Training has been ongoing officially since February 1st. It's been an interesting journey so far. My mental state has been on a roller coaster, taking my confidence along for the ride. However, my ups and downs have been mostly restricted to my performance in relation to the everyone else in my group (am I the slowest swimmer, biker, runner?), like that even matters. But, as Paula Porizova said in her blog "No one ages as badly as a beautiful woman" (or something to that effect) I'm finding that the desertion of all my running speed has given my ego quite a beating. Running was the only part of triathlon that I had any competency and I don't even have my running chops anymore. Wah.
I have been training more for this than for anything else I've ever attempted. Swimming, running, biking. 8, 9, 10-hours a week. One would think that I would have wasted down to nothing with that much exercise, but to quote Bea, my friend and fellow Red Lady, I'm wondering when my six-pack abs are going to start to show. Maybe they are in there somewhere, under that stubborn layer of fat.
This weekend I attended EMG's Kansas 70.3 training camp and the magnitude of what I have signed up for has started to hit me. We did an open water swim yesterday morning (the air temperature was 39 and the water temp, 67), and I freaked out again.
Even though I have done a little bit of open water swimming, the opacity of the water threw me off, plus the cold water kept me from being able to get any rhythm. I couldn't catch my breath. The more I tried to relax, the worse my gasping became. Lucky for me, a fellow camper assisted me back to shallower water. I spent the rest of the time practicing in the designated swimming area, but my confidence was blown. Liz, the Red Ladies coach, asked me if I had had a panic attack. I wouldn't have called it that, as I didn't really feel afraid when it all started happening. However, the more I gasped, the more tired I got. If Steve hadn't helped me, I would have gotten scared.
Overcoming a lifetime of being afraid of deep water seems impossible right now. Just thinking about what happened yesterday is making my chest tight and causing me to gasp a bit. I know a lot of people in the club have had this issue and have gotten past it to do a full IM distance, so it can be done. I'm just not sure what I need to do to make it happen. For now, I just have to keep plugging along to plan, but I'm still worried.
The second sanity check came later that day when we did our bike segment. I was going to ride about 40 miles. But, once we got started, I decided to ride with Bea as she did the whole course. The furthest I had ever ridden before was about 35-40 miles. The Kansas 70.3 course was nice. Challenging with some good hills, but not as gross as riding around Shawnee Mission Park. It was really windy, which made the ride more difficult that it might have been, But, it was long, and it seemed that we couldn't get out of the wind, no matter which way we turned. We finished the ride, but the idea of running 13.1 miles off the bike almost made me cry!
So, between the unsuccessful swim attempt and the misery I experienced toward the end of the my ride were a harsh reckoning of exactly what I signed up for.
Four months to Redman. It doesn't seem long enough.
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