I Am Officially Training - A Triathlon Diary

It was very lucky that my first triathlon went so well. The reason for this is because I only had 8 weeks until my second on the day of my first! Which means, while I write my blog post I only have six weeks and 2 days to go! You would think that having done one already, and having done it reasonably well, that I would be excited for the next one.

You think wrong?

I am just as terrified, if not more so, for this one and this is because the swim is in open water. Okay, it's a lake. But it's outside, it's huge and you cannot for the life of you see the damn bottom. Don't get me wrong, I love to swim. Put me in a pool and I can go for hours. The sea? Yes, love it! The waves and funny salty taste. Trying to do handstands with your hands sinking into the sand on the bottom - hours of fun! I've even been lake swimming before and, on the whole, enjoyed it. It was lovely and warm, we were on holiday in Canada and it was a gorgeous lake. The surface was strewn with lily pads and we all waded in and went for a lovely dip....

Here's the problem... (there will be a slight digression, but stick with me, I'll come back to the lake and the triathlon very shortly). I have the worlds most over active imagination! Truth. I have kept myself awake until the early hours of the morning, the hours that NO ONE should ever see, because I convince myself that the characters from the horror movie I have inevitably watched that day are, in fact, very real! I have two examples of this that highlight just how pathetically scared I can become of my own mind.

Example A) It is a very snowy February in the UK (I know, that in itself is just freaky) and school is closed because, obviously, the whole country came to a stand still at the foot and a bit of snow that had dumped itself on us. Both my parents were home and working from home in the office upstairs, Sian was off doing I don't know what and I thought it would a really great idea to watch a movie by myself to pass the time. Yes, I know. A very normal decision to make - I thought so too. A movie to myself. Lovely. What shall I watch? Oh, I know, let's watch Paranormal Activity. Why the hell not?

Those were famous last words, weren't they! Now, for those of you who haven't seen this movie, it's basically a house haunting filmed by the inhabitants of the house. There is a very angry spirit that seems to take over the woman living in the house. (Even writing this, I am starting to feel really uneasy) There is one particular scene where the couple are in bed and the door to their bedroom opens by itself. The woman then wakes up, shrieking that she can feel the demon breathing on her. Here is where I imagination kicks in. I was fine ALL DAY! I didn't even think about the movie once I'd turned it off - the rest of the day passed without any drama and I got into bed. And Oh, holy Jesus, I scared the living daylights out of myself for hours. I went to bed at around 9:30 - 10pm.... I was awake until 5am! I kid you not! Every time I started to drop off, my brain would tell me that I was feeling the demon breathe on me and I would wake up again. It was honestly ridiculous but there you have it - my imagination scared me so much that I stayed awake for 7 hours!!! SEVEN HOURS!

Example B) I can no longer have a dressing gown hanging on the back on my bedroom door. I went to see The Woman In Black in London with one of my closest friends. It was terrific, I'd see it again any day but again, my imagination likes to play tricks on me. There is a part in the show where the Woman In Black stands on a stair case and just watches the young man move around her house. It is chilling - to see the presence of her in the house and see him so oblivious to it. (I am again, starting to get goose bumps and my heart is racing a little) When I got home after the show that night, I was just slightly jittery and couldn't sleep because every time I rolled onto one side of my bed I would catch sight of my dressing gown and freak out that it was The Woman standing at the bottom of my bed. So, once turning on all the lights of course, I got out of bed and put the dressing gown in the wardrobe and there it has stayed ever since.

So yes, my imagination doesn't need much of a seed to be planted before it goes into warp drive and creeps me out completely.

Right, back to the lake and relevancy of this digression. When you are lake swimming, everything is fine and dandy when you are above the water. The water is warm (if it's in summer and the water has been heated by the sun) and you can see everything. The second you put your head under the water it gets really murky really fast. If you pull yourself down into the water further, it gets cold really quickly too. I'm sure some of you can already guess where this is heading. When I was in the lake in Canada, I went into a little mermaid dive, like I had done a million times in a pool and freaking the flip out as I suddenly panicked that the monster in the bottom of the lake might come up and drag me down to the depths. Because I couldn't see, and it suddenly got so cold, my brain went into panic mode. I very quickly made the decision to stay in a lazy breast stroke with my head firmly above the waters surface!

I'm usually a very confident swimmer - as my Dad tells all his work colleagues, I was born with gills behind my ears. I would happily spend hours in the water without a second thought about it. But I was/still am very nervous about swimming in open water before heading out on my bike and then my run. I know it will totally change the feel of my triathlon. For this reason, I attended an official training day, run buy RGactive, a company affiliated with HumanRace, who are running the triathlon at Eton Dorney in July. The day was split into three seminars, one for each event, and three groups rotated round all three seminars with lunch tucked into the middle.

I was swimming first and quite frankly was very happy to get in the water and get it out of the way. Now, as I have said, I am a really confident swimmer and I have never felt more uncomfortable in the water as I did last weekend. It is a whole different ball game swimming in open water than it is in a pool. The first thing to battle with is the cold! It was freezing!! Well, actually, according to the thermometer, the water was actually 19 degrees C but it felt more like 2 maybe 3 degrees. I couldn't breathe, let alone swim. We did some basic warm up stuff, treading water etc. Then we were told to just float. We were all in wet suits and the instructor wanted us to get used to the feel of the buoyancy the wet suits provided. This buoyancy was going to, apparently, make all the difference to our stroke.

Here comes the part where I really panic. We were asked to go on a very short swim, using the modified front crawl stroke we had been taught on dry land. Putting my face in the water has never been more disconcerting. I have never felt panic like that. My body had adjusted to the cold of the water but my face hadn't. When I put my face in the water, my body wanted to draw in breathe. This, under water, is obviously not such a great idea. I could not exhale under the water. It was so weird, I'd never experienced it before and I actually think, that because I'm normally so at home in the water, that I was feeling even more thrown that someone who wasn't too confident in water at all. It took a while, but eventually, I did feel much more relaxed, my face got used to the cold and I could breathe but those first few minutes were horrid. It was a big eye opener to just how different this swim was going to be compared to the pool in Taunton.

The rest of the training day was helpful enough and I learnt some really great tips for the other disciplines as well as nutrition and kit but the swimming is the thing that I will take away the most from. It was so weird not being to swim easily! Luckily, there is a lake near me that does open water swims so I can go and practice more before that actually triathlon day. Got a lot more training to get through before then and hopefully, by race day, I will feel more confident getting my face in the water and I can just focus on the 400 meters that I have to get through without freezing, instead of panicking that I can't breathe!

Fingers crossed eh!

M xx