Traumatic Memories (Tri-Training Day 72)

I woke up this morning to really cold weather and decided to wait until the sun warms Utah up a little before I stretch my legs. I took my clothes to the office and asked around who brought their clothes. Luckily Todd brought some. Stoker was supposed to go with him but forgot his clothes so it worked out well. By the time we were actually going to go for a lunchtime run we had two more recruits – Zach and Dan. That is one thing I love about working with eLearning Brothers is that there is always someone that brought their clothes.

We took off down the main road from our office at a nice pace. It wasn’t quite what Coach Marci had prescribed but it was close enough that I decided to go the three miles that the group was running and then do a tempo run to finish off the final three miles. We ran to the end of the street, about half a mile, and turned right toward the more industrial area and our first overpass. Along the way Dan would pick up snowballs and lob them toward Todd who was the steam engine of the group. Not fast, not slow just steady and determined. We took another turn and head toward the overpass. This is where my recent training came in handy. This minor hill in the shape of a freeway overpass was piece of cake and I actually accelerated the farther I went up.

The conversation was always fun. Todd tried teasing me about my GPS giving me extra miles even though today his showed higher than mine. Dan and Zach’s conversations were fun as always. Just after we made it to Todd’s turn around spot I shared my story of being Arlo The Good Dinosaur and how I was sweating in the theater after watching the drowning scenes. Zach was quite surprised and took it seriously. He asked if I had any traumatic events as a child. It sparked a memory of me and my younger brother Paul at the Castle Dale Pool.

We were both really young. I was old enough to jump off the diving board and doggy paddle over to the side. Naturally, as big brother, this fact makes someone like me 100% qualified to catch my little brother when he jumped off for the very first time. I think he was between 4-6 years old when he took his first flying leap into my water-treading arms. He inched his way to the edge of the diving board and after some cajoling I finally convinced him to jump. His execution was flawless. Judges would have given him a 10 for accuracy because he landed right on me. The impact startled me and pushed down into deeper water. This started the panic response in me but I was still his big brother and needed to get him safely to the side of the pool. I kept trying to  swim up to the glorious border between water and air to breath but also to get my arms around him to tow him back to shore. Each attempt was thwarted with dangerously flailing arms and kicking legs. I kept getting pummeled by his frantic appendages which pushed me further down. At this point I was so low that I was no longer able to keep him above the waterline even if he was standing on my head (which he was). My vision started to darken and I thought that this was the end just as I felt a huge shove from behind and then another, and finally a third that landed my brother and I at the edge of the pool. I later found out that the Good Samaritan wasn’t the life guard but rather a fellow (older) swimmer that saw our desperate flailings in the water.

For the first time since I started training did I realize why I have such a panic response in the water when I feel like air is scarce.