A Good Week and the Art of Suffering

Did a Hard Hot Highway on Wednesday and made it 10+ miles before Don and Leon drove up and gave me lift to Makapu'u. We did three repeats, so it made it about 16 miles for the day. Slow on the highway, but right now its the distance not the pace.



I thought I was going to meet Don out at Peacocks on Saturday, but when I got out there he wasn't there. So I did a solo up and over. Ran into a guy named Fred from Hawaii Trail and Mountain. Maybe in his late sixties or early seventies. He and his wife were out marking trail for the HTM Sunday hike. The guy knew all kinds of side trails and pointed them out to me as we walked up toward the top of Kealia. He left me at 'Lombard' Street. at the bottom of that quick left and up the steep to the top of the hill that has the quick down.



Did the old one hour, one hour, one hour pace, or a bit slower. Ran into Rob at the bottom of Long Road and turned around and went back up with him. I was really ready to bag it and go back the road, but Rob came out early and caught me still on Long Road. He put up with me as we made our way back up and over. He turned at Kealia and went back. I headed down Kealia to the airport. I sat there for a few minutes, drove over and took a quick shower, and stopped at the bottom of long road at about 1:20 or so maybe 1:30 from the time I left Rob. Some bikers told me he had flown by them and was already gone. Rob had to get home to take care of the kids. I had slowed him down, and I guess he had to make up the time getting out of there. Pretty impressive actually.



I was thinking about the Art of Suffering on the way up the Kealia switchbacks. Not that I was suffering much, but it hit me that training is largely just increasing levels of suffering and pain so that we become inured to it over time. Good training is good suffering. Nothing like doing a HURT Loop on a cold windy and wet night, or a Peacock on the hot and sunny day when the humidity is about 100 percent. I didn't suffer much today until I had to chase Rob up long road, and then it was agony. I was carrying a lot of weight in my pack, and I'm not in shape, and it was a nasty few miles.



But to get back to the suffering. It is easy to suffer. Just look at all the couch potatoes out there who sit around, stuffing their faces, drinking, getting bored, and ultimately going into some depressive state that causes great suffering. Then many of 'em do drugs or alcohol to alleviate their suffering and suffer even more. There is no finesse to their suffering. It is anti-evolutionary. And in the end it will kill 'em.



Runners, on the other-hand, go out and push themselves to the physical edge. They suffer from the fatigue, the pain, the many facets of over exertion. They suffer as they endure the elements and the break down of their bodies. But the suffering has some purpose. Its not an afterthought. Runners seek suffering like the knights of the round table sought the Holy Grail. Suffering is the runner's holy grail. Good training, adequate suffering, leads to a mind and body that understand the task at hand, and when the eventual event comes upon them, they move through the reality already hardened to the levels of suffering that are required of them. They may even transcend their training and achieve greater physical feats than they had anticipated.



And when the event is over, and this is the key to the art of suffering, the body fills with a surge of endorphins and seratonin that fills them with an incredible sense of wellbeing. The internal chemical mix is so great that it is likely to be better than morphine,which only mimics these wondrous internal secretions. So strong are these surges that it is not uncommon for a runner to find him or herself sitting transfixed in a chair a day after a major run with a dumb smile on their face, just zoning on existence. It is everything the couch potato wants and seeks but can never honestly enjoy.



It is almost as if suffering is a one-way street. The runner has discovered how to run down that street in the right direction. Others make their way up the road going the wrong way and it never fails to bring them even greater suffering of a kind that has no internal blessing to it.



The runner suffers physical hardship and is rewarded with a natural set of mind blowing chemicals. Others take a wide array of mind blowing chemicals only to find that they ultimately suffer great hardship as a result. A runner is made stronger, more healthy and often is rewarded with a longer life. Those coming the wrong way up Suffering Road, find themselves physically off kilter, weaker, and facing an array of death inducing illnesses.



Life is largely suffering, it is human nature to suffer. However the evolutionary tendencies of mankind are such that the suffering of hard physical work or training provokes internal bliss. A certain degree of physical suffering is necessary for the creation of a healthy human being. We are built that way. Modern life, on the other hand, has turned this fact on its head. Today people seek to short cut the route to mind blowing reality only to find themselves deep into heavy duty suffering.



As a culture we are generally quite sick because we have turned our backs on the evolutionary path of mankind. The guru's call this social evolution. But they do so without fully comprehending the reality of just who we are. We are still the siblings of Paleolithic man. Denying this leads to catastrophe, and each civilization after the next has fallen into ruin because we fail to admit that we have not really changed in the last ten thousand years, and understand who we continue to be.


As individuals we can at least recognize that there is an art to suffering, inevitable suffering. And we can attempt to create a routine of suffering that reflects our evolutionary character and allows our bodies to buffer the travails of our existence. We become more whole through the art of suffering.



Run well, run far, and go home and sleep undisturbed. Aloha.