Pain is Temporary (Loops #16 & #17)

The sun already high in the 7am Sunday sky.

Joy here...After taking two weeks off the bike, I felt like I was back in the groove a bit this week with Monday's easy flat ride, Tuesday's Personal Best Time Trial, and Wednesday's strong WOW ride; then Thursday I went to the gym with the Trainer and did some intense strength training, took Friday and Saturday off, and thought I was all set for a strong two loops of the park...only one week before the Gatineau Grand Prix, the very first real bike race that I intend to compete in.

So as we rolled out early Sunday morning, into the gusty winds and under the blue sky, I felt like I was strong and ready to have a powerful ride, challenging myself up over the hills and maintaining a strong and consistent pace for my first two-loop ride in the park in about a month (my last one being when I first started toying with the idea of doing the race...but back then I figured I had 5 weeks of training to prepare...now I'm down to 1 week).

But while my brain seemed to think I was all set to go with a strong and powerful Sunday morning ride, my body seemed to have other ideas.

Even before we reached the first steep climb (the Pink Lake Climb, about 1km of climbing around 70m of height gain with an average incline of 5.6%), my back was killing me.  I had a sharp pain in my lower back like I had been stabbed in the right kidney.  I don't know if I slept wrong and had back pain, if I was pedalling too hard and was straining my back, if I had worked my back too hard on Thursday and it was seizing, or if an invisible monster had jumped on my back and was digging in his claws.  I'm not sure what was going on, but no matter how I tried to stretch my back on the bike--leaning forward, standing up, sitting on the back of the saddle--nothing seemed to work.  The pain had settled in and seemed like it was there to stay.

So the battle between the brain that wanted a strong, hard Sunday ride and the body that was suffering began.

I huffed and I puffed; I tried to moderate my breathing lamaze-style to deal with the pain; and I just tried to ride beside The Man and not be too slow as to ruin both my ride and his ride this Sunday morning.  My face cringed; my mouth groaned; and my hands clenched.  I was doing everything I could to mind-over-matter this back pain.

Then, just before the start of the second big climb in the park (the Fortune Climb, nearly 2km of climbing over 150m of height gain with an average incline of 6.2%), we came upon The Professor and Cili Padi relaxing with their bikes and having a snack before tackling the climb up to the Champlain lookout.  We had a bit of a chat with them, caught up a bit, and I complained about my back, and then we hopped back on our bikes and headed up the hill.

At first my back seemed to calm down a bit with my pedalling up the steep part, but then that dagger started twisting its serrated edge in deeper and all I could do was settle into my bike in my easiest gear and pedal as consistently as possible.  I could feel the tears in the corners of my eyes and was happy that my sunglasses were hiding those eyes so no one would be able to see.

The Sunday morning view from Champlain lookout.

As I crested the steep part of the climb and rode towards The Man, he took one look at my scrunched up, "I'm in pain" face and said, "you know, we don't have to do two loops, we can just turn around at the top and go back."  I could have kissed him right then and there for the offer.  Everything in my body screamed:  "YES!  I wanna go home!"  But instead, I heard myself say:  "No, I need to finish these two loops."  What?  Did I just say that?  My brain seemed to be winning this battle between body and mind.  My brain was thinking that I needed the experience of suffering through these two loops as this Sunday's ride would be my last two-looper before Saturday's race, and without these two loops in my legs, the race would come along and I wouldn't have the mental fortitude to complete it.  When those voices in my head show up during the race (as they always do), I knew that I'd be quitting.  The only prevention strategy that I have in my arsenal is to finish this painful two loop ride on a hot and windy Sunday morning so that when the race begins to hurt, I can say, "shut up little voices, I can suffer through two loops, and even coming in last place is better than quitting."

Shadow Joy giving a thumbs-up, but definitely not
feeling thumbs-up-like!

So onwards we trundled, up to the Champlain Lookout, stopped long enough to eat and visit with The Professor and Cili Padi as they eventually reached the lookout, and then The Man and I began our descent so that we could reach the turnaround point and do it all over again.

I looked down to my Road ID on my wrist--it's a little velcro bracelet with a metal info plate engraved with my name, phone number, The Man's phone number, and my blood type.  It was a gift given to me by Simon (aka TriTwins), our friend from Malaysia who came to visit us last summer and rode with us in the park.  In addition to the info Simon had engraved on my little wrist ID, he also added a slogan:  "Pain is temporary."  So as the stabbing back pain spread from my right lower back to radiate to the rest of my lower back, not letting up at all, I looked down at that slogan, swallowed hard, grimaced, and just kept on pedalling...suffering up the Fortune Climb for a second time and suffering over those rollers on the way down from the top of the climb and suffering all the way out of the park.

In the end, our average speed was 26.5km/hr, and the ride was just over 80km door-to-door.  My average speed should have been somewhere between 27km/hr and 28km/hr (ideally even faster), so I was disappointed with that.

But when I think about the fact that I suffered through more than 3 hours of riding and was still able to complete the ride within spitting distance of the time that I would have expected of myself, I am pleased.  While this ride certainly doesn't represent a triumph of the body with fast legs and a fast time, it represents a triumph of the mind.

Napoleon once said:  "The strong man is the one who is able to intercept at will the communication between the senses and the mind," and this Sunday I can't say that I intercepted that communication between my body and mind, but I sure did prevent it from stopping me, and that's my triumph for the day...one week away from the two-loop race day.


"Pain is temporary...Pain is temporary...Pain is temporary...Pain is temporary..."


Over and out,
Joy