Making changes to our lifestyle is hard and takes consistent effort but it's worth it long term.
As I said yesterday I rarely post details of the exercise I do because it can be intimidating when somebody says they went out on their bike for a few hours when you get breathless walking to the car.
However, some people do gain inspiration rather than feel intimidated.
Over the weekend, some of our friends came to support me during a long course triathlon. It was broken down into the three separate events over three days.
A few of
our friends and clients joined the individual events.
Over the next couple of days I'll write a little about each part and preparing for a triathlon in general. I know this is a blog about general fitness and health rather than specifics but the lessons learned are global.
On Friday evening the event started with a 2.4 mile
swim.
That's a little further than a lap of the Coventry Ring Road.
I was reasonably well prepared for the swim, I have been swimming with friends over at Stoney Cove and had swam up to 90 minutes and was feeling good when we arrived in Tenby.
Then in the
race guide they mentioned giant jellyfish. I wasn't aware that I was scared of jellyfish until that point.
It played on my mind for the whole of Friday.
During the warm up, the sea felt warm (if that was 14C the guys at Stoney have definitely been lying about the temperature) and I had a bit of a splash about when the girl
next to me pointed out a jellyfish or breast implant, she couldn't confirm :)
Then I thought, ok they're not the giant ones I saw on google - big mistake I made looking at those.
The starter horn went off and I headed out to the first buoy. Stoney Cove is a great venue but it didn't prepare me for the tide or waves, it took a bit
longer to do the first 800m than I thought it would but I wasn't concerned.
There was a bit of a traffic jam and it took a while to get around it. The main straight was in deeper water, as I was swimming I noticed a couple of pinky shadows under the water, the visibility wasn't great so I couldn't really see that well.
A few metres
on, one was closer to the surface. I felt my heart stop, I had a mini panic attack. I was a jellyfish, just out of my reach and about the size of my torso. The same happened for most of the long stretch, it really disrupted my stroke and made me nervous.
My two friends are different swimmers to me. One focuses fully on technique, he doesn't notice anything around him; watches his hands and
focuses on that. He didn't notice the big ones. The other is fast, he doesn't notice anything apart from the person he's chasing for the next place.
When we swim in the cove, a look around at the fish and the sunken stuff. They train, it's the difference between taking pat and being a competitor.
I wished I was a
competitor. It felt like I saw every jellyfish in the sea.
The last straight in to the beach I didn't encounter any of the big ones but glided my hands across plenty of breast implant ones, they felt smooth and again messed with my stroke. I was lucky not to get stung by any, my friend did get stung between his fingers.
The
swim was two laps, split by a little run across the beach.
By the time I had finished my first lap the leaders were close to finishing their second. The tide was a lot stronger by the time I got back in the water.
It felt like I was swimming harder than the first lap but the buoy wasn't getting any
closer.
The giant pink balloons (in my head that made it more bearable to be in the sea) had got closer to shore.
I just wanted to finish but didn't seem to be getting anywhere.
The second lap took me nearly 15 minutes longer than the
first.
On the final straight, it felt like the tide was coming back out. The coast was;t getting any closer but I think that was mainly because I had reached full panic point and was swimming in zigzags rather than straight lines.
In a final burst, I felt my hand press in to something. I pulled back and let out
a panicked 'f**k', as I apologised for my language to the lifeguard in a canoe she let me know that that one was a carrier bag but she there were some really big ones in the water tonight.
That really helped, not.
I blasted my way through to the coast to go run over the finish line and collect the first of my
medals.
I then really felt the pain in my armpit, I hadn't pulled my wetsuit on properly and had some major chaffing. I didn't care though I was away from the jellyfish.
My friends couldn't understand my fear, jellyfish are just there, they're not like sharks, they can't chase you.
However, you can't really do anything about them. You can't punch them in the face or win a fight against them, you swim in to them and they sting you and it hurts, you can't fend them off.
I didn't like that, it probably has something to do with me liking to be in control.
A friend did point out that he watched a shark programme and somebody tried to punch one in the face and had his arms bitten off so it wasn't really a great argument.
If it weren't for the sea monsters I really enjoyed the swim but will probably look at lake swim triathlons rather than sea swims in the future.
Although a few friends have mentioned that they would like to do the event next year at which point I'll have to get over it and swim the course again and accept sometimes you can't be in control.
Darren 'jelly should only be in a trifle'
Checkley
