Pain comes in all sorts of ways.

Most of know the pain of road rash. Some of us break things in our bodies that require powerful drugs to calm down the pain. We get that deep pain in our legs as we fight gravity to ride up those hills – then the itching pain as we recover after the ride.

There is the AFL player who felt the agony when called an APE. Every day, people will go through the pain of losing someone close to them dying. Emotional pain will push people over the edge and this form of pain is often the start of the road to suicide.

Just yesterday, I was called a little Asian #@!!. A while back, a fellow racer reported the same description of me made in the peloton by someone she had also had a run-in with…

In my younger days, name calling would create an anger and pain that was all consuming. Nowadays, it just floats by relatively harmlessly. So, why is it that pain can be triggered on and off so easily?

Our five senses perceive everything that we feel is real. Real is solid. We can see, touch and feel it. Whilst I can feel pain, I have never seen it, smelt it, heard it or taken a picture of it. Yet, we will all say that pain is real.

But why is one thing painful for someone, yet fails to register for others? What is this about a pain threshold? It seems that pain is more imagined than real.

Fresh bread and coffee are things that most cyclists have affection for. The aromas of these two instantly trigger feelings of pleasure. Whether coffee or the bread is consumed or not, the imagination that is set off by the smell is enough to make it an experience.

This is the same for pain. Bike crashes and other tragedies do the job of bringing pain to those just watching it. You don’t have to be there and have it happing to you. That is what makes television and movies so successful. Pain (and pleasure) can be entirely made up – and yet feel so real.

So next time you are in pain, think of it as the aroma of your favourite cup of coffee. Every life story has some element of pain in it. You can just smell the aroma and not drink or you can hold your nose as you drink the coffee. Most will sniff then drink – and enjoy the full spectrum (no matter how made up it is) of the experience.