On a recent morning I was driving to my favorite beach where I swim regularly, only this time it was to do a time trial. As I approached the park entrance I felt my mood change. It was as if a cloud passed over the sun. Fear? No, not that. But similar. Much less intense than fear, but pretty much the same sensation.
I was waiting for the traffic light to change, which gave me some time to reflect on what I was feeling. I had already decided it was not fear. But, what was it? Let’s agree to call it dread. The interesting question for me was, why did I feel that way?
One reasonable explanation was that what I was about to do was a challenge. The plan called for swimming a total of about 1300 yards and would last a little less than an hour. Having just come off a run intensive period in which I did very little swimming, the requirement to go 1300 yards was in itself a challenge. On top of that, or, I should say, in the middle, were two 230 yard sections to be done all out. This was the test. The time trial. Could I swim all out for 230 yards? More than likely I would blow up and stop. Or so I thought.
Stepping back a bit, this kind of swim test is normally done in a pool, by swimming lots and lots of laps. When I started coaching we were just going into COVID lockdown. Pools were closed, but the ocean was open. I set myself the goal of developing an open water swim training method, one that did not require access to a pool. Something I am still working on.
After some experimentation I settled on a simple way to do a time trial, using the parallel columns that line both sides of the walkway along the Ala Moana shore. Find the spot at the east end where the first two columns line up, and swim until the last pair on the west end line up. Take the time from the Garmin, but do not rely on GPS distance. I have measured the distance multiple times and have settled on 230 yards. Not Olympic grade timing, but close enough, and repeatable.
I was about to do the first swim time trial of the season. Of the year. What would a reasonable expectation be? Naturally I wanted to post a time that would mean finishing my planned Ironman race swims without fear of exceeding the cutoff time. Realistically, I have not been swimming much and should have no expectation of doing great. Just finishing the test would be a success. Getting close to a better than cutoff time would also be a success.
I swim Ala Moana frequently. I have done this time trial before. So, why did I feel this way? Before the light turned green I had hit upon an answer.
Why do people put off going to the doctor? Why do people put off going to the dentist? Pain? Discomfort? No. They fear what they will learn about themselves. They will be told they are overweight. Have high blood pressure. They don’t floss. Picture that old time preacher yelling at his congregation, “You are all sinners!” Powerful stuff, and it works.
A time trial is a test designed to reveal how fast an athlete is. Done periodically, they measure progress. Show me an athlete who loves to be tested and I'll show you a liar. We do not want to know how slow we are. How low our power is. Maybe we can pretend we do. We can lie, and exclaim, “I am excited to be here today.” Emotionally, we are not. We dread being here.
In their book The Brave Athlete, authors Simon Marshall and Lesley Paterson spend a lot of time explaining how our chimp brain tries to protect us. The primary goal is survival. The chimp brain responds to stimuli much faster than the parts of the brain we think of as under our control. Our emotions always get ahead of us.
The fascinating thing is that this source of intense emotion includes embarrassment as a threat to survival. Embarrassment. Humiliation. Shame. Powerful emotions that we prefer to avoid.
So, I am parking my car and trying to hold onto the thought that nobody else will know the results. How bad I am. No, drop the bad. How I swim. Because I swim rather well. Slower than the athletes I race with, but faster than 95% of the people at the beach that morning. True, but they are not attempting an Ironman. There’s that self doubt, sneaking back in.
Around so it goes.
The lesson I hope to learn from this experience is to become aware of when I begin to feel this cloud of dread. Instead of “What’s happening to me? Why do I feel so bad?” or hiding out in denial, I want to be able to spot the cloud as soon as it appears.
Marshall and Paterson offer lots of suggestions on how to deal with such thoughts. I especially like the one about locking yourself in your car and screaming. I just can’t imagine doing that. I certainly did not feel like doing that at Ala Moana that morning. A good first step is to embrace it. Take ownership. Then let it be there.
I guess my point here is that getting better at noticing when the cloud arrives, without freaking out that it has, the better the chances of dealing with it successfully.