How to swim in turbulent water and the start to my blog
I ran my first open-swim triathlon in North Carolina with my friend Jo during grad school and I was shit-scared because I’m a shit swimmer. I’d never swam more than 600m let alone in open water and this was 800m in turbulent water. The days leading up to it, I did countless long swims to prepare for it but the fear never left. The simple fact is that there’s no support if you aren’t able to finish the swim in open water. So if you start the swim and can’t finish, you drown and die.
That’s not true- there’s people wading around with kayaks but DQing a race in the first 15 minutes of a 90 minute race would be a bummer. Mostly because physically I was completely capable of swimming 800m. I’m a long distance runner- I’ve run marathons and done long tiring hikes. No- if I was ferried to shore on the back of kayak, it would be the fear of swimming that far.
If you’re not sure what kind of fear I’m talking about specifically, here’s what I mean: there’s a well documented fear that novice swimmers have and it centers around not being able to breathe when you want. It causes immediate panic and although there are ways around this, it’s hard to deal with in the moment and slowing down during swam is energy-consuming.
There’s enough literature out there about fear setting and how being afraid of being afraid can be rationalized away but that’s not what this is about. That day, I just said fuck it and did it. It was miserable- I panicked several times and had to backstroke, and I finished basically last for the swim portion.
There are a lot of stories of people who managed to do what they were dreading and found they had nothing to worry about. That’s mostly a myth. Conquering your fears is not always like that- in fact most of the time it’s not. Sure the dread makes it seem worse than it is. But it still sucks and your brain was dreading it because the thing you’re trying to do is probably pretty difficult.
One my favorite quotes is from the great philosopher Conan O’Brien at his Dartmouth commencement speech:
Nietzsche famously said “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” But what he failed to stress is that it almost kills you.
This is an extraordinarily long-winded way of saying, I’m taking a leaf out of that day in my life doing a fuck-it starting my blog. The fear of posting perfect content has held me up for many, many years- close to a decade actually and it’s way more interesting to live in the ring than staring at it from outside and thinking about what it’s going to be like.
You may not like everything I post on this blog but all my content will always try to satisfy one of three goals:
- It’ll be entertaining/funny
- It’ll explain a unique perspective on an issue or narrative
- It’ll help someone
Enjoy! And remember, whatever you’re dreading doing is probably going to be pretty hard 👍 but if the dread ever gets to you, you can always come back to my blog and take solace in the fact that I’m still toiling away at this. It’ll either inspire you that I’m sticking to my commitment or you’ll think, “well if Naren’s still doing it I can definitely do this”.
