Submitting to the pain
A reminder to all committing to doing hard things this adventure season
Why is a mountaineer writing on a cycling publication?
‘Cus we all love suffering, and I’d like to talk to you all today about pain.
When I lived on Coronado Island in San Diego, where on the beaches aspiring Navy SEALS would try to endure the brutal Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training, my friend who was serving told me about the 40% rule SEALS live by.
I’ll paraphrase. Even when you are completely exhausted and simply can’t go on, your body is only 40% depleted; you can still push for another 60% before you expire.
You can apply this philosophy to anything.
Whether you’re riding 10 miles or 100, everyone eventually “feels the burn” and generally the focus is on powering through the anguish, overcoming and completing the ride.
But what I’ve seen in the climbing world and being around ultra athletes, bikers, triathlon-ers, runners, etc., all too often there has been a skipped step. A bit of mental preparation that needed to happen weeks before the 40% self-imposed torture limit.
And that step is about giving in and submitting.
Submission means you must give into the idea of torture. Every marathon runner or 200 km trail rider always has a story about when they hit the wall, or the moment when the legs gave out, etc., but it is always relayed with such historical surprise.
“I’ve ridden hard before, but that time, I’ve never felt that tired” types of tales.
The tattoo is going to hurt — everyone knows this — but are you really ready for that needle to poke through five layers of skin for hours? You must completely submit to the tattoo process, embrace the bee sting that you knew was coming.
The chair squirmers in the tat shop don’t have a lower tolerance for pain, they simply did not anticipate the tearing of flesh to hurt that bad. And in their minds they still have a choice, to get up from the chair, to stop it, to end it.
There must never be the perception of choice when you’re on mile 184 of the bike race.
If I told you I’d give you $10,000 bucks to jump into a freezing cold shower and not make a sound, you would mentally get prepared, you would accept the future cold shock. You would submit to the shower process and not make a sound. Because you already knew what cold water felt like, so you could prep for that.
So again, step one, really, truly know that freezing water is coming. That there will be a wasp stinging your arm. If you’re already floundering in the tat chair, it’s too late.
I didn’t turn back
Just two of a climbing crew of seven made it to the top of Wyoming’s Gannett Peak, one of the hardest mountains to climb in the lower 48 states.
Two hundred yards from the summit, after a year of planning, days and days of hiking and setting up different camps, enduring glaciers and snow and ice bergschrunds (that if the snow bridge didn’t hold you’d fall deep into a black crevasse), the goal, the summit, was two football fields away and five members turned back. Like worms on concrete after a downpour, they squirmed all over the place.
I didn’t turn back. I wasn’t dangling on the side of a hanging snow field without belay protection; I was deep in the torture chamber, swimming from the bottom of a sunken ship towards the lighter-colored sea water above — no choice but to keep swimming, climbing up a blue liquid ladder.
Anyway, before your next bike ride, I hope you’ll entertain some pregame submission prep.
Know that parts of the journey will absolutely suck and you that will be indifferent to that suffering, and will power through. And when your head explodes through the surface of the water after that climb from the bottom of the submission shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean, no deeper breath in the world will you take.
About the author:
Adam Doc Fox has signed up to complete one of three PKR routes this June. This column, of which he submitted to Cycotherapy over a year ago, seemed perfect ahead of his journey to complete his first Peckerhead.
He is a mountaineer and writer. He has been to the highest point in 49 states, holds the FTK (fastest known time) for climbing the Southern Six Pack in winter and has been on the History Channel for cold case reporting on Dyatlov Pass, grad non-degree work at OSU and Harvard, currently works for SBS / Source Media in Ohio. And of course he is a wastoid but “gets shit done.”
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I probably should have read this before the Black Fork Gravel Grinder this past weekend. 😬