For me, there's nothing more special than tip-toeing the line between outright brutality and mere punishment. \u00a0Pushing the limits of pain tolerance flushes any other misery from my body. \u00a0Even that persistent hamstring and glute pain becomes muted when masked by the sweet misery of lactic acid induced suffering. \u00a0And that self-inflicted suffering is only fuel for the machine, creating a craving for pain that can only be satiated by the next climb. \u00a0It's a bizarre sickness that can only be cured with prodigious amounts of self-inflicted anguish and it's a monster that constantly needs to be fed.<\/p>\n
Maybe it's the cleansing feeling of punishing your body in search of personal glory. \u00a0Perhaps shattering your group as the road winds uphill is the motivation that leads you to drink from the chalice of agony. \u00a0Or maybe it's just a twisted feeling of satisfaction knowing that you've pushed the boundaries of physiology beyond what your body (and brain) thinks is acceptable.<\/p>\n
The only answer to that question lies within each of us: as humans, as cyclists, as masochists. \u00a0We can only answer as to the nature of pain in our own mind.<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[dc]P[\/dc]ain is an interesting, often elusive and sometimes debilitating creature. \u00a0Almost always negative in connotation, it denotes a kind of suffering, either physical or mental, as a result of some assault upon our body or mind. \u00a0As human beings, we associate pain with misery, with suffering, with disability and typically strive to avoid it wherever possible. \u00a0However odd it may seem, athletes in general (and cyclists in particular) seem to live for the rush of agony that often accompanies competition. But why? \u00a0What is it about this universally negative condition that drives some of us to seek it out while the majority of the population tries to escape it? What, really, is the nature of pain?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[60,178,68],"yst_prominent_words":[],"wppr_data":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2188"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwind-coaching.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}