Ouch! That felt good

That is a quote from Mae West. Feel free to plagerize it like I did.

Any person who does a reasonable job of working out will reach a threshold of...discomfort. This is not PAIN like omigosh there is a shooting pain up my leg--that means STOP RIGHT NOW YOU IDIOT (my body tends to talk to me in all caps. Especially the words EAT THAT). This is the discomfort level you feel when you push harder, faster, stronger (did I cover the entire Olympic creed here?). I do like the philosophy that says: "pain is just your body getting stronger," but uh-hu--you tell my glutes that on a 6 mile run, okay? Do you think they are listening?

As a species, we humans are designed to avoid pain and discomfort, not embrace it. Back in the day, our ancestors experienced discomfort when they ran fast after a deer, or threw a large something very hard at a bird, but they didn't do that for fun and fitness. That was either dinner, or no dinner. Today, our biggest calorie expenditure in hunting dinner is often punching out the number for the pizza delivery.

Since we have evolved into having easier food availability (most places. I am very aware of hunger still in America and elsewhere), we have lost the caloric expenditure and discomfort of having to chase it down. The math no longer works for us.

Therefore, we are now required to experience discomfort by CHOICE. We elect to pound out the miles, churn the water, hammer the bike pedals, grunt through the crunches. All for the right reasons of course, but sometimes you gotta wonder about evolution. Can you imagine a 15th century barbarian watching one of us flail away on the treadmill and think....they pay good copper for doing that?

Everyone has seen what I have dubbed the Easy Goer. The Easy Goer arrives at the gym, or the track, or the pool, hair and makeup perfectly in place (and that goes for the girls, too). They climb on the recumbant bike (always a big hit for Easy Goers) or the treadmill, and then pedal along at 8 mph or walk at 2.4 mph while paging through a fashion magazine and talking on the cell. After about 15 minutes, they wipe their forward with their matching towel, and go home.

Part of me says, well, at least they are doing SOMETHING. And something is better than nothing, right? And maybe they are also suffering from injury, or illness.

The other part of me--that part that likes to read Stephen King novels-says, oh come on now. Why bother?

Every workout--hard or easy, fast or slow--has a threshold where your body says "it would be nice to stop doing this now." And you have to be able to tell it to shut up, or dial up your iPod to drown it out (good song for that: Ringo Starr's "It Don't Come Easy"). Not every workout is redline hard, certainly, but even an easy workout involves breaking a sweat and a little effort. An ultramarathoner doing a 30minute easy recovery run does not talk on the cell during the exercise. Trust me.

If all you ever do in your workouts is stop when your body gets a little tired, you are not doing yourself any favors. Workouts do range from easy to hard, and easy IS certainly easy, but it's not zero effort.

Last night I suffered throught Survivor: The Bike Ride. It was supposed to be a 90 minute easy ride. Easy does not mean walking the bike up hills, or stopping and pushing when the wind blows 30 mph into your face. It means spin easy, but still get the ride accomplished. Since it was 104 heat index out there last night, with a 30 mph wind, and since I was already tired from a long hard day at work, and since I was also taking antibiotics that made me want to upchuck on my cool new Bontrager water hydration system, there was discomfort on the ride. There was pain. There were times I wanted to quit. But I got the ride done, and actually went a little faster than I thought I was going. I can't say the ride was fun. But you leave bad workouts behind and move on.

So happy discomfort...er, getting stronger.