Right, but that is not the kind of pain we are discussing.
Two kinds of pain to take seriously—the “I am doing damage to parts of my body which won’t heal” pain (things like ignoring serious knee pain, ignoring decaying joints, or my specialty, ignoring chest pain and a rising heart rate
And muscular pain which just intensifies.
The muscle pain is much easier to recover from—but if you do enough damage you lose a few or several days for no reason. As with muy back—I ignored it and rode through it and after the ride was still in pain for a few hours, and so tight I could barely move.
No damage done …. Just knots and cramps from muscles way overworked. But ignoring that kind of pain doesn’t help. Your muscles are not going to suddenly gain capacity in the middle of a ride.
I haven’—I no longer have the capacity, which is why I am still trying to grow and gain. Bt I know from experience … the same as standing or sitting in one position for hours—there will be lots of random discomforts.
Anyone who has not learned a lot about pain oand injury … will, most likely, if they keep riding. After a while the differences between “sore,” “strained,” and “torn,” become very clear—you can tell when joint is complaining and when it is telling you Stop Now.
On another hand .... by doing specific exercises to address those particular weaknesses one can overcome them more quickly and enjoy riding more.
It is akin to doing intervals—no one really likes doing intervals, but those who want to go faster will go faster, faster if they work at it in some kind of structured way.
I could either ride less and grow very slowly, or I could ride more and also exercise more—which is good whether I ride or not—and ride more.
Since I like riding and I don’t want to decay too quickly, exercising and stretching makes more sense, to me and for me. Your mileage will most assuredly vary.
Here’s my thing: I will only live so long …. And the longer Iwait to do stuff, the less I have to do ti with. Decay is a real thing, growth is slower, recovery takes longer.
I could ride shorter rides … which means whole sets of roads would be closed off to me, which means I would be letting my weaknesses control me … or I could do a little work off the bike, and have more options.
Instead of spending another six months adding ten miles a month, I could (as I have been doing) add tens of miles per month—whole days of riding, or whole new realms of terrain to ride through.
Doing less and gaining slowly is fine when you are young and think you will live forever. When you realize that in some number of years, you will be Forced to do less by age and infirmity …. You think in terms of gaining more now so I can afford to lose more later.
I already have too much to regret. (I hope this post doesn't get added to that list.)
