Fears are to be Understood...

Yesterday I found out the Point to Point swim I want to do in January is 7 kilometers (4.6 miles) which kind of freaked me out. I have never swum more than 2.5km at one time in open water. I sat last night and thought about this race and distance over and over again. In a way I feared the distance, but I think I feared more my capability to do the distance.

I messaged a good friend of mine last night asking for a pep talk, with this one. One of the answers I got from him was..."Why aren't you trusting your training?" I said to him that it wasn't the training that I wasn't trusting it was the distance, and he was right in his comment next..."One thing I've discovered is that numbers are just numbers and we typically build them up in our minds way more than they need to be." He is so very right in this. 7km is just a number, with good focus on my training, and nutrition I will make it through the distance.

So now it is time to believe in myself and my ability to train hard, eat well and focus on getting through this up and coming swim.

I will also be cutting back on my running for a little while, to allow the sesamoiditis in my foot to settle a bit more. I will have 4 weeks between the Point to Point swim and doing Busselton Half Marathon and Jetty swim. There is this saying I tend to use a fair bit..."where there is a will the there is a way!" I stand by this quote and know it is true.

So with the start to my new training plan I managed to pump out 2 kilometers at the pool this morning, feeling still a little stiff from the weekends swim, it was good to get it done. Tomorrow will be a run on the treadmill at the gym. Rest day is Friday and then another 2 days of training, Saturday being parkrun (5km run) and then an endurance swim (2hrs of straight swimming with not stopping). The big part of the endurance swims will be mental strength. As you go your mind starts 'talking', and you can either end up talking yourself out of what you are doing or push harder. It will be a matter of staying focused on good technique, especially when you become tired.

May we find something that scares us enough not to run away from it, but face it and conquer our fear.

Hayley xx