Where do the limits *really* lie?

[trailgumby]

Interesting article from Bicycling Magazine on training, racing and suffering.

http://m.bicycling.com/training-nutriti ... ndent-pain

A bit of an eye opener for me. I've perhaps not been pushing myself hard enough when training.

[Oxford]

I always thought I had a high threshold for pain, not being able to take many typical drugs like opiates such as morphine, codeine, pethidine etc mean that often pain is something you need to embrace. I confirmed my threshold barrier some years ago when I broke my ribs in a 12 hour MTB race (4hrs into the race). my race manager a good friend and intensive care doctor assured me at the time my ribs were not broken, so I raced on taking just paracetamol and ibuprofen under his direction. did I mention I was riding an SS, solo? I came third in age class competing against the gearies, then my race manager let me know my ribs were broken. I can assure you racing SS with broken ribs for 8 hrs is a new level/limit of pain. almost nothing is hard now.

[Nobody]

We had two MTB club uphill races in one day. The first one others laughed at me because I stopped and threw up almost half way up the hill. Second race. Realizing I couldn't pace myself, I sat behind the leaders then pulled out and sprinted at the end. Then threw up.

I think I saw my limits that day.

[toolonglegs]

Good read, thanks.

http://m.jap.physiology.org/content/108/1/98.long
Dull the pain... Reap the rewards.
I haven't actually tried it but matches up with the article.

[justalf]

There's a line to be drawn here. We all take drugs and all drugs are poisons, its just the quantity that differs. At some point we learn that 2 paracetomol to dull the pain is one thing, but taking them before you start hurting could be over the line.

[toolonglegs]

UCI & WADA draw the line... people just chose how close they go to it ( or over it ).

[justalf]

Maybe on my next commute I'll try to get close to the UCI line. Anything to get to work quicker!

[toolonglegs]

I hear motors in the seat tube dull the pain a fair bit .

[justalf]

Yes, but a motor + panadeine Forte = even less pain.
Now I need to add drugs to my bike budget!

[ozstriker]

So we all have the ability to go harder but the the better you are the less you have to suffer hmmmm

I'm confused isn't that what we have known all along

[ft_critical]

Thanks for that TG. When I was a swimmer....
I swam two lengths of a 50 metre pool under water. It was late autumn and I did it alone in the outdoor pool, unsupervised.
As I touched at 50m, my lungs were reverberating, I was desperate for oxygen. My legs were screaming at me. But I thought I would just do a few more strokes and come up.
Then a strange thing happened. My lungs stopped that weird reverberation, my muscles stopped screaming. From about 75m I was swimming fast and calmly.
I touched at 100m and thought, wow, should I do more. Luckily I decided that was enough. I came up calmly and took a breath. I have seen asthmatics take Ventolin (sp?) and their lungs seem to burst out in their chest. This happened to me and… And my god, a headache that lasted for three days.
It was clear to me then, as now, that had I continued that I would have blacked out and died. But peacefully, not suffering. It was an incredible experience. But I would never repeat it because it was so frightening to realise I could overpower all my body’s natural responses with willpower. And that I had done it completely alone.
I haven’t experienced anything similar on the bike. Swimming is not as sensory as cycling; there is less to block out, it is much easier to focus fully.

[cyclotaur]

Thanks for that TG. When I was a swimmer....
<weird story>....

I used to swim laps at lunchtimes in an indoor pool at a private school. Usually very few people about. After a few laps I would lose count and just follow the line, very meditative until something else intervened - eg. a splash from another swimmer, people on the pool deck etc. Sometimes I would swim on way past my planned number of laps and I could only work out how far I'd swum by how long I'd been swimming. Sometimes the distances I did surprised me (40-50 laps), but I felt no different from when I'd swum the planned 20-25 laps. And I had no particular memory of the time - just a big empty blank.

Same thing happened a few times when running - suddenly you snap out of the reverie and wonder how you got there, with no memory of the last few kms at all, having crossed main roads and negotiated all sorts of twists and turns - A great feeling, like a dream. And the times were always good when that happened, and no after effects.

Couldn't possibly do it on a bike !!

[ColinOldnCranky]

Over 60 years I have had a few moments of the sort of pain that induces you to vomit or buckle at the knees.

Some years back I was lifting what was considered to be a large screen TV at the time - Something like a 90cm screen. It was before flat screen LCDs and the like and so it was a heavy and awkward brute to handle.

It was worth something over three grand,a lot now and even more back then.

Anyway, I felt a sharp pain accompanied by an unravelling sort of sound emanating from the left shoulder. I was tearing my left long-head bicep away from the bone. OOOUUUUCHH!

But there was NO WAY I was gonna put that TV down except in the most gentle and least destructive manner possible. Sure it hurt a lot. But so does the loss of three grand. The TV survived and I lost one bicep muscle.

A few years later I tore off the right bicep.

Dislocating a shoulder is pretty painful and I have done it three times. It was put back in place insitu each time without anaesthesia. The third time I put it back in place myself (after all I had seen it done twice before). The alternative was to leave my car in a sheep paddock for several weeks if I could not drive out of there.

Yep - putting my shoulder back in place, that's about as much as I want to handle.

After these and a few other incidents I have concluded that, where there is a need I have a strong capacity to work thru extreme pain. Yet where that need is not apparent I will very quickly down whatever I am doing and scream bloody murder to get assistance on less severe injury than other people. Just ask my wife.