Where Everybody Knows Your Pain

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“Does it taste like pennies? Hemingway says that’s the taste of death.”— Mark Wetmore in Running With The Buffaloes Photo: Jorge Maravilla

“Pain forces us to confront disruptive, awful, and occasionally inspiring realities of the world around us,” the ever philosophical Sam Robinson writes for Outside. “The pain cave is a place where we take stock of our courage and ask ourselves how much we are willing to give for the goals we’ve laid out. And that, I think, is why we willingly descend into it.”

I enjoyed this essay, which explored the “cavern of discomfort” most of you reading this know as the pain cave. It reminded me of these brief thoughts I shared on Instagram after my last race.

A version of this post first appeared in the morning shakeout, my weekly email newsletter covering running, writing, media and other topics that interest me. If you’d like for it to land in your inbox first thing on Tuesday mornings, subscribe here.

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