Suck up

Yeah it hurts, what did you think? Maybe that it would tickle? This is the real thing, this is about finishing, and no matter what the state of fitness is the actual feeling is the same for the slowest to the fastest as long as both are giving the same effort. At the end of the race it is about owning up to your pain threshold and letting it shine. There is something to be learned about limits by watching both the fastest finishers and also the rest. Plenty of better trained and better genetically gifted runners do not have the pain threshold of the slower or “less” competitive counterparts. Fear or lack of guts can undermine all the training in the world. During the critical zone, or last 25% of a race, when the chips are down you just have to suck it up and take as much pain as you can.