"Pain is the feeling of weakness leaving the body" is a mantra seen on some distance-runner t-shirts. Yes, it's horribly insensitive to to victims of torture, and to those who suffer from chronic pain.

But in the context of training for a marathon one must admit that it's quite inspirational, in the same spirit as the Nietzsche/Conan-the-Barbarian aphorism, "That which doesn't kill me, makes me stronger". The implied theory of weakness — a fluid rather like phlogiston — is entertaining if fantastical. Like the phlogistonic hypothesis, weakness-as-liquid gets things backwards; that's entertaining too. And of course, too much stress without enough time for recovery is a good prescription for injury.

But for fun, take another proverb (from a recent Washington Post article re Scandinavian Americans): "There is no such thing as strong coffee; there are only weak people." Combine that in a syllogism with "Pain is the feeling of weakness leaving the body".

Conclusion?

(see also BodyMods (23 Dec 1999), LoseTrack (11 Nov 2002), ...)

TopicHumor - TopicLanguage - TopicRunning - 2003-06-07

(correlates: SherlockHolmes, Inventing a Running Machine, Body Tides, ...)