Good news: I finished my second sprint triathlon today!
Better news: All five of the roommates did it together, including the one who declined last year (hurray hurray hurray!) and the one who is flying to Paris later this evening. (People kept making puzzled faces at her and asking, "Why are you doing a triathlon the same day you're flying to Paris?" She would shrug and say, "Peer pressure." Let's hear it for peer pressure!)
News of uncertain import: I am going to tell you all about it.
Let's talk about the swim first. Do you remember my long and exclamation-point-y post from last June about the swim and bike legs of my first triathlon? I forgot something important: even though I typed those words with my own ten fingers (nine, really; I never use my left thumb when I'm typing -- do you?), I didn't remember the weight of those words. I knew I had been really anxious in the run-up to the triathlon because I was afraid I'd be last or need rescuing, but I didn't remember the magnitude of the anxiety that assailed me during the triathlon itself. "The course is shorter than advertised!" I told myself when worries would loom up from the depths of my psyche like an unwelcome Loch Ness Monster. "No big deal!" I estimate that it's a 600-yard swim course, and I swam 600 yards in turbulent 12-foot water in our practice tri two weeks ago. It wasn't my favorite thing I did that day, but it didn't stress me out too much. I thought I was over my swimming anxiety.
[cue sea monster music] (well, no, I've never seen anything billed as sea monster music either, but I imagine it's like the Jaws theme with additional legs and bonus suckers)
I'd say that my overall swim anxiety is down by about 75%. The whole unmanageable childhood fear thing-- it doesn't really rear its head in a pool these days. But OH is it different when I'm not in a pool. There is something deep inside me that puts its foot down. It says, "No, I am not going to put my head under this turbid water and propel myself forward at speed. I only propel myself forward at speed when I can see where I am going because do I look like I want a BRAIN INJURY??" It says, "Unless I can see with my very own eyes that there is no kraken in this body of water, I am going to operate under the assumption that it could contain a kraken." I tried a few times to swim like an actual swimmer instead of a patient old lady, and NOPE was the unambiguous and immediate response from some part of me that doesn't usually get to run the show.
So. I swam on my back for a while, and I old-lady-breaststroked for a while, and I tried to find a groove. But I? was a mess. I was trying to calm myself down, because I have lived with this anxious brain for almost 47 years now and I know a few things about dialing down the adrenaline. "If you pray a decade of the rosary," I told myself, "you'll be at the first buoy before you're even done."
The rosary is my go-to strategy for digging deep when I am suffering and also for putting a metaphorical hood on the cage of the Panic Parrot that lives in my brain. If I ever say, "I was working too hard to pray the rosary," I know that was a tough workout.
I was too hopped up and stressed out and miserable to pray the rosary.
I got through it, slowly and wretchedly. It took me a minute longer than last year. Instead of the relief and delight I felt on the sand last year, I was suffused with frustration and embarrassment. I headed up to transition, where I touched base briefly with the next-slowest roommate before she headed out on her bike.
I was looking forward to the bike leg, which was such a joy last year. I got myself out of transition and onto the bike a little faster than last year, and set to work trying to find a good rhythm and shake off the residual misery. I was passing someone when a voice from behind bellowed at me to get out of the way. "Ride on the RIGHT! Pass on the LEFT!" she spat angrily, pelting by at what must have been 25mph. "I was passing," I snapped back. There was plenty of room for her to pass me on my left while I was passing the slower rider on our right. I'm not sure why she had to be so nasty, but the figurative ash from her eruption left me sprinkled with another layer of self-doubt and bad feeling.
I biked right into a headwind, which did nothing to blow away this encrustation. The first half of the two-loop bike course is downhill, but I was gasping for breath at 13mph. "Oh, man," I thought to myself, "coming back uphill is going to be AWFUL."
WILL our heroine shake free from the Shackles of Self-Doubt?
WILL she be slower on both the swim and the bike this year?
WILL the kraken rise up out of Kraken Lake to seize her as she struggles past, held up by the roaring headwind?
(BONUS QUESTION: IS there broadband internet at the bottom of Kraken Lake?)
Tune in tomorrow.
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