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Training to live with pain
Have you ever noticed that since taking up riding, when you stub your toe, or bang your elbow... it really doesn't hurt as much as it used to? Are you so used to rocks smashing into your shins, skin being ripped off your arms and the burning in your legs that anything else seems passé?
... when physiologists at the University of Wisconsin used spinal injections of a powerful painkiller to block lower-body pain in a group of cyclists, the cyclists actually got slower. They initially felt great and started out faster than normal, but then faded. Without the feedback of pain, they couldn't pace themselves properly.
So bike riders must be mental, right? 
For endurance athletes, pain at times seems like the central reality of their existence.
... a study on the pain tolerance of ultra-endurance runners ... asked 11 of the competitors to dunk their hands in ice water for three minutes; by the end, they rated the pain as about 6 out of 10 on average.
In contrast, the non-athlete control group gave up after an average of just 96 seconds when their pain maxed out at 10; only three of them even completed the test.
LOL... love it 
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Full article is an interesting read
He who hurts the most wins......... Someone pass me the panadol.
as a rower and a mountain biker i know quite well that the burning in your quads is just your body telling you that you're working hard, not to stop
Compare the quote in Rob's extract with the following from later in the article:
"Mauger has led a series of studies in which cyclists taking acetaminophen (i.e., Tylenol) are able to cycle farther or faster than those given a placebo. The difference in speed is most pronounced late in the trials, when the cyclists are in the most pain."
Maybe a mild painkiller (such as Tylenol, which is just paracetamol) helps push through the pain, but a "powerful" painkiller (not specified) has some other effect??
I'm sure there were studies a while ago the questioned the whole idea that lactic burn is bad and inhibits performance belief
Tests using a current to activate the muscles in dead frog legs (?) showed muscles responded better for longer when they were injected with lactic acid than they did without
Your on the right track there Flinny. I read a study somewhere that in highly trained individuals their muscles have adapted to use lactic acid as a fuel. Somewhere between the ATP and glucose running out and before protein starts to be used as fuel.
The more you hurt the faster you go.
I'll have to dig the reference out.
The ability to suffer separates the normal from the exceptional endurance athlete in a lot of cases.
Jens Voigt is famous for it and if Tyler Hamtilton's bio come expose on Armstrong is to be believed, he was good at it too. Being able to suffer and keep going is often the mark of a good climber.
In other sports (eg 400m hurdles) at elite level in the final build phases of their training, unless they're throwing up at the end of their intervals they're not going hard enough.
Not sure I want to go that far!
Ah yes, Tyler Hamilton. There is a story... oh, it's succinctly put in the NY Times review of 'The Secret Race':
Yes, that's right: the guy wore his teeth down grinding them due to the pain of his broken bones!
Ah yes. It's a great read. Well worth picking up.
I get the impression there was a lot more that could have gone in but didn't because of Dan Coyles insistence on bullet proof verification.
I love the quote about truth having an inner springiness that won't be suppressed.
/hijack
The study I was referring too was more about the muscles retaining better response to electrical impulses when lactic acid was present
Can't find it now though