What is your pain threshold

I often feel sorry for my wife because she married someone with an extremely low threshold for pain. I have been known to ask her whether she thinks I will live when I have the slightest bout of flu. She rolls her eyes quietly and fetches me her garlic and ginger concoction. Never complaining when I take the 1st sip and gag dramatically. I have, however, come to the conclusion that I have to find a way to increase my pain threshold. Not just in terms of my health, but generally as it applies to my life. I think my wife will also be thrilled!

I congratulated a colleague who had just run the Comrades Marathon and described him as a superhero. His response…well…that anyone can do it if they put their mind to it. I can imagine for an amateur athlete, the point in a road race where they feel their legs give up or their chest burn. What keeps them going under these circumstances and how is it that they are able to push through this pain barrier? What is it that transforms a person from a casual 5km runner to one day being a Comrades finisher? While there will be the impact of training and preparation, there is also something in-built that helps these people press on.

Like running a road race, I suspect there are other aspects of our lives that involve some sort of pain. Do we give up at the slightest hint of discomfort or do we push through? Building that threshold for pain just allows one to persevere just enough so that new opportunities become visible. So that new outcomes that were previously unknown can be discovered.

The other side of the story, however, is about people who have an extremely high threshold for pain. My favourite example of this is Xolani Luvuno who runs marathons despite the fact that he only has one leg. Imagine the discomfort of supporting your full body weight on one leg and a crutch for over 12 hours. Xolani is an inspiration and can actually do it.

For someone with such a high pain threshold, how do they avoid the trap of failing to recognise when it’s time to quit. When the proverbial dead horse has started to smell…badly. Think about people in abusive relationships or in miserable jobs. When does that point of enough come? How does one distinguish the handling pain from abuse?

It is great to mull over these questions and apply the correct required level of perseverance to the situation. However, I can say from observation that I have never met a successful person who didn’t show evidence of a high pain barrier. This really makes me wonder if in many cases we have just become too soft, and this is actually what is holding us back.

The main image is of my good friend Tapiwa just before completing his 2nd Comrades Marathon

Here is a picture of Tapiwa after doing the lockdown Comrades challenge this year…still beating the pain.