Mentally Tough - Cod Liver Oil Workouts

Today, I rode the stationary for 1 hour 25 minutes, resulting in a 26ish mile ride.  During these rides, I have mainly been listening to podcasts, my favorites being Rich Roll and Talk Ultra.  Regardless,  I still find these rides difficult mentally and particularly boring.  I would much rather put in a 2 hour run, with nothing but the sounds of traffic and nature to get me through it.  As I have shared, I expect to be on that stupid bike for another 2-3 weeks at least and so I have taken the view point that these are part of the process of mentally toughening myself up for the 7-8 hours that I will be running during the 50-miler I am planning on debuting in Spring 2014.

I used to have a track/cross country coach back in the day that summarized these as "Cod Liver Oil workouts".  He gave me this expression one fine November afternoon back in the day.  Ok, so it was far from fine.  It was one of those days where there was a cold drizzle, in between bouts of rain, that soaked your clothes (this was before moisture wicking, though gortex was available, but was expensive) on a typically southern Ontario November day of somewhere between 5 and 10 degrees Celsius.  It was the kind of cold that you could feel constantly, that was almost numbing, and for a few hours afterwords, you had difficulty getting warm.  No amount of warm drinks, sweats and blankets would help on the drive home.

On this particular workout, he had us doing hill repeats.  As if the cold wasn't enough, we were included to run up a 10-20% hill about 600-800m in length.  Over and Over.  The only plus was this was on a sidewalk rather than grass, so our feet remained soaked, not drenched/water logged.  About a third of the way through, upon reaching the top, the coach shouted something about a "Cod Liver Oil Workout".  On the next repeat I asked him what this meant.  He explained that when he was a little boy, everyday in the fall and winter, his mother made him take his cod liver oil, that it tasted disgusting.  His point was that even though it tasted bad, it was meant to make you stronger, just like the hill repeats in the cold rain.

This is the view point that I am taking with these stupid stationary bike rides while I am injured.  Suck it up, because looking back, everything will seem glorious when compared to these darn workouts.