Courtenay Brown

Unreasonable pre-race freakouts commenced early this time, and violently.

(Although, I think that my paltry 3 hours of sleep on Tuesday night could not have helped matters any. I woke up at 1:01 a.m. yesterday and could not not not fall back asleep. On the plus side, I am all caught up on the past three months of cheezburger.)

So back in April when I raced Oceanside 70.3, they handed out this magazine with all the WTC events in it, course descriptions, last year’s top-5, etc. For Eagleman, I happily noted that it was a wetsuit swim. Yay! But happily = naively. Of course it’s not going to be a stupid wetsuit swim since now I have my stupid pro license and everything is stupid, including stupid pro wetsuit rules.

Tears and accusations of pointlessness ensued.

Then, on Twitter I follow Terenzo Bozzone. He’s in Maryland for Eagleman this weekend, just like me! Right before going to bed, I read his latest update, in which he said he went swimming and he got jellyfish stings ALL OVER.

Jellyfish? We have to deal with JELLYFISH during the swim on Sunday?! That is ridiculous! I did not sign up to be MUTILATED!!! So I did what I always do when I freak out, and which I had already done earlier in the day: I called Ben. Who was like “I don’t know anything, but I am sure you will be fine. They won’t sting you.” If there is anyone out there who would find this statement to be encouraging, calming, or otherwise remotely helpful, please don’t identify yourself so that I don’t call you stupid… It would be one thing if I were facing the jellies in a wetsuit. It’s another thing entirely when I am facing them in nothing but a cute little Splish. For approximately forty minutes, if we are being realistic. All by myself, since I am the slowest swimmer and I won’t have anyone to put between me and the jellyfish.

Ugh.

The only reason I got a good night’s sleep last night is I had the very HELPFUL help of Sleep1, which I was tempted to designate as my new boyfriend. But Ben was actually pretty helpful on day 2 of my crisis (today) so he is not in danger of being replaced by a supplement . He helped me work through my attitude about this race.

So this crisis is a mental matter, as you can probably tell. It has been pretty easy for me to build it up to monster proportions, to start feeling like the three legs of a “triathlon” are 1. jumping into a cavern of near-certain death followed by 2. a round of lawn-bowling and then finishing up with 3. a watermelon-spitting contest (which I would win). But really, I will probably be fine. As far as swimming with no wetsuit goes: it will be fine. I did it at Columbia, and I didn’t die. I have been training in the pool with no wetsuit, and I have been doing lots of long sets without the aid of “training tools” like the pull buoy and fins and whatnot. So I could/should be a little bit better prepared now. My goal will be to do the swim in the same time as my wetsuit swims from early season and last year – at Columbia, my goal was just to not die and/or not cry, this time I will get out there and focus on good form and forget about the wetsuit stupidity.

As for the jellies, what can you do. It’s not in my hands. I will just hope that the race directors will be responsible and make decisions based on everyone’s safety on Sunday morning, and that’s that.

It will be fine. I don’t know anything, but I am sure I will be fine, and they won’t sting me.