I have jumped in the deep end figuratively speaking more times than I care to remember. I have always managed to stay afloat and do well. But when it came to jumping in the deep end in the literal sense it was daunting to say the least!
Late last year a good friend asked if I would do a triathlon with her. I looked at the event, it was an event called Triathlon Pink, a fun event raising money for breast cancer. There was various distances but I would want to do the biggest one (small by triathlon standards) 600m swim, 16km ride and 6km run. So I thought yeah why not! She said ‘no take backs’, I said no worries!! I mean I ride and I run, sure….then I remembered that I can’t swim!!! Yes you read that correctly. If you are thinking that you’ve seen me in the water, jumping off things etc you would be remembering correctly…what you may not have noticed is that I always hold my nose when going under water and I am continually doggy paddling to water that is shallow enough for me to stand in!! So when people say really, you can’t swim? I say yes, I mean I don’t drown….but I can’t swim!
Some would see committing to a triathlon when you can’t swim as a hindrance; I saw it as a challenge, and an opportunity to learn something I have been shying away from for years.
I am becoming increasingly good at taking myself out of my comfort zone; pushing the boundaries of what I think I can achieve, and finding out that I am capable of so much more. I have to constantly remind myself that this is the case in an effort to stop subconsciously sabotaging myself from achieving my full potential.
Growing up in Greece, swimming was not a thing we learnt at school. We didn’t go to the local pool as a class and we didn’t have swimming carnivals. We went to church and said prayer and did maths really well (so well that I was bored in maths when I first started school here but that’s another story!) So point is, we didn’t get swimming lessons. We had a holiday house near the beach and we spent a lot of time there but I didn’t learn to swim. I believe that it was partly my fault, apparently I wasn’t an easy child when it came to doing things out of my comfort zone! I do remember my dad telling me it was time to take my floaties off and me having a hissy fit!! I did eventually let go of them, but I always had flippers on and was on inflatable things and never went deep, so I found a way to get away with not learning how to swim.
So, having committed to this damn triathlon I decided it was a good reason to finally go and have some swimming lessons! I’ve been wanting to do this since my mid 20s but to be honest, I’ve been too embarrassed! I mean, I’m 39, and I can’t swim, and I end up in a pool with little kids who put me to shame.
So in November I rang the local pool and inquired about private lessons. I was petrified heading to the pool for my first lesson. Really shitting myself. But it was fine. I had a couple of lessons and Mel (instructor) gave me some things to work on and told me to call her when these things were second nature. She didn’t feel I should pay her to watch me practice. So I took it on and went once a fortnight or something. December was crazy busy so getting to the pool was hard work. Chris came with me a couple of times to give me some pointers and after the last one I felt frustrated, annoyed and overwhelmed at what lay ahead of me. By now it was late January and I had not done much. I couldn’t swim with my head under water for more than a couple of meters before stopping because I was either gasping for breath, or more often than not I had forgotten that I can’t breathe under water and came up gagging. Pool water really doesn’t taste very good!!
I believe it was around the middle of February I very excitedly messaged a friend to announce that I had just completed my first ever 50m lap! That felt like an achievement! It wasn’t much head down, there was a lot of arm flapping, but I felt that it was a little milestone. Great! Now to learn to do it properly, remove the flippers and add another 11 laps to it!…in less than 2 months!
So the question was, had I bitten off more than I could chew? Was this a pipedream that I wouldn’t be able to fulfil? Have you met me??? Hell no!!! I just needed to step it up like 10 fold! Cause when you realise you have bitten off more than you can chew, you have two choices… you can let the overwhelm choke you and give up, it’s all too hard, or you can choose to chew like f’ing crazy!! Guess which one I went with???
I rang Mel to book in more lessons but it was apparently peak season and she was booked up. Uh oh!!!! Now what? Keep going I guess!
At the start of March my friend piked out of the event! It was also around this time that I started to become a little anxious. I had not made much improvement in a couple of weeks, I still couldn’t get my breathing consistent enough and I could only sometimes do a lap. On really good days I could make it half way back…sort of. And I was still in flippers always.
I couldn’t sleep, I felt so stressed and overwhelmed with the sheer volume of work that needed to be done if I was going to be successful. Some days I would get to the pool, see how many people were in there and want to turn around and walk away. Some days I did walk away, got to the car and said to myself, come on, you have to do this. If you are going to have any hope in hell of swimming in this triathlon you HAVE to do this. Turn around, go back to the pool. No excuses. Too busy, too cold, too tired, none of these are excuses, they can’t be excuses and no matter how shit I am feeling I need to be in the pool!
It wasn’t helping that work was crazy, I was barely functioning leaving work, all I wanted to do was go home and go to sleep. And all this stress about swimming that I hadn’t gone for a run in ages. Good lord woman, it’s a triathlon, you need to get fitter! You’re going to be spent when you get out of the pool!
3 ½ weeks out, 5.30am, panic stations. This goal was not realistic in the timeframe I had left. But I had no intention of giving up. I’d invested too much in this already. So I enlisted help. I had tried to get help from a friend about three weeks earlier but between shift work and school carnivals we hadn’t coordinated, and to be completely honest I didn’t try very hard to. But I was fast running out of time so it had to be all hands on deck to get me to my goal.
