What stood out for me at the U.S. cross country ski team meet and greet last week was their relationship with suffering, what sounded like an almost loving embrace of the “pain cave.”Jessie Diggins talking about her legs going numb, vision pink and collapsing at the end of races in her quest to leave nothing — nothing! — to regret later.Park City’s Rosie Brennan taking on the same at distance beyond competing for the team to see what she can endure. Ben Ogden known for giving it all … uphill, saying his ability to endure pain is his lone super power to the nods of teammates Diggins, Brennan and Gus Schumacher, who in February in Minneapolis was the youngest U.S. athlete ever to win a World Cup and the first American man to win a World Cup in the discipline in 43 years.All around, last season was the best ever for the American team. Diggins was the World Cup overall winner on the women’s side. Brennan podiumed five times in her best season. Ogden, the noted pace pusher, sprinted to a third during the Tour de Ski. Each pushed through intense, self-induced suffering. This is their life, basically, as they said during a group Q&A.Easy enough to intellectualize off the snow, the pain cave is red-tinged with narrowing vision, burning lungs and thighs. Blind, desperate and a dealing with a voice that progresses from whisper to hoarse roar: Just stop! Park City is even more of a pain sport town than a ski town. At least it is in the summer. Good ol’ analog mountain biking and all distance running, which of course has no means of  “e” to share or remove the effort from the exercise.The cave awaits others, too. For example: The wildland firefighters who punched endless handline on the Yellow Creek Fire have more than a passing acquaintance with this kind of enduring pain.Most modern Americans don’t have nearly enough. We’re by and large the opposite of Jessie Diggins driven beyond all better sense to leave nothing on the course. Never mind Rosie Brennan 2 kilometers into a 70-kilometer race and already dying, thinking, Good, only 68 to go.Riding, running, cross country skiing just hurts. Even when we’re leaving most everything on the trail, keeping a sane pace, there’s pain and that insidious voice. Anything would be easier, say, a beer and a game on, mine reminds me.The voice when I run sounds nothing like Diggins’ voice. It’s much whinier, for starters. Take that turn and cut this thing short, just for today, it suggests. It’s too cold, too windy, too hot, too wet, too dry, it says. Be reasonable. You aren’t Jessie Diggins or Grant Fisher, it says. Leaving it all on the trail ain’t exactly going to get you a medal … anywhere, it says. Let’s start getting in shape tomorrow, it says. Today it’s too …Weirdly, perhaps, I run precisely because I am lazy and give in too easily. Running’s my hack. At the gym, I find too many excuses, ones I too gladly take, to slack off, skip rounds, drop weight, cut reps short. At least when I’ve thrown myself out there on a trail, I have to keep going even if only to get back. The trick is to fool myself into running far enough out.I can fool myself a little with music or a good book in my ears, or go into a kind of day dream zone for short periods, pretend this is all fun, begin a budding relationship with pain, tiptoe into breathing hard, allow a little burn, remind myself that this pain now will prove worth it later in better fitness, pride of accomplishment, good stuff like that.A higher voice, the one that Diggins and Brennan and Schumaker and Ogden listen to, promises if I do this now and again tomorrow, I’ll be stronger, faster next week, and build on that for the next week and the next after that, always climbing, always getting better.Next week? The one after that? But won’t I just go through this gantlet a little faster each week only to achieve the same … pain? The inner cynic is strong, alas. But it isn’t wrong. The pain cave is always there, waiting.Basketball was better. The game never loved me back the way I loved it. But it put me in great shape until the knees I wasn’t supposed to play on all those years finally had enough.I never entered a pain cave with hoops. The game itself made me forget entirely, gasping for breath, hands on knees only incidental. I was trying to win, lost in the contest for that hour, maybe two, on the court. It felt like cheating, honestly. Now I have to square up with pain. That is to say, me, facing my limitations directly, no distractions. In this I begin to understand Jessie Diggins.Don Rogers is the editor and publisher of The Park Record. He can be reached at [email protected] or (970) 376-0745.The post Journalism Matters: The agony of victory in the endurance sports appeared first on Park Record.