Fear Of A Challenge? Or Fear Of Failure?

I have a secret to tell you.  I’ve known it for about a month or so and haven’t told anyone; you’re the first.  OK, here goes:  I think I’m too scared to do any more triathlons.

I know.  It’s on the unusual spectrum, somewhere between “crazy” and “weird”.  How can I be scared to do triathlons?  Haven’t I done like a million of them?  OK, not a million, but I have completed 11 triathlons and 2 duathlons; enough that I shouldn’t be scared, especially since the 4 I had been thinking of doing are all ones I’ve done before.  But I don’t think I can do it.  I’m scared.

What am I scared of?  The swim, bike, run, or all three of them blending into the perfect storm?  The answer: all of the above and none of the above.  Let me explain, but to do so I have to build up the scene for you.

Last year I decided I was going to really kick my training and racing up a notch, so I bought bike shoes and clipless pedals for my bike (and can someone explain to me why they’re called “clipless” pedals when you have to clip into them?  Anyone?).  This was a huge step for me, as I was now going to fasten myself to the bicycle, so that if I miss a turn and it’s going into a ravine, I’m going with it (since I’m clipped in with my clipless pedals.  Yeah, I just don’t get that).  I got them during the winter when everything was cheap, and decided that when the weather warmed up I was going to teach myself to bike in them and then just eat up every triathlon course I was going to do that summer.   But by the time it was warm enough to bike outside, I was already on crutches with a broken foot and a season full of withdrawn race entries.  I managed to salvage enough of my season to get in the 9 races I needed to qualify for this year’s NY Marathon, but 2013 ended without my name on a single triathlon results list.

I’ve worn my bike shoes and used my clipless pedals all fall and winter, but it’s been on a bike trainer where the odds of going into a ravine are pretty low, even for completely uncoordinated people like me.  I’ve thought about when it warms up enough to take my bike outside (which at this point in January feels like never) that I’ll still have to teach myself to use my pedals without dying. I’ve built this up so much in my own head that I am thoroughly convinced that I can’t do it.  I thought about putting my old pedals back on with the “rat cages” where you just stick your foot in and you and your bike remain plural rather than becoming one single unit, but then I just got scared at the thought of training on the roads at all.

To take my mind off it, I decided to work on my swimming.  Before I broke my foot last spring, I could swim a mile slowly but easily.  When I was on crutches my shoulders hurt way too much to lift my arms over my head let alone complete a stroke strong enough to propel my body through the water.  I stopped swimming completely for a couple of months, and though I’ve forced myself back into it, I haven’t swum more than a half mile at a time.  On top of that, I’ve panicked in the middle and had to stop a few times (with no help from the lifeguard at my gym who takes the first hour of his shift to catch up on his sleep).  OK, so now I can’t bike and I can’t swim.

Running is going OK, but only because I’ve been training for the NYC Half Marathon on March 16^th.  I have talked myself out of running outside, though in my defense it has become newsworthy when the temperature in Westchester breaks into double digits.  Instead I have been training on the “dreadmill” at my gym.  That’s been so awful that by the end of my 7 mile run on the treadmill last Friday, I wanted to pick it up and throw it at someone.  But half marathons are different from triathlons.  At half marathons, you get to run right from the start.  You don’t have to keep yourself from drowning in a lake or crashing into a ravine first.  If I can’t get through the swim and bike, how was I ever going to get to the run?

All of this had been going through my head, and with each thought my fear of triathlons has grown into this big monster that I am in no mood to battle.   Fear 1, Ali 0.

Yesterday I was talking to my kids about gymnastics.  The winter session is almost over and it’s time to sign them up for the spring if they want to continue.  My son Ben didn’t.  I wasn’t overly surprised; he is a baseball fanatic and gymnastics class would have conflicted with his little league games.  He had to pick one or the other, and baseball won hands down.  My daughter Olivia did, which I have to admit surprised me a little.  Ben is a gifted athlete, which occasionally makes me think we should run both paternity and maternity tests on the child just to make sure his amazingly coordinated body is being run by some recessive athletic gene and he wasn’t switched at the hospital (and if you’re reading this, are a professional athlete and your almost 6 year old son who was born at Weill-Cornell is remarkably ungraceful, I think we need to talk).  Olivia is smart, kind, mature, funny – and let’s just say definitely our child when it comes to any gross motor activity.   So though I was thrilled that Liv wanted to stick with gymnastics, I really didn’t understand why she liked it enough to continue.  I decided to find out, so we had this conversation:

Me: “So, you really like gymnastics?”

Olivia: “Yes, I love it!”

Me: “What do you love so much about it?”
Olivia (without needing to think about it): “Because I can’t do a cartwheel.”        

Me (trying not to sound confused and stupid): “Umm, huh?”

Olivia (clearly forcing herself not to roll her eyes at me): “Because if I quit, how am I ever going to learn how to do a cartwheel? And once I can do it, I’ll love that I can do it! (and then I think she said, “Duh!”, though that might have been just me picturing her as a teenager for a moment when she won’t be able to hold back the eye rolls anymore).

1st triathlon with buddy Stephanie, 2010

Well there’s an interesting concept: if something is a challenge and you face it instead of running away from it, you may overcome the challenge and love both the process and the result.  Last year’s triathlon season was a failure.  If I avoid it this year then I won’t fail, but I also won’t get to work hard at something that I know I love.  And I had to learn this from a 9 year old who is losing her ability to not be exasperated with me.

I’m going to do 4 triathlons this year, 1 Olympic distance and 3 sprints.  When the weather warms up I’ll take my bike outside and learn to haul ass on it with my clipless pedals.  Until then I’ll work on my swim until a mile feels like a warm up.  I know; on the on unusual spectrum, it’s somewhere between “crazy” and “weird”.  But it’s a challenge and that’s the part that I love the most about it.