I went to Hood River Tri Club on Tuesday night. People were SO nice! I had met a bunch of them at a party at my coach's house on the 4th so they all knew I was The Girl Who Didn't Finish The Swim. It was a treat to see them all again.
The course was an open water swim, 7 mile bike, and 2 or 3 mile run or something. Then a beer. I'll do it every week until Canada.
Getting back in the water with a group of people in wetsuits wasn't fun. I swam 2/3 of the swim course. It's this weird panic like I can't breathe, or am not moving, or something. So weird. Not a problem in the pool and never been a problem in open water before Ironman.
After the workout, when we were all hanging, chatting, and laughing, a man came up to me, he asked me how it was going, and I smiled and said "good," he smiled and said "Really? How was that swim?"... fuck.
I told him it wasn't fun, but that I'd just keep banging my head against it until it got fun. He just looked at me. I'd met him at Mondays party and he basically, very nicely, called was calling me out on my shit. He basically said that though I was physically trained for Ironman, my mental game was a mess.
True.
It makes sense. One signs on for these things for lots of reasons, for me there were lots of reasons as well: Adventure, a big goal, to see what I'm capable of, to celebrate my life... then there's all the "because I have something to prove" reasons. The latter reasons are deep and rooty and probably worth some pondering and making peace with. It totally makes sense that one goes into all this with all their weird stuff about being good enough, and if you don't sort all that out before hand it's not like it's going to get clearer in the freezing water with 2500 other freaks.
It think I have some deep wormy hiccup in my mind, and I have to iron it out.
In addition to mind work, it's back to training. I got acupuncture and massage on my whackidy shoulder last night and am all over figuring out the work/train/sleep/eat/shower/water garden/summertime balance.
The Epic Continues... This is the blog I started when I signed up and began training for Ironman Coeur d'Alene, my first Ironman triathlon (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run). I trained for 10 months. On June 26 20011 I went to Idaho to do it, something went wrong in the cold water, I didn't make the swim cut off and was pulled from the race. Huge bummer. In a fog of disappointment I signed up for Ironman Canada on Aug 28 to get er done.
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