On Fear

Alili has an interesting post on her blog about "Fear", where she talks about her nearly crippling fear of being on the bike. I.M. Able commented on that post that she's terrified of hills on the bike.

This got me to thinking about my own fears in the game - both to uncover anything worth exploring inside myself, but also in case I had anything useful to share with Alili (who mentions in her post that she's not looking for advice along the lines of "just get out there and do it" - which is understandably too easy to say...even where there can be truth in its simplicity.) I've mentioned before a truly watershed moment not just in triathlon for me but in my life - my first open water swim in 2005. I'd positioned myself at the front of the pack - because I didn't know any better - and, totally lacking the skills to actually hold my own there, was promptly run over by the masses. I'd never experienced such raw, troubling fear; so that my body took action with a nearly full-blown anxiety attack right there in the water. I'd never experienced anything really like anxiety (I'm the least anxious person I know), so the whole experience was just really terrifying. I nearly quit the race then and there.

But I didn't, and the question is why not. If it's not enough to say, "I just told myself I had to do this," then what's underneath that answer in itself? I don't absolutely know...I think it gets under the skin who we are. I have a general attitude in life that "I can do this." I don't fear fight. If we want to really get melodramatic, I've faced head-on the deepest, darkest places of myself and lived to tell about it. Scarred, but alive. So maybe it's just perspective - "I've been through worse." That sounds...unfair and inaccurate. But I'm not finding a simple phrase or an answer to satisfy the why, and the how, to overcome the things that make me afraid.

In '06, while training for Ironman, I was descending a hill on the roller-coasters near Garfoot, when suddenly my front wheel started wobbling horribly at 40mph. I screamed involuntarily as it happened, because I was losing control of my bike and could feel what was about to happen, as my bike prepared to buckle underneath me. I had just enough sensibility to try and move to the side of the road, so as to hit the ditch if possible, instead of impacting with the asphalt. At the precise moment when my mathematics said, "this is it", my bike slowed just enough for the wobble to subside and everything was fine. But I got off my bike shaking. It was like when you're in a car accident, and the last thing you feel equipped to do after that is drive - I could think of no way I could finish this ride, I was just too shaken up. So I sat there for 15 or 20 minutes and tried to collect myself. Scoured the bike for some mechanical failure to explain this thing that had never happened before. I found none, and that was more unsettling - what happened? How and why? And will it happen again? I did eventually get on the bike and finish the ride, but even the slightest descent was spent riding the brakes and sitting up high. It was weeks before I was really "over" that, and to this day I have to go through some mental warfare when descending not to get anxious about the possibility of "what if".

Early in the season I lack courage for fast descents. I develop it over my riding by picturing myself as an eagle, gliding on the wind. I try and relax completely, I let the road and the breeze move the bike gently around, instead of white-knuckling the handlebars with rigidity. I try and think about relaxing my fingertips, my forearms, my face. I push scary thoughts out of my head and just picture that eagle. It does help me. But sometimes, still, I'll quickly sit up in the saddle, or push the brakes a bit. And y'know -that's okay.

After that horrible first open water swim, I experienced the strangest phenomenon when I got back in the pool for training. My body just froze, paralyzed, unwilling to swim. I had to spend a full training session just kind of "starting over", with easy swimming back and forth with my head out of the water, then just slowly swimming through my strokes, to get the feel of the water. But I didn't really "get over it" until I put a blue rubberband around my wrist, as an object I could focus on and see underwater. I used it as a sort of hypnosis - look for the rubberband...look for the rubberband...look for the rubberband. With a single thing to focus on, I was able to push out whatever intrusive thoughts were keeping me from swimming naturally. It worked, and my workouts resumed to normalcy. As my life as a triathlete continued, I grew more and more comfortable with the washing machine in open water, and I don't fear it now at all. So maybe that's another piece of learning to overcome fear - maybe the most essential piece: experience. The more you do it, the more you'll understand yourself within it, and the less you'll have to fear.

Anyway, I'm wondering what you guys have been through. What scares you in this game, and why, and how do you deal with it? Probably we might all learn a bit about each other, and hopefully ourselves.