Stories, Thoughts and Snippets
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Pain exists to tell us that something is wrong, that something is happening, which could damage us, eventually kill us. Exercise is us pushing ourselves towards death, your lungs are not meant to strain, your heart not meant to race. That is why the runner from the plains of marathon fell dead. Exercise is the project of building a tolerance for one particular poison, in the same way that one builds a tolerance to any poison. By ingesting small amounts of it, slowly increasing those amounts until your body becomes accustomed to it. It will never feel good, it will never become easier, but it won't kill you if you push it just a little bit further than the last time. Up until a point. There is always a limit to what you can force yourself to endure, no matter how you train. The line is a little different for everyone, but it is always there.
One guy told me once that he thought the pain was worth it, that the hell of running up that hill was a reasonable price for the feeling of relief at the top. Most of the time, when someone tells you that they feel good, what they really mean is that they don't feel bad. People who are nauseous feel bad, people who then vomit feel worse, but after vomiting people feel good. Because they no longer feel bad. I just gave the guy a look and rolled over on my pack, and breathed. When we get back to the bottom we get to eat, and then we get to sleep. Sleep is the only thing that they can't change, they can shorten it, and they do, but it's still sleep. It's blackness and images that flicker and sometimes absorb and then fade as the light of day sharpens.
In the way that gasping for breath feels good at the top of the hill, sleeping feels good at the end of the day. It feels good because it feels normal, which means that if I ever get out of this, if I ever get to live my life the way that I want to again, it won't feel like anything. It will feel like sleep.
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