Killing me or Making me Stronger?

I have to admit, this year especially, I feel tired with my training.  It may be that I am another year older and the workouts are not any easier and my dry land has increased.  It may be that the kids are older and I am stretched in more directions; or maybe it is a synergistic effect.  Whatever the case, things are still moving in a forward progression, spring is coming and so are my big swims.  As I left the pool yesterday I sat in my car for a few minutes and thought about the months to come.

First, my 6 hour training swim in Bermuda with Coach and 5 other swimmer friends in tow.  This will be fun, it will be amazing, and the support and camaraderie will be a beautiful reminder of what the 8 Bridges Hudson River Swim will offer.  Then the experience of swimming down the Hudson over 7 days – the anticipation, nerves, fear etc. etc., that I have, are intense.  Lastly, to finish off the summer swims, there will be Manhattan.  I am not even sure what to expect with this swim but again, the intense feelings are all there.

I think with any swim that I do, no matter what the distance, the fear of not finishing is the most intense.  I know there will be pain and there will be long long hours, but the unknown elements in open water swimming makes dealing with these feelings especially difficult.  Will the water be too cold and I’ll have to get pulled? will my feedings be wrong or my body not react to them the way I practiced and I’ll have to get pulled?  Will there be unknowns in the water or other boat or ferry obstacles that will squash the swim?  Will the conditions change that will make officials call the swim?  These are all things I worry about but they seem to melt away once I start swimming.  The moment I start swimming further and further away from the start, the more comfortable, finally, I feel and am able to focus on nothing else but my stroke and the moment.  A big part of this comfort comes from the training.  The hours and hours and hours of training that are put in at the pool.

Yesterday, my coach gave me my IM workout.  9,500 yards, of which 6,000 of it was IM sets.  The yardage was not the problem.  I am doing 9,500 daily right now and will move up to 10,000 next week- I’m used to the yardage.  The IMs weren’t even the problem, as Wednesdays are usually my designated IM days.   It was the start of a few of the IM sets that scared me.  I will spare you the breakdown of that workout but when I first looked at it my reactions were as follows: “Is she serious?” followed by “oh god, I wish I didn’t look at this right now,” and then “how am I going to get through this?”  I was thinking that this was a test, to see if I could do this whole workout without breaking stroke.  Bonnie (my coach) knows I hate fly, and backstroke is a close seconds.  I’ll do them because I think incorporating all the strokes into my training is important for open water, but I don’t like them.  These anxious feelings I had did not subside through my 2,000 mix warm up.  When the first two set came, I was relieved, actually relieved I made it through with little pain but the third set is what was on my mind.  And as I was on my 4th lap of a 225 fly I thought to myself, actually thought, “she IS trying to kill me.”  Lap 6 came in a strained stretch, lap 7 I felt a second wind, sails lost their wind on lap 8 and lap 9 well (I didn’t break stroke), but I’m sure nothing look pretty to those on deck.  When I hit the wall I though, “I made it, I did it (even though I still have the hardest of the back stroke to get through followed by 3 more long ladder sprint IMs).” The fly was not picture perfect at the end and, it didn’t feel particularly nice either, but I didn’t break stroke and was able to get off the wall for backstroke without adding any time.

When I crawled out of the pool, exhausted, and achy, with my mind telling me I made it over the hump day, I again pondered whether Bonnie was actually trying to kill me.  Slowly, so no one would ever suspect her…but then I though No!  of course she’s not trying to kill me.  Today, she just made me a little stronger.