Capacity to take pain
Since the beginning of March, I've been erging again.
I haven't erged this seriously in a long time. Fifteen years to be exact.
The funny thing about erging is that it never gets easy. As you get faster and faster, the time at which you complete a workout may decrease, but the pain stays constant, if not greater.
Getting back into it was not easy. I needed to prepare myself mentally before each session. A combination of house music (Steve Aoki and Dillon Francis) and brief bouts of meditation was my secret.
But each week, I saw progress. The first week, I could barely finish 10 minutes at a 1:58/500m pace. But then I was getting down to 1:54/500m for 20 minutes, then 1:57/500m for 8000 meters. Despite the pain (and occasional dread of my upcoming workout), I started to enjoy it.
I told my colleague that I was really enjoying my workout. Something about pushing through the pain and crushing a workout was clicking with me. I joked with my wife that it was an innately animalistic feeling that was coming out, knowing that I could walk into a room and crush everyone in a rowing competition (god forbid there's an olympic rower).
Among other things, I felt good that I could push myself this hard.
A long erging session feels like a movie plot. You feel miserable just 3 minutes into a 30-minute workout. You just trick yourself to get to the quarter mark. From there, the third mark and then the halfway mark. Your mental space affects your pace as well. Your split from the 4k to the 5k mark may be slow, but something kicks into gear where the 5k to the 6k mark gets just a little faster, and then for the last 2k, you absolutely crush it. This tells me it's not my glycogen storage that is impacting my performance.
Those around me know that I often repeat the mantra, "Be comfortable with being uncomfortable." Yet this idea is quite common. It's similar to the quote that David Cerna often says on his podcast: excellence is the capacity to take pain (attributed to Isadore Sharp). Jack Dorsey implements this by taking a cold shower in the morning to prepare his mindset for the rest of the day. I don't like the circle jerk aspect of this idea, similar to the 996 movement happening in SF, but I can see why people preach it when they've gone through it.
I recently came across an old episode of the Huberman podcast that had Michael Easter on as a guest. It gave a neuroscience explanation of my inner monologue during training to the dot: When you make small achievements (like telling yourself to get to the quarter mark of a workout, then the halfway mark, and so on), your body releases dopamine. Dopamine gets transformed into adrenaline. Continuing to put small markers like this throughout your workout helps you go longer.
Fifteen years later, I’m in a different place with erging. I no longer imagine the faces of competitors at Southern Sprints or Head of the Hooch. Instead, each session is a test. I'm testing how much discomfort I’m willing to lean into to get a little better. The erg has become less about beating someone else, and more about reminding myself that progress is built in those small markers, the dopamine hits that carry me through, and the discipline to keep pulling when it hurts.