Having a 'Who's idea was this, anyway?' moment

Several elements have cross-bred to conceive a perfect storm of doubt in my ability to resist a brutally overused metaphor. I'm sorry, in my ability to complete this race.

First was the knee pain that shut me down on Wednesday. That meant an extra day off training aside from my rest day today. Could I have swapped them as rest days? Yes, but I would have paid for it in a few days. You have to keep your one rest day a week sacrosanct; I take a break Saturday or Sunday, even if I've had to miss a day during the week. This was a lesson learned the hard way, as in the I-can't-get-out-of-bed-after-eight-consecutive-days-of-training hard way.

Then was the fact that I couldn't repeat my 400m swim. I managed 300m, in about 9:15, which would put me at about 12:25 in the water for the race. Still six weeks off, so I can still build confidence on that.

But tomorrow, I'm scheduled to jump in the lake, and I'm not convinced that's not Insanity Lite. I want to get in at least two lake swimming sessions before the race so I don't die of shock when I jump into 65-70F water on race day. But this is Lake Friggin' Ontario. It ain't warm, even if the air temperature's 30C in July. Superior, it's said, never gives up her dead, but Ontario's pretty forsaken cold, too.

Which is why, in a weak moment, I let a voice in my head say: "What the expletive deleted were you thinking? You can't do this."

Well, voice in my head, with apologies to Billy Joel, you may be right. This was a dumb idea. I should pack up the tents and go home, Goodnight Irene, etc., right?

Fuck you, voice in my head. Did the Donner Party give up? No. Did the Uraguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes give up? No. Have I any idea why I'm choosing examples of superhuman endurance that involve eating your companions? No. Probably shouldn't invite me over for dinner for a few days.

Point being ... this is about training my will as much as my body. Am I scared of swimming 400m in a lake? Yes. Is it possible that my knee is not up to the full training plan I'm on? Yes. But I can find a way to keep training without doing more hurt to my knee and still be in shape to run 2.5k. And in two or three more weeks, I'll have convinced (or deluded -- tamayto, tomato) myself that I can handle the swim, and I can overcome the panic by remembering: It's a little under 13 minutes. Someone's written a book about survival and endurance on the principle that you must focus on getting through the next five seconds. What's five seconds? Whatever the circumstance, you can get through five seconds. Thirteen minutes is just five seconds, 156 times.

By the end of next summer, I want to be able to do an Olympic distance triathlon, which is about four to five times as long in every discipline. Wouldn't do to cough up on a super-sprint, would it?

I would also like to one day run the Beer Mile in Boulder, Colo. In the dead of winter, competitors run four circuits of a 400-m track, after chugging a beer at the beginning of each lap. That's endurance. Nobody scared of a little cold water can pull that off.