Phantom pains

It’s all in your head.

This might be a bit of a touchy subject but I believe a lot of us have experienced this phenomena. You’ve trained hard, tapered, rested, massaged and stretched, it all. With only a week to go until your race day, out of seemingly nowhere, you start to feel some weird pains in places you’ve never had pains before. You panic and wonder if all is lost. You start going over a million different scenarios of what it could possibly be and where it could have come from and you come up with nothing.

Now, stop and breathe.

You could be experiencing phantom pains. Yes, it’s a thing. Some sort of brain signal misfires. Nothing is actually wrong with you and you are not injured. “How can you say that?”, you might ask.  “The pain feels very real”.  Yes, it does.  Scary as it may be but there’s only one way to find out if you are truly injured or if it’s all in your head.  Go and cautiously test it out.  Since it’s happened to me so many times, I’m used to the drama … err…. process.  I start by massaging and stretching the affected area.  I take hot baths with Epsom salts just to make sure I do everything I can to take care of my muscles.  Then, when there’s nothing more I could do, I venture out and start with a slow jog.  As it’s usually the case, there are two possible outcomes.

If indeed it is a phantom pain, it will start to subside shortly into the run until it magically disappears for good.  You will have a great run and will come home puzzled about all this but in the end you will be happy to know that you can confidently go on with your plans as normal. 

If, however, as you start to slowly jog and the pain increases, stop immediately and go home.  You are injured and you need to start addressing it as a real injury.  

Why does this happen?  It’s hard to tell.  Your brain could be trying to sabotage the hard work ahead.  It could be fleshing out some of sort hidden fears.  Or simply trying to give you an excuse for a subpar performance.  An out, if you will.  Otherwise, why is it that those who experience cramps, always blame them on a failed goal.  Those of us with weak stomachs always seem to have GI issues.  Our brain sends us signals that seem to be tailor made for each of us. 

Again, all those things appear and feel real but they may not all be actually there.  If this occurs during a race, one of the ways you can try to address an issue is to see if it persists.  If it does, then do what you need to do to address it but if you keep on going and it goes away, then what was it? 

All in your head.   

 

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