FACE THE PAIN

I sometimes watch UFC fights with AZ and have gotten to where I can do so without covering my eyes the whole time. I’ve watched enough now that I can even name a few of the fighters and have even developed a few favorites. Favorite fighters for me are:

#1 how fit or hot they look, of course
#2 if they are a good sport,
#3 where they live (i cheered for a guy, just because he was from Oregon)

If you uncover your eyes enough you can see they these guys are very unique, but amazing athletes. I bet most of them have better hamstring flexibility than I do. Each fighter gets their own walk down song, the song that must pump them up enough to jump into a ring they could potentially be killed, or hurt very badly. One guys' song is “Face the Pain”, I forget which fighter and I forgot who sings it but it is a a loud, naughty song that I have on my ipod and save it for when it really starts to burn, hurt or get really ugly. Now,... I am a physical therapist and work with people every day on facing their injury and pain, which is a different kind of pain that you shouldn't ignore.

I love the phrase ” face the pain”. When it starts to hurt, burn or get ugly in hard workout, interval set, race what will you do? Face it head on and stare it in the eyes? (um these fighters are great at giving frightening stare downs), or will you crumble, fade and walk away from it. Good places to practice facing the pain are in workouts. Face it in those uncomfortable sets, least favorite workouts, or least favorite conditions. The more times you face it, the better you get at dealing with, and taking on whatever is thrown at you. For me, facing a solo swim when I am tired, cold and without a real workout is a a painful experience, but I have been staring down the eyes of it more often and getting better at putting up the fight. Facing the Pain doesn't always have to be pushing through a hard set or even be related to working out It can also be facing head on whatever you least like doing. I once read in Apolo Ono’s biography No Regrets , that he used to put bowls of his favorite candy out in his house when he was trying to drop weight, just to “face” the temptation and walk away. Ouch!




Training hasn't been too unpleasant to face. The weather has been phenomenal for Feb and I have been outside and happy! Runs have required sunglasses and not as many layers, and my bike hasn’t really been stuck on the trainer. I was faster on the track last week and almost felt like I had arms in the water a couple times. My awesome Coach Scott Iott has been pretty nice to me so far, but with some time off work and a trip home to Oregon I see some real work ahead of me! Time to Face it!