The other day at 1,200 yards I started sinking, and with that came coughing and gasping and panicking, and I had no idea what it was that wouldn’t stop pulling at me until it occurred to me just how much I was carrying into the pool that day. My stroke was encumbered by the load and no matter how much I insisted on ignoring it by thrashing through, it just didn’t work. I had to accept it, and that was the only way to be rid of it. I had to cut myself a little slack, take a deep breath and step back and it’s then that I could see what I needed to do.

I needed to find a window.

You see, it tried to drown me, and I almost let it. It was one of those things I knew was happening, but didn’t quite know why – or better said, knew fully well why, but just went with it because all this time it hadn’t cut off my air enough to make me fight to change it. Kind of like being moderately overweight – just heavy enough to make one wake up each morning with that ironic being worn away feeling, caused by the exhaustive wardrobe negotiations and shopping induced bouts of depression and sexual position modest finagling time and time again. But we fight from somewhere to adapt and overcome, don’t we... we find the air pockets when we can't manage the way to the window out, and thus the clothes fitting, but not well, causing autopilot tugging and pulling when it seems no one is looking - some kind of second nature adapting and enabling in which one gets stuck shallow sucking while life is submerged. Most people will stay in these air pockets as long as they can, and I used to be appalled by this. I used to think they were unmotivated and therefore undeserving until I realized that they stay not because they don’t care enough to seek a window, but rather because they instinctively prefer breathing over not. And I suppose, in some ways, I’ve been no exception.

I’ve always believed that training affected life, but perhaps surprisingly, I’ve just recently started appreciating that life affects training. More honestly, I apparently used to think that I was immune in a way, or that life was separate somehow from training - that its stress couldn’t hinder me, but this isn’t the case at all. For so long I’ve called it balancing – balancing family, career and sport – though I’m staring to see that it’s much, much more than a balance of the three, and this is likely true for anything we dare endeavor.

Balance suggests things that are separate entities in separate places, but living a life and training for Ironman isn’t this. It’s not about balancing, that’s the mistake I made when deciding in fine OCD fashion that this lifestyle might be feasible if I could just separate it all out into nice, neat categories. But once I got into it I found that it leaked in from all sides, and this was especially panic inducing because I didn’t expect it to be this way. Faced with the threat, I strove to survive because it’s our nature, after all. I created air pockets and fought at first by taking on more and suffering through, and that which I couldn’t fight and couldn’t suffer I had no choice but to try to outrun. I denied or pushed away or buried and because I was especially seasoned at it, at times, and even at the same time, all of these. This was the result of thinking balance was all it took. In fact, I've found, it has very little to do with balance and almost everything to do with blend.

This is my window.

Life touches training and training touches life, and no matter how much I either didn’t want to believe this or simply naively overlooked it, this year I realize that what I do in one area affects the other because they are floating around in the same self, and as I can neither fight nor outrun that, I think I’ll stop trying.

Deep breath then ... I'm ready to start swimming.