No more pain

It's been one month since the marathon. I think 2 days ago my left shin finally stopped hurting. "Hurt" may be too strong a word, but there was definitely some uncomfortable tension there for the past four weeks. My right shin stopped hurting about a week earlier. I wrapped up my lower right leg on race day and that leg healed sooner. Hmmmmm... whatdayaknow, that stuff really works.

So let's see: marathon training involves about 2 months of pain before the race, and 1 month of pain after. That's 1/4 of the year. Why do people do this?