F.E.A.R.

I am not big on acronyms. They’re just one more thing I have to memorize, in order to remember something else. One that stuck, though, was F.E.A.R. It stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. The underlying premise is that most of our fears are in our heads. I truly believe that. Believing something and living it, however, is not always easy to do.

 

Years ago, I experienced my first panic attack. It was terrifying. I had never felt anything remotely close in terms of sheer, overwhelming, near paralyzing terror. It was fear on steroids. The “funny” thing was that I couldn’t pinpoint the actual cause. I awoke from sleep and, no, I wasn’t having a nightmare. The walls of the small apartment in France (I was on our 28^th anniversary celebration trip to Paris with my wife) were closing in on me. I got out of bed, pacing the narrow hallway, and struggled with a feeling of impending doom. I felt trapped at first, and wanted to run out of the small apartment into the open air of the street outside. Then, I imagined getting on an airplane, which is basically nothing more than a small, hollow enclosed tube full of people  in which you are trapped for hours, to fly home, and the feeling intensified. I realized I couldn’t return home. I actually thought of taking a ship home, then quailed at the idea of a week or more in a small stateroom.  I actually felt for a moment that I would be trapped in France forever, never to return home. The feeling eventually passed and I went back to bed and slept. Two more less intense attacks occurred in the next week, one on the elevator to the first level of the Eiffel Tower (I took the stairs down) and the other on the metro, when the crowded train stopped briefly in a tunnel. I made it home on the plane but the experience left me so shaken that it took two sessions of therapy with a psychologist to teach me how to handle these. I still travel with my security blanket in the form of a vial of Xanax, although I have never had to take one.

Fast forward a few years. Since that trip, I have never had a full blown panic attack but several close calls. A couple, ironically came in the pool, even though I love to swim. I have learned that when starting out on my swim, I have to allow several laps for my heart rate to kick up and  to establish rhythmic breathing. Until then, if I try to go too fast, I begin to feel panicky, as though I cannot catch my breath. Once I warm up, I am fine. On a couple of occasions, the pool at the YMCA has been too warm for comfort, up in the high 80’s, and I know on those days to slow down and take it easy, or I, again, begin to feel that panic well up. I am trying to mentally prepare myself for the chaos that I know will accompany the mass start of the ironman when several thousand people run into the water and begin thrashing ‘en mass’. I expect to be punched or kicked a few times before it is over.

 

Each week now is much the same. I never sleep well on Sunday because I know that Monday morning a new training cycle begins with my AM swim at the YMCA. I am now one of the “group” of early morning swimmers, there around 6 AM. The others are usually done long before me, as I usually spend at least 1- ½ hours in the water. Now, I am ramping up my distances and the time commitment is growing. This is becoming a full time job- is a full time job if you consider how much of my day I am thinking about the ironman and all that goes into it.

 

I am excited, yes, and grateful- grateful that, at 60, I can even contemplate the possibility of doing something so outrageous. I have been blessed with good health all of my life, and an inborn desire to always be active, so that I have never really “let myself go” physically, as so many of my peers. I can’t take credit for that. As C.S. Lewis said, we cannot take credit for not doing things that we are not, by nature, tempted to do.

 

If I am honest, however, there is a definite element of fear. I am not quite sure of what. I am working on that. Is it fear of failure? Perhaps a little. After investing all the time and energy, and considerable money on the preparation, I would hate to fail to finish, but that possibility is real. Even the elite triathletes fail to finish at times. Is it the pain and discomfort that I know will accompany the effort? That too, but I have been uncomfortable and sore before, and survived. I think a part of it is fear of disappointment. I don’t want to disappoint myself, yes, but I also don’t want to disappoint those who are watching me do this, either overtly, or out of the corner of their eyes. I don’t want to disappoint my kids, for whom I hope this will be an inspiration to try to do daring things in their own lives. Heck, I don’t want to disappoint Karl and Misty, who have helped me so much in preparing for this.

My main goal, at this point, is to just make the cutoff times for the swim and bike portions, then let the run take care of itself. If I can get to the run with enough time left, I can run, walk, and/or crawl

to the finish. Of course, I would rather not do the last.

It isn't pretty.

In the final analysis, perhaps President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it best: “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” I pray I have the ability to take that to heart.

 

** Changing things up a bit in this blog. I don’t think anyone much cares about the details of my training sessions, and I don’t plan to go back over these in the future, so I won’t be posting them any longer. The Florida Ironman Log and blog will be rolled into one. I will try to apply this experience to other aspects of life. There are lessons galore to be gleaned from the process.

Health to all……