A FRESH START — GASPING ALLOWED

"When a person trains once, nothing happens. When a person forces himself to do a thing a hundred or a thousand times, then he certainly has developed in more ways than physical. Is it raining? That doesn't matter. Am I tired? That doesn't matter, either. Then willpower will be no problem." — Emil Zatopek

Monday marked the start of my second season of triathlon. Last season was all about survival. Don't drown, don't crash and don't blow out the knee. This season is going to be different. I'm a veteran now. Experienced. Seasoned. Time to get serious.

Last season, at Lavaman and at Honu, I felt like I needed another month's worth of training to be ready for each of those races. This season I want to be prepared. To do that I'm going to have to face a couple of deep-seated fears that I have been avoiding.

First, I'm afraid of over-training. So much so that last year I undertrained. Lesson learned. This year I'm pushing my body to the limit. Train until it hurts then push through it. That's easily said I know. I'll see how hard it will be to actually do.

My second fear, which I just recently realized is going to be hard to overcome. I have a very real fear of water. More to the point, drowning. I'm not sure if I had a near-drowning experience when I was little or what, but while learning to swim over the past year I have come face to face with terror in the water.

The first time I experienced this was during Masters 101 when coach Steve had us swim a couple of lengths doing the back stroke. The moment I flipped over onto my back and pushed off the wall, my heart began to race. By the time I was halfway across the pool, I was nearly panicking and I didn't even know why. I had never been afraid of the water before but for some reason I was certain I was drowning. It was like an old memory was surfacing, warning me to get out of the water.

When I find something I'm afraid of I usually stare it down and work through it, which is what I did with swimming on my back. after a few dozen laps I finally accepted the fact that I was not drowning, repressed whatever memory was lurking and have since incorporated the backstroke into my training.

So I thought that had ended my fear of water, but last weekend's Peaman 1.2 mile swim opened my eyes to another part of that same fear. As I was swimming along, I was really trying to push myself to go hard verses just grabbing onto someone's feet who was going at a comfortable pace for me (something that I did all last season). I kept catching myself slowing down, conserving energy. So I would speed up. Then it hit me. That same sick, panicky feeling I had felt in the pool. I realized that I'm afraid that if I get too tired while swimming I'll drown, so I shut down.

I'm going to face that fear: My mission for now is to get tired in the pool. I've seen other swimmers end an interval and come up gasping for air because they pushed themselves so hard. I want to be able to push myself that hard in water. Just like I do on the bike. And like I hope I will on the run.

I want to hit that wall gasping, chest heaving, lungs burning, muscles screaming and be at peace with it. So here's to gasping, not because you're drowning, but because you are digging deep and making it hurt. Like someone once said, "It's a dream until you write it down, then it's a goal." So that's my goal.