I did it. I signed up for my first sprint triathlon. I needed a goal, something to point to...and I found it. I will be spending my July birthday churning through a local lake, pedaling through the countryside and pounding 5k's worth of pavement.
It's a short triathlon, but it's something worth climbing out of bed in the morning and heading to the gym.
One of my biggest problems is that I put off doing things that I'm not comfortable with. In this case, the swim looms large and long. But, it's not just swimming...it's anything that I dread, am not good at, may involve conflict or has an unknown outcome. This "defect" causes alot of stress in my life at times and it's something that I am working on.
With my typical avoidance pattern in mind, I started swimming this week. As I started paddling along in the pool, I was filled with despair over my endurance and irregular breathing. This time, however, I have started months in advance instead of 2 weeks before the event.
I have since been in pool twice. (Instead of drowning in my despair and quitting) And, it's already better than I would have hoped. Today, I did a 1/2 mile swim and survived. I still have 10 weeks to train and the relief of facing my weakness is great.
Now, if I can just translate this across many aspects of my life, I'll have found a way to decrease some of the stress in life that I can control.
As Dory said in "Finding Nemo", I'll "just keep swimmin..."
No comments:
Post a Comment