Spiker Takes the Pain, Makes It Hurt So Good

Let’s test the threshold for pain.

Pinch a baby boy and he’ll cry. Pinch a pro wrestler and he’ll bite back. Pinch a lawyer and he’ll sue.

No one, though, can endure pain quite like distance runner Josh Spiker of Ventura High. He should be in a laboratory being poked and studied for his ability to tolerate pain.

And what’s pain to a cross country runner?

It’s that feeling during a race or workout when suddenly the body begins to malfunction and the runner starts to wonder if there really is a place called hell.

“Your legs feel like they weigh 1,000 pounds,” Spiker said. “Your breathing is out of control. You’re just trying to finish. You’re thinking, ‘Why am I doing this?’ ”

Each time Spiker comes close to breaking down from exhaustion, he finds a way to fight through his ordeal.

“I don’t know why I can, but somehow I can get through it,” he said.

Last June, in the state 3,200-meter final in Sacramento, on the final lap of an eight-lap race, the lead changed hands five times. But it was Spiker who summoned all his energy and determination to rally in the final 10 meters to win.

“I remember just saying, ‘Stay with those guys as long as you can. You can take more pain than them,’ ” he said. “I said, ‘This is it, give it all you have.’ Afterward, I kind of forgot I was hurting. I was just so excited. I couldn’t believe I had won.”

There’s every reason to believe in Spiker, a humble 17-year-old senior who has frosty blond hair and the perfect name to be a volleyball player. But he chose running.

He runs every day, up to 45 miles a week. While friends ask, “How do you run that much? Why do you run that much? Are you crazy?” he races up and down the streets of Ventura, usually shirtless, never questioning his life as a teenage distance runner.

“I love racing, and to race good, you have to train hard,” he said. “I love the feeling when you’re dead and pushing through, finding how far you can push yourself in breaking your times.”

Bill Tokar, Ventura’s cross-country coach, believes Spiker has risen to the highest level because of his mental toughness.

“In cross-country and track, especially distance running, someone who can push themselves to the point of near exhaustion and can do that time and time again is a pretty good indication that someone is capable of pushing themselves hard enough to reach the championship level,” Tokar said.

As a freshman, Spiker made only one brief running appearance because of a stress fracture below his right knee and tendinitis in his right shin. But Tokar already was seeing signs of Spiker’s potential.

“There was something special about him as a freshman,” Tokar said.

With little practice, Spiker ran in the junior varsity league final and won by 45 seconds. Even more inspiring was the way Spiker approached his conditioning workouts in the pool.

“When someone’s swimming pretty hard and they’re gasping for breath and you tell them, ‘Keep going,’ and they take another breath and go, that tells me they’re willing to make the sacrifice physically and accept the pain,” Tokar said.

Last season, Spiker won the Southern Section Division I cross-country championship and finished 14th in the national championships.

Wisconsin, Arizona, Oregon and Stanford are pursuing him for track and cross-country.

He’s an ex-soccer player who avoids junk food (he didn’t eat his first hamburger until he turned 16), likes snowboarding, has a 4.0 grade-point average and never has trouble sleeping.

All those people who take Sominex, Nytol and Melatonin, Spiker has the answer to your insomnia--run, run, run until you’re exhausted.

“When I go to sleep, I sleep straight through,” he said.

Eric Sondheimer’s local column appears Wednesday and Sunday. He can be reached at (818) 772-3422 or eric.sondheimer@latimes.com