Wow, I’ve been way out of it lately.  I apologize that I have been so absent in commenting on blogs; I’ve been meaning to catch up on both my reading and my commenting, and so far I haven’t really been able to find the time.  During the past few weeks, things have been so stressful that I feel like I ended up kind of dissociating from my own life a little bit just so that I could get through things without breaking down.  Between now being the only person who works in my office (the Director quit and a new one hasn’t been found yet, leaving me to do the work that would normally be distributed among two people), beginning to teach a six-week intensive course, trying to find a new apartment, etc., I feel like life has gotten out of hand.  The good news is that I have found an apartment, and even though I won’t feel like that’s settled until I have the keys in my hand and I’ve moved my stuff in, at least it’s a significant something.  The way things are going lately, though, I’m scared something will go wrong somehow.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!

After taking last week off of training, I made an effort to get back into the rhythm this week.  I’ve done some running and swimming, and this morning I did something really exciting: I attended an open water swim clinic that was offered to the SheRox triathlon participants here in the Philadelphia area (I’m visiting for the weekend).  Some of you may already know that the open water swim was/is my biggest triathlon-related fear.  There are so many factors: What if I get kicked in the face/head by someone else? What if I can’t see anything around me and I start panicking in the water? What if I can’t finish? There’s no line painted on the bottom of the Schuylkill river the way there is in the pool.  The water isn’t crystal clear.  I have no idea how deep the water is.  Apparently people really do have panic attacks during the swim portion of triathlons.  And obviously, I want to avoid being one of those people.  Hence the open water swim clinic.

I got to the location where the clinic was being held early this morning.  There were already a ton of women there, chatting and waiting for the event to start.  Everyone seemed to be talking about the same thing: how scared they were about the open water swim.  It was comforting to know I wasn’t alone.  It was also nice to look around and see all these athletic women of all different shapes, sizes, and ages.  I am guessing I was probably one of the younger women there, with most of the attendants in their thirties or forties.  Hopefully, I’ll be like those women in five to ten years

The clinic started out with a talk from a psychologist about how to deal with fear and the fact that the best thing to do is not to deny or try to make the fear go away, but rather to accept it as being there, and allowing yourself to feel that that’s okay.  He stressed the fact that it was normal to be scared, and that if anyone didn’t feel scared, something was probably wrong!  He also told us not to think of trying to “prove” anything, but “improve”.  If you go into the event trying to prove (to anyone, including yourself) that you can do it, or you can do it in a certain amount of time, then if something goes wrong and you can’t do it, you are going to be devastated.  Boy, how well do I know that one!  Often, even though I accomplish things that are objectively amazing, I undermine myself by thinking that I wasn’t able to prove to myself that I could do better.  If, however, you focus on improving, you win no matter what happens.  This is definitely a sympathetic attitude that I need to work on adopting toward myself.  If you are thinking about improving rather than proving, then even if you get in the water and feel like you get to a point where you can’t finish, you have still succeeded just by trying.  Another thing he mentioned that I found really interesting was how the monsters in the closet are a lot scarier if you keep the door closed.  It’s so true!  Anticipation of an event or a scary thing is so much worse than the thing itself.

After the psychologist spoke, we got a little speech about stuff that was a bit more practical from a seasoned triathlete, Beatrice.  She spoke to us about different sighting techniques, what to do if we start to feel like things aren’t going well, etc.  Basically, she went over some “survival skills”.  Then, it was time to get in the water!  There were two buoys set up, about 1/8th of a mile away from each other.  We were given the option of just doing one loop (for a total of 1/4 mile) or doing two.  I figured I would see how I felt once I got in the water and go from there.

Upon getting in the water, I got really nervous.  But I told myself that was normal, and did some easy breaststroke to the starting point of the course while allowing myself to breathe deeply.  By the time I got to the buoy, I felt fine!  The water was a great temperature and actually felt really refreshing and relaxing.  It was a little odd to have such low visibility, but not as bad as I thought it would be.  As I swam my two loops, I practiced dodging other swimmers, got used to wearing my tri suit, and worked on my sighting.  Overall, it was a great experience!  I feel like I could have done a whole lot more, and it was great to get a sense of what things will be like on race day.

I was hoping to go for a run today as well, but I’ve been feeling pretty crummy all afternoon.  I took a long nap, but my stomach is still feeling iffy, so we’ll see how things go.