When I started running, body awareness became a focus. The sense of feeling the body is heightened. Listening to what my body was telling me becomes essential. There seemed to be a constant pain or discomfort. Never a pain that reached excruciating or intolerable levels. I would have stopped running in that case.
No theses were pains in the legs mainly. Lower leg mostly. Pain that seemed to come and go. The pain would move around and be a little different each time. I would tell myself that the pain was weakness leaving the body. Lower levels of pain were just part of running. You can learn to feel it, evaluate it, keep moving, stop or slow down.
In a way, one becomes used to it. One looks forward to it. Telling oneself that this is normal, feeling it, thinking about it, dismissing it and continuing anyway. Enjoying it? Probably not a good way to describe it. But maybe feeling pride or accomplishment with overcoming it. Maybe knowing that others, less resolved, would have quit long ago. I think that may be a part of it.
Discovering that one is tougher than one thinks. Discovering that one can do more than one thinks. More than that self doubting, anxious and limiting voice inside us. We can do more than even what our body tells us. Through running I find that there are no limits. With enough preparation and training the seemingly impossible is possible.
Ironically it may be that pain doesn’t stop us. It may become the thing that ‘feeds us’. When pain ceases, we may be dead.