2900 Yards and Counting

First and foremost I wanted to thank everyone for their encouraging comments!  It's nice to know I have an audience.




2900 yards in the bag last night during an hour and a half practice.  2900 yards is about 1.6 miles.  My race has a 2.4 mile swim.  


And I hate swimming.  


Well hate is a strong word (lots of strong words in this blog).  It's uncomfortable.  With biking and running I can at least get off and just walk, with swimming the equivalent is turning on your back and blindly trying to keep your forward momentum going.  Or you can just sit there bobbing like the buoy you are struggling to reach and become overwhelmed with the giant expanse of water surrounding you.  It's like being stuck in your seat surrounded by people in the burning down theater...  


Have I mentioned I have a control and anxiety issue?  


During a long drive to a practice race a teammate and I shared our love for the sports the other one feared.  Her's the bike, me the swim.  I love the bike.  It's exhilarating to be speeding 35mi an hour, your body cutting through the wind like a knife through butter, at one with the machine.  She explained how the swim was like an embrace.  Safe.  Enveloping.  But you see the swim is one of those things where my mind is like "help!  we can't get out till we finish this and we are a slow @ss!"  Also there's no mints or drinking water.  I have a phobia of my mouth going dry which began when I started having panic attacks in college (a story all its own).  I no longer have the attacks, at least at that severity, but when I'm nervous my pacifier is mini Altoids and drinking water.  There's no Altoids in the ocean.  There's no drinking water in the ocean!  At least in fresh water or the pool I can swish some water (which is gross but you gotta do what you gotta do) but the last thing I need is a mouth full of salt water.


Can I confess something?  For every scheduled open water swim I've prayed for rain, and it rained!  I'm not claiming to be the reason for the rain but I feel guilty to be hoping to avoid something I desperately should be attempting to get over my anxiety.  This is my third season with a triathlon team with Team in Training!  I should have TONS of open water swimming experience, right?  NOPE.  My first season it rained every weekend.  I had one open water swim practice before my race.  The race went surprisingly well but you can not understand my relief when it was done.  I felt like I could laugh again.  It was being released into freedom Shawshank style.  It was this:

My sister, cheering on the sidelines, thought I was in pain.  I'm not sure what happened but the outsides do not match the rainbows and unicorns I was feeling on the inside.  My second season we had about 2 chances for some open water action.  The first one I was frozen with the waves around my knees staring nervously at the blue in front of me.  As a mentor it was shameful, embarrassing.  I was supposed to help my mentees but instead they came out of the water and told me how fun it was.  


Now here we are.  A week or so ago the day before a scheduled OWS Ninja Coach (who affectionately now calls me M-Kak) pointed at me and said "open water swim"!  He knows I have two other seasons under my belt and apparently has faith that I'm comfortable in the liquid blue salt lick.  Eh...


But this is why I'm here.  With each 10k getting easier, then my completion of half marathons, I needed another challenge.  I never wanted it to stop there.  So tris were the next step and now this massive undertaking of the Ironman.  This is how I want to live my life.  Facing fears.  After the "bus incident" (see previous blog) I had nothing left so there was nothing left to lose.  My motto became "do it till it's easy".  Since then I've reconstructed and rebuilt so that aggressive nothing left to lose feeling has faded so it's a little harder to attack fears head on but I haven't stopped.  Sometimes I read old journal entries and try to bring it back.  Why fear?  








Why fear?

Too bad big blue waves aren't like love.




Must channel my inner happy seal.