Pain ! The final frontier !

Nobody likes pain and nobody really likes to suffer.

As a child I was raised in a very protective way and thus was taught to avoid and stay away from pain and suffering. This had its effect on my life when I was a young adult. When one is raised that way, as soon as pain or suffering kicks in, one tends to walk away or be mad at the world.

The Triathlon life changed that for me. To break my barriers I had to learn to suffer. Every day of training the limits of my body were pushed and as time evolved I started to accept pain and suffering as part of life.

But the mind can drive your body extremely far. I started to take ice cold showers and baths, started to push the limits even harder and then July 21st 2022 came. It was a quarter triathlon race day like any other and the feeling was fantastic. I clocked times like never before, but after 2.5 km of running suddenly an intense pain in my left foot. There was no indication what could have caused it, no uneven path, no stumble, nothing. It was almost unbearable the pain so I slowed my pace and took it meter per meter. I ran an additional 7.5km and finshed the race.

At home and the next days my left foot had all the colors of the rainbow. The pain was gone in the morning but came back at the end of the day. So I thought it could heal with some rest. After a week I decided to see a doctor. She send me to the hospital for some X-rays. 2 Minutes later the doctor walked in and said those famous words: "You better go to the  plaster room, your foot is broken" !

Nobody in the hospital could believe it that I ran 7.5km with a broken foot and went to work on it for another week. So when the check-up came after 2 weeks and I could switch from an immobile plaster to one with mobility, I asked if I could start swimming again. The reply of the doctor was immediate: "anybody else would  get the go from me, you do not. Your pain treshold is too high !"

The mind is a very strong instrument, sometimes it is too strong for the body ! And one way to get to that point is taking those ice cold showers and baths.

 Make it cold, colder, freezing !