I Survived My First “Paincation.” Here’s How.

What Happened on My First “Paincation”Jason Speakman, Men's Health Illustration

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“GET IT TO 100,” Coach says, as factually as if he were saying “we're parked in row B-11.” I was on my bike, he was riding next to me, and that part of the workout involved doing the next 3 miles at 100 RPMs. I was at 97. “Get it to 100.”

No yelling, no cajoling. Just a fact: Get it there.

Also a fact: I was far out of my comfort zone—usually a tougher gear at a slower (and less efficient) cadence—and was secretly hating every RPM.

So went day 5 of my 5-day Paincation, AKA triathlon camp in Clermont, FL, with coach Robert Peninno, who runs Terrier Fitness and Roads Less Cycled. It was a kind of warmup to the “real” Paincation—an Ironman 70.3 triathlon in Maryland this summer—that my best friends and training buddies had FOMO’d me into.

Warmup or not, I’d still bought into the trend of spending a bunch of money to spend a bunch of days to suffer with a bunch of people who’d done the same thing. And despite the bragging-rights title of a Paincation, one thing became clear: If pain is all you get, you’re missing a lot.

Even though I’m a triathlon coach myself, after 5 days of swimming, biking, running, drills, videotaping, feedback, copious amounts of laundry, $600 in groceries for 5 athletes (not counting dinners out), and serious camaraderie, I hadn’t expected to learn these things:

Patience Is the New Pain

“DURABILITY” IS A HUGE buzzword in endurance racing right now—everybody’s obsessing over how to be the one who slows down the least over 26.2, 70.3, 140.4 or however many miles.

My 1:1 coach, Liz Waterstraat, has told me time and again that durability isn’t built by Strava KOMs and hero workouts. Winning athletes tell you that. Coaches reinforce it. To be reductive, durability is about this: Do long, easy-ish/comfortable sessions. Sometimes, do very long easy-ish sessions. Do hard stuff at the end of a session sometimes. And don’t leave strength out of the equation. Simple, right?

“Hard sell, though. Everyone wants to work ‘hard’ to get better,” Waterstraat says.

I didn’t really believe it until I lived it.

We did every sport, every day. We didn’t slouch. But camp was so intelligently programmed with slow drips of fitness that each workout didn’t crush you; it prepared you for the next one. “I’m not here to turn you into one-week superheroes who need a nap for the next month,” Robert says. “Just steady, solid work all week. The magic isn’t in one big workout. It’s in all the small, consistent ones that nobody brags about.”

By day 4, my training load was the same as it usually is after 7 days of a build week of training—and I didn’t feel beat up or exhausted. My usual aches and pains just weren’t showing up. Day 5 put me way over my usual week of training stress, and same: No urge to type “totally toast” in the post-activity comments in TrainingPeaks.

Lesson learned: Patience works better than pain. It’s just a lot harder to commit to.

Little Things Add Up

“SOMETIMES THE REAL progress comes from focusing on the details—your form, your rhythm, your breathing, your consistency. Speed will come; efficiency lasts,” as Robert puts it.

So earning that Strava Course Record in training isn’t really the ticket to a great race—how you earned it is. For instance, everybody’s making a big deal out of VO2max these days—whose is bigger, how to build yours. You definitely don’t want it in the basement, and there’s value in training it. But there’s more to sports performance than a big engine or how many watts of power you generate.

“Leaks” in form, errors in pacing and other factors can cost you tons of metabolic energy that should really be contributing to driving you forward. The world is full of stories of cyclists who put out more watts on a segment of road than the pros do—but they go slower since they’re not as efficient.

“Keep dialing in the little things we worked on, because those are your secret weapons,” Robert reminded us after camp. He gave us tools to train our efficiency—smoothness throughout the pedal stroke; cadence on the run to reduce ground contact time and train neuromuscular efficiency; stroke refinements in the pool to reduce drag and increase the power of the catch. We worked on the little stuff like head position on the run. Consistent and intentional fueling.

I’m not the person who ran her first race and, what do you know, won it. I felt lucky to finish. I have to earn every drop of fitness that I get. Stacking the little things makes the point that in the end, small wins aren’t really small.

Play Is Vastly Underrated

SERIOUS RUNNERS, TRIATHLETES, swimmers and pretty much anyone serious about any sport—all of us can get wrapped up in how to get the hours in and level up our game. We get up at 4 AM to make our long rides as low impact as possible to the rest of our families. We obsess over how quickly we have to drink our creatine shake before its benefits dissolve. We figure out that yes, if the pool opens at 6:15 and you have a one-hour swim and a 45-minute run, and if you can take your clothes to work the day before and shower there the next morning, you can run your commute and still be at your desk on time.

But behold the power of camp, where someone else knows the bike routes, so all you have to do is ride. Where they reserve the swim lanes at the National Training Center and bring the ideal drills and sets for you, so all you have to do is swim. Where you run on bewitching red dirt roads. You test stuff. Learn stuff. Try again. You share dinner and laugh with your campmates at the end of the day and wonder how you’re going to live without them when you leave. You feel like a kid whose job it is to just play, play, play all day.

Paincation? It’s okay…suffering has its place. But the metric I’m now more excited about than anything that shows up on my Garmin: Reconnecting with the joy of the sport. If I can do that on race day, it’ll be a win no matter what.

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