Eddie O

I’ve been contemplating the things that I can control during a race and the list is rather short:

Attitude
Effort
Nutrition

Did I miss anything?

During my last race (Cowbell Challenge) I had a lot of time to think about pain, suffering and their effects on my attitude. Just prior to the race I was talking with my coach about a mediation session he had just been through where he tried sitting in a cross legged position throughout a 4 day retreat. He does not usually sit cross legged because he is not very flexible which makes doing so quite uncomfortable. During this conversation he told me that “pain is the mind’s reaction to a situation it does not want to be in.” I gave it some thought at the time, but didn’t really understand the meaning until I crashed during the Cowbell.

When I hit the ground there was pain, very acute pain. I thought I may have broken my leg, but was relieved when I was able to stand without the sharp pain that would indicate a fracture. So I remounted my bike and went on. For the next hour or so the acute pain that came with every pedal stroke subsided and a dull ache settled in. I became aware of the absencse of pain when I would push the pace or focus on spinning up a climb.

Later as I learned I was a lap up on second in my class my pace slackened and the pain on the upstroke returned. Why did it return then? I even began to wonder if I was doing more damage by continuing, but was not about to throw in the towel while I could still pedal….and certainly not while I was leading! I was conscious, though, that if I pushed the pace my leg didn’t hurt, so I did things like try pushing bigger gears and chase the team riders around the course. Still, at times when I was alone on the course the pain would return to my thoughts.

During the last two laps when I was aware that Rich Dillon was close to catching me the pain was gone. I was completely focused on racing again. It was not until I was off the bike and cleaning up that the pain returned again. It occurred to me that I had been without pain for the last hour and half and I wanted to be able to be that way for the entire race. I could have done at least one more lap had I been more focused my racing rather then the pain in my leg.

On Monday I was discussing all of this again with my coach. He is very good at helping me hash out these kind of thoughts and we agreed that there is a difference between pain and suffering. Pain is much less controllable, such as the moment of impact when I crashed. Even the greatest Zen master would have felt that one. What is controllable is the suffering that follows. When I focused on the pain there was continued pain. I define that as suffering. Just by being conscious of the ache in my thigh seemed to make it worse. When I focused on racing, nothing hurt. Had I not truly wanted to race in the first place, the suffering surely would have take priority and I would have been drinking a beer at noon.

I’m not always in control of my focus during a race, but now that I know that I can be hopefully I’ll be able to work toward that kind of mental control.

Eddie O

This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 12:07 am and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.