Facing my Swim Demons

Tuesday night was the scene for one of those training sessions that really test your ironman resolve.

It was the night I faced up to my swimming demons.
It was the night that Coach Dave realised he had underestimated the strength of those demons.

It was a learning experience for us both.

Over the weekend I had told him that I felt I had done enough pool swimming.  I felt that what I really need now, with little over 100 days to ironman, is to get stuck into some serious open water swims in the wetsuit.  I needed to do this as the memories of last year's half ironman were still burned into my memory banks, and it wasn't a fun memory.

I guess I had experienced what all novice triathletes experience.  That first 2-300 metres where my breathing wasn't right, I felt constricted in the wetsuit and, as I tried to stop hyperventilating and watched the rest of the field swim away from me, I seriously questioned whether or not I could finish the distance.  I did get there in the end, but it really took all my willpower and self talk to get me through and I knew I had a bit of work to do to get my mind to the end of the swim leg at Taupo.

Over winter, then, I spent a lot of time in the pool, practising drills and working on technique.  As a result I'm now swimming much more freely and smoothly.  However tempered against that is the knowledge that, while a swim session might be up to 2700m in total, it would be broken down into drills which have generally been 200m or 300m at the most and with turns (and extra breaths!) at the end of the pool, at the end of every 25m.

What I needed to do now was get comfortable with longer swims and sighting - and I was only going to get this experience away from the pool.

In the weekend, then, I relayed these concerns to Dave and so we organised a wetsuit swim with Andi out at Pegasus on Tuesday night.  I was particularly glad to be getting this in with half ironman looming as I didn't really want my first wetsuit swim of the season to be in a competitive environment!

Pegasus Lake

It was a great evening, weatherwise.  Temperatures hitting 30 degrees, sunny and calm, and there were plenty of people at the lake enjoying the evening.   The lake itself is about 760m long, perfect for a decent stretch of swimming.  If you look at the photo above, we got into the water just out of picture at the bottom then the plan was to swim under the bridge and then all the way up the photo to one of the two beaches at the far end.

So, wetsuits on and in we get.  Andi bowls into the water and starts swimming and Dave and I follow close behind.  Within a couple of minutes we are steadily stroking our way towards the bridge.

Which, for me, lasts approximately 1 minute.  I stop and look around. Man, I haven't gone far and the bridge is still in front of me.  Oh and look, Andi and Dave are at the bridge already.  OK, better get going again.

30 seconds pass.  I must be at the bridge now.  Nope, keep going.  Another 30 seconds pass - finally, I'm under the bridge and Andi and Dave are about 50m ahead of me.  Damn, they make it look so easy.

And so it continues.  In short, I'm totally pathetic. Andi and Dave cruise along and before long are tiny specks in the distance and I'm hyperventilating in the middle of the lake thinking I'm getting nowhere and I'm never going to get to the end of this blasted stretch of water, and what's my coach doing taking off and leaving me behind like this?!!!!!

So I continue on with my totally irrational thoughts.  Meanwhile Andi and Dave have reached the end and are sitting on the beach waiting for me.  When I finally haul my sorry self out of the water I'm ready to fire the coach (and tell him so) and then burst into tears.  Not feeling much like an ironman now...

So we sit down and talk about what's happened and deduce that the main problem is that I'm not breaking up the swim in my mind.  All I'm seeing is the far end and it's looking like a loooong way to go and so my brain is telling me I can't do it.  The same principle applies to a marathon or a 180km bike.  You don't think about running 42km.  It's just too far.  Instead you break it down into four 10km runs.  The Ironman bike is chunked down to four 45km segments which is much easier for the mind to deal with.

Once we got that issue sorted Dave worked out a strategy for our return swim.  We picked out three spots down the lake and we would swim to each of those spots.  That broke up the swim into much more manageable segments and, with the three of us sticking together it was a much less traumatic (almost enjoyable!) experience. 

Dave also showed me the best way to sight.  Whereas I had been focusing on their ever-reducing heads as they swam down the lake, Dave had me looking for much larger objects which are easy to find with a slight glance while swimming.  Like big trees or buildings, well above water height.

It therefore turned out to be a very successful evening and, while it's going to take more than one session to have me swimming happily for long stretches, the experience has set me on the right trajectory to the ironman swim course.

Oh, and Dave is still coach!