3 weeks out my first helper (Luke) and I went to the pool. He gave me some tips, corrected some of my technique, and also gave me lots of encouragement and was impressed at how well I was doing considering that 2 months ago I couldn’t swim. I made a little breakthrough with my breathing too. The next day I completely destroyed myself in the pool. At the point where on other days I would have called it a day, I changed tactics and kept going. Partly motivated by the woman in the lane next to me who kindly asked me if I had had swimming lessons because I was throwing my arms around. I politely thanked her and explained that I hadn’t been swimming long etc. (Thankfully I knew better than to mention why I was doing it, I dread to think what she would have had to say!) Would’ve been fine if she had left it there, but at every end she insisted on giving me ‘tips’ and telling me how important it is that I get lessons. So I waited till she got down the pool before I started to ensure we didn’t end up on the same side of the pool at the same time again, though supposedly she could swim and I can’t but I was still beating her down the pool in all my untrained arm-throwing glory! I did start to think about my arms more though and the side to side movement Luke had told me about, and by the end of the session I had come full circle, without flippers doing 50m…properly!!! That felt good. And I felt that there was hope!
A few days later Freddy came to my rescue….his teaching was thorough, meticulous and bloody hard work!!! He pushed me through 1 ½ hrs in the pool trying to sort out my breathing, making me do lap after lap. I was exhausted and sore…and wished I’d started the whole thing a lot earlier! Freddy spent hours over many days in the pool with me, breaking down and correcting everything, while keeping in mind the time constraints I had to this goal! Whenever I got frustrated he would remind me that Rome wasn’t built in a day! I was very aware of what I was trying to do but I had invested too much time and energy to give in now. So we persevered. We came up with strategies on how to tackle the day. Take the opportunity to rest at each end of the pool, switch to breaststroke when I lost my rhythm. Get through it somehow!
1 week out…my body was declaring war on me! I hurt, I was tired, I was not conditioned enough and I still couldn’t swim the distance. I was trying not to panic and accept my situation. I was determined to push through and get this done, but the exhaustion was overbearing and I didn’t get in the pool or do any more exercise after Monday, 6 days out.
T minus 2 days and I was in bed resting, sleeping, fighting. I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, I had no energy. I was taking vitamins and had been going to bed early all week but my body was not responding. I’d had a headache for days on end. I had no idea how I would even get to the start line in that condition.
The night before I barely slept. I was so full of nervous energy, still debating my decision to go through with this and wondering if it was even possible to get through it. But I had come too far, I would be doing myself an injustice to not even try.
The morning of the event, I was the first person there! 15 minutes early! My friend Fran who lives in Sydney and had decided to enter, showed up a few minutes later. We got ourselves a good spot in transition and set up. Then we casually walked over to the pool and sat down to chill. Sitting by the pool I felt sick, I just wanted to get it over and done with. The event was very relaxed and the focus was fun, but I was conscious of not being in the pool forever and not holding up the following events. I got in the pool 4th to last (it had been requested that slower or less confident people line up further back). I had been watching the first half of the field swim and was honestly overwhelmed…what the hell was I thinking?!
When it was my turn I jumped in and swam as far as I could. I have to be honest, this wasn’t far! I took in some water on my jump in (I’m going to thank nerves and a racing heart for that one!) so I was already on the back foot. So I stopped to regroup and calm myself down! Restart! Swam as far as I could then switched to breaststroke. At the shallow end I stood up and waddled around the buoy to catch my breath. And then that became my strategy. Dive in and swim freestyle as far as possible towards the deep end and around the buoy on that side then switch to breaststroke till I was back in the shallow end, waddle around the buoy while catching my breath and repeat. It meant I kept moving. Coming down the 6th lap I was spent, and almost pulled the pin on the swim….but I couldn’t do that to myself, so I ran around and jumped in for the 2nd round. Completing the 600m, I ran out of the pool area, relieved that it was done, got into transition and onto my bike.
The bike was easy. 16km flew by, barely puffing, got back in to get ready for the run, then bam, shutdown! I hadn’t hydrated properly and my body felt like it weighed a tonne. 500m in, my stomach cramped up, like somebody grabbed my insides and twisted them into a knot. The second 500m was a combo of jogging and walking, trying to breathe it out and walk it out. At the 1km mark there was a drink station, so I stopped and guzzled 2 cups of water then kept going. 100m or so into the 2nd lap I started coming good and was able to run comfortably again. It was a very slow 6km but I got through it.
Crossing the finish line was the most incredible feeling. I cried tears of joy and relief. This was a case of ambition outweighing ability so I had to draw on the one thing I know I have a tonne of, and that is sheer stubborn determination!!!
I learnt so much doing this. Not only that I’m capable, I’m fit and the fact that I recovered amazingly well is proof of that, and I am now aware of what I need to do to be better prepared for the next one! Yes yes, I will be doing this again! But I will get my swimming improved and I will train a bit more evenly! Thank God I had been fit, cause I only did maybe three 3-4km runs in the lead up to this! Oh and water!!! Water water water! It’s really important!!!
The times were: swim 17mins, bike 43mins, run 55mins. Just under 2 hours of ‘fun’…which is code for fulfilling agony!!!
Many thanks to my friends who have supported me on this adventure. In the pool, Chris Neal, Cath Seabrook, Luke Abberton and my number 1 swimming coach Freddy Koch. Could not have gotten even close to doing this without you all. And outside the pool, all the messages of support and encouragement, not just on the day but throughout the process. Fran, for joining me on the day and keeping me in check, and of course my number 1 supporter, official photographer and sideline cheersquad Hubby skippy Neal!
Thank God my friends encourage and support my crazy ideas! I mean, why would you not enter a triathlon when you can’t swim!!!
🙂
lifeis1adventure 