A peculiar kind of masochism

It occurred to me somewhere in the middle of today's workout that running is a peculiar kind of masochism. Say you're in pain and there's no way to escape it. You cope as best you can, by ignoring it, distracting yourself from it, or whatever. But you cope, because there's nothing you can do.
Running is different. While it may not be proper to call it pain, its certainly significant discomfort, but unlike pain being inflicted on you by someone else, it is significant discomfort of your own making. Moreover, when you are inflicting it on yourself with the goal of hitting a certain time, coping isn't really an option; if you cope, you slow down, and the whole exercise becomes pointless. So that's my peculiar masochism: dealing with significant discomfort in such a way as to render the fact that I inflict it on myself as useful. "Pain is weakness leaving the body" as the stupid army saying goes. Which means I'm a pretty fucked up guy.
I believe I noted at the very beginning of my last post--almost a year ago--that I never have been a good blogger, precisely because I can never seem to get into the habit of posting consistently. When I last wrote I wasn't even sure I was going to be able to keep running. I got out of the habit of writing here because there wasn't anything to write about for a while. My foot is actually still kind of messed up, it hurts often when I walk, but oddly only extremely rarely when I run. So run I did. However, I still have yet to officially PR since junior year, which means that while I did mean to write here before now, and while I did compete in quite a few races last spring, none of them were significant enough to me to start writing again. Honestly can't tell you why I'm writing now, but here we are...
This was supposed to be some sort of narrative about life as a runner. Well, I'm no longer in Houston, for the moment more or less isolated in my training, doing all my runs alone, and my new coach lives in another city. Its an odd and lonely place to be. Maybe its interesting enough to some of you out there to keep up with; if so, you're welcome along for the ride. Honestly this resurgence of interest on my part may not last much more than a week, but we'll see...I think at times its as much an exercise for myself to reflect on what exactly it is that I'm doing when I lace up my shoes every day. I was good for my age in high school, but ever since I have never seemed able to get past being on the cusp of being what I suppose can be considered an "elite" runner. It is in no small part due to a surprisingly large lack of confidence. But as my coach told me today, can't dwell on the past, all that shit's behind you. Just worry about today. And ain't that always one of the cliches they throw at us as we grow up, carpe diem, seize the day...
Well, hopefully if I keep this up I'll be a little more focused, insightful, and interesting to read anyway.

Wednesday: 3x2 miles around 10 min with 5 minutes between

10 minute warm-up
~2 miles in 10:01
5 min jog
~2 miles in 9:58
5 min jog
~2 miles in 9:56
10 minute cool-down