nerves
timsroot
Spring, TXCharter Member
So, I'm sitting in the parking lot waiting to get on the bus to the ferry, and I'm trying not to freak out because of my nerves. Does everyone do this? Does it get better the more of these swims that I do?
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www.darren-miller.com
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania U.S.A.
By the way, the big swim got cancelled due to the dodgy weather. They did something in the harbor, but I was checked out mentally, only did about a mile, called it and got out. I feel like a pretty mentally weak dipshit.
When I was younger, I frequently had problems with nerves at big pool meets. But for whatever reason I haven't had these issues with OW swimming. Like Bob, the longer the swim the calmer I am. I'm not sure why this would be... perhaps because in a long swim there's plenty of time to "make up" for any mistakes.
*Crew Member - in Pensacola, my fiance paddled for me and managed my feeds, after I had trained with her quite a few times. For SAS, I had a volunteer picked out by the race organization. He seemed nice enough, and he was more than capable of following the instructions I had given him, but it was only my 3rd swim longer than 10k, and second 5+ hour swim. Also, he barely knew me from Adam, and I don't think he had volunteered to crew for anyone before (if he had crewed for anyone before, he didn't tell me that he had). This didn't help my peace of mind.
*Boat Pilot - I'm sure that St. Vincents has some sort of vetting process, but my pilot had never escorted a swimmer. They had been on the outside of the event before serving as a barrier between other traffic and the event, but they hadn't escorted a swimmer. Also not a good feeling.
*Assigned EMT - This girl was very enthusiastic, and was disappointed that the swim didn't go off. However, when she was asking me about stuff that had happened before (and my Mom was mentioning things that had happened in Pensacola), she was trying to offer suggestions how to fix them. Any other time, I might have appreciated it, but not an hour and a half before I'm about to hop in the water for an 8ish hour swim.
*Mom/Observer - I should have learned from Pensacola and asked Mom not to come, but that would have hurt her feelings, and due to a lot of family history that is too private to go into on this forum, I wanted to avoid that. She seemed a bit hurt that I had "fired" her (she used that word over the weekend, so I guess I will too) from being my crewmember. I had gotten up to Bridgeport late Wednesday night (off the train about 2:30 AM), she got in Thursday around lunchtime. Family has been on eggshells for a while, so that was two extra days of added stress trying to pretend to be interested about the goings on from home (some of which I was interested in, most of which I wasn't). She asked if I wanted to be told about the issues at home, which I had severed communications about in times past. I said I certainly didn't want to know before my swim, she alluded to them anyway. She asked how she should log it if I had troubles like the ones I had in Pensacola (documented thoroughly in my write up on that) on Friday evening. I didn't have an answer for that. I figured some of that would probably happen, but I didn't want to think about that all that much the night before the swim.
I'm sure that I come off sounding kind of like a prima donna. Perhaps I was a bit of one. But, I was dealing with a big effort ahead of me, in territory I'm not very familiar with. In my life, I've so far done 1 8+ hour swim, and 3 8+ hour bike rides, 2 of which featured stops to refuel. Also, given all the preperation I'd done, and the support I'd need, I don't think it's terribly unreasonable.
Going forward, I'll do whatever I can to at least make sure I have my crew member be someone I'm familiar with. Had I had a random volunteer observer, but Amanda (or someone else that I had trained with) managing my feeds, I would have felt MUCH more at east about everything. While I know my Mom loves me, and is concerned about my well being, with the extra stress she unintentionally brings with her, I won't invite her to participate in an event like this again in a role crucial to my success.
I'm disappointed that the weekend turned out so poorly (got home 3 hours later than I should have because of flight delays to top everything off), but I ended up learning a lot from it anyway that will put me in good stead going forward to whichever event I decide to swim, whether it's something organized or something I do solo and arrange the logistics of myself. I'm still reeling a bit, but I'll get back in the pool tomorrow, and might try a longish swim locally in the fall, although I probably won't publicize it to very many people beforehand.