one hand, the hand rail in the other, and make like a kangaroo. By the time I got to the top I felt as though I'd just had a bout of coitus verticus but it wasn't nearly as much fun.
Typing chairs are best for moving around the office. I soon found that scooting around on a large, mobile, executive chair is something like driving a Toorak tractor (that's a four wheel drive if you're reading this outside Australia) compared to which the typing chair has speed, manoeuvrability and panache. Manufacturers have missed a great opportunity by failing to exploit the "sports chair" market.
The morning I returned to the real world I was walking to the station, crutches (being returned to Sydney Hospital) across my shoulder when I passed a couple of road workers. One of them saw me and called to his mate, "Hey, look at this! Here's a bloke who goes to work expecting the worst."

Seeing me back on my feet again the first thing the doctor did was ban me from resuming my lunchtime swim because I walked to far to get to the pool.Instead, he told me to stay in the office and read a book.
If you've ever had inactivity forced on you for any length of time you'll realise the psychological difficulties involved. I tried to resolve them by getting out my old chess books and preparing for a tournament, my first for years. When I told the doctor I had finally found something he couldn't stop me doing he responded, in all seriousness, "How far will you have to walk to get to the hall." That was the last straw and I realised it was time for us to have a trial separation.
The tournament lasted for nine weeks and proved to be a great substitute for lost activity but, by its conclusion, I had been unable to run or cycle for about eight months and was getting heavier and heavier. I've always been keen on the California diet (eat as much as you want, as often as you want, then burn off the kilojoules) but here I was eating like a triathlete but training to play chess. I was browned off.
Finally Lynne got sick of me moping around the house and ordered me out on a training run. It was painful for a while and the foot never did heal completely, but it felt great to be back.

So there are several types of pain. There's the "pain" of competition which is little more than discomfort; there's the pain of injury, not be be ignored; the pain, imaginery or otherwise, of trying to work or starve an unfit body back into shape; and the pain, real enough to those who experience it, of not being able to participate in the sport of their choice.

Maybe the volunteer at Audley wasn't too far off the mark when he said, "Here's a man who enjoys pain." Given the alternatives above, that's the kind of pain I would choose.

What about you?