I just posted a few weeks ago that I have never quit a swim. It's the one thing I never give up on. I don't make it to the pool as consistently as I get in the saddle or on the road, but when I am in the water I don't get out until I have completed the task at hand. I have different strengths and weaknesses in each discipline, with none of them being something I'm overwhelmingly good at, but swimming is the one that I feel most comfortable doing, even if I don't always want to do it.

My pool was closed last week, so in the last 2.5 weeks I've only swam one time, in the bay last weekend. I was supposed to swim at the pool on Wednesday and Friday this week, but I made some poor training decisions early in the week that snowballed into me lifting weights at the gym on Wednesday night right before heading to the pool. After an hour of legs and core (including a total of 90 push-ups), my body was tired and if I went to swim I'd be looking at about 5 hours of sleep before getting up at 3:50am the next morning for a 2.5 hour brick before work. So, the snowballing continued and I decided to pass on the swim to go to bed instead.

When Friday rolled around, I really had to swim. No choice. Like I said, I'd swam once in 2.5 weeks when I normally swim 2-3 times per week. I got off from work a little early and went home with some pep in my step, ready to get back in the water. Ben and I had some chores to take care of first that took a little longer than expected, but we finally got to the gym around the same time I'd normally get home from work, and I was feeling ahead of the game. 

The pool is in the back of the gym but you can see it from the front door. As soon as we walked in we could already tell it was very full. I really don't like swimming in pools and get weird pool anxiety, which is how I roped Ben into swimming in the first place and how he ended up signing up for his first triathlon (coming up this weekend). The lanes make me feel claustrophobic and I hate sharing with anyone because then I feel even more claustrophobic and I just find the whole thing very stressful. I'll share if I have to, but I really don't like to share with anyone other than Ben because I'm just constantly worrying about where they are and what they're doing that I can't calm down. I know it's weird, but give me open water over a pool any day.

Sometimes the pool is crowded when we first get there but then people start getting out, and since we usually got around 8 or 9pm, not a lot of people come in after we get there, so we just wait for a lane to open up (Ben is the only person I feel comfortable sharing with). Today we went at 6pm so not only were people not leaving, but more just kept coming in. Finally we figured out that we weren't going to 

This is the part of training I feel like no one really talks about. Maybe it's just another presentation of social media syndrome, but I read a lot of training and racing blogs and follow a lot of runners and triathletes on Twitter and Instagram, and while some are more transparent than others, there are far more stories of success than failure. But even the ones that do acknowledge failure don't seem to be affected by it the way that I do. Do they really not have the same negative emotions I do? When they do, do they just not allow those emotions to affect them as deeply as I do? Are they just not able to find the words to describe them, as I'm also unable to a lot of times? 

I've always shared my running on my personal social media accounts whenever I felt like I had something to share, but I've deliberately chosen to document as much of my ironman training as possible this year on Instagram. I've tried to strike a balance between finding beauty in something that isn't always beautiful, and remaining as real and transparent as possible. I do share a lot of highs but I don't intentionally hide the lows or try to minimize them. Still, I often wonder if I am unintentionally contributing to this social media culture where everything is perfect and running is easy and I'm just over here powering through 15+ hour training weeks like its no big deal. I would hope that anyone who knows me or has read my blog knows that that is far from the truth and that I struggle, quite a lot sometimes, but I am still always curious how what I present online comes across. If I've ever downplayed how hard this is on me, it's only because I am trying to do my best to remind myself that this is a choice, it's something I am voluntarily putting myself through and for that reason I try not to publicly complain.