problems
Holidays are supposed to be relaxing. The second you put your out of office replies on and print out your itinerary, even though yes, it is 2019 and you actually don’t need a piece of paper to board your flight but there’s always that lingering doubt in the back of your mind that maybe, just this time, you will, so you obviously still print it and bring it anyway, the same way that you also hold onto the remaining half of your boarding pass tightly for the entire flight, like it’s a movie and if you get up halfway through to go to the bathroom and somehow lose your ticket stub they won’t let you back in and you’re left wondering what happened to Lady Gaga’s husband for the rest of your life (spoiler alert: he hangs himself).
My anxiety about a holiday begins even before I book it. My concerns start with the fairly standard things like where will I train and how will I get there, but quickly extends to which drink bottle to take (because I’ll obviously lose it so which one do I like the least but is also not unbearable to use) and what time do I eat the Quest bar I bring for the flight (obviously as soon as I’ve sat down) and how much will bananas be at my destination and what will happen if they’re not ripe ($2.99 a kilo and they weren’t). I normally start packing a week before I leave, as this gives me enough time to pack and re-pack every outfit several times; with so many variables to contend with a week is barely long enough to make sound decisions and I always find myself regretting the rash-ness of bringing two pairs of shorts or the sports bra that is my favourite but doesn’t go with the tights I plan on wearing it with.
The first thing I do once I’ve booked a holiday is plan where I’m training, and schedule all other activities / catch ups / gatherings around these times, even if the purpose for my trip was one of said gatherings. Once this is organised I then need to know exactly what I’ll be doing training-wise every day (which is fairly annoying for anyone with a active role in this process; my coach, for example) as well as how I can also factor in my daily 10,000 steps and 30 minutes of mandatory ‘exercise’, which is what my Apple watch calls walking, which is supposed to calm me but has now obviously become yet another obsessive task. Rather than being on holiday mode, my heart rate is regularly about 30BPM higher than it’s usual at-home resting state and I can physically feel it nervously pounding away somewhere in my throat to compensate for the thought of losing a drink bottle I don’t really like anyway and the potential lack of bananas.
About mid-holiday I start to worry about my return to normal life, and basically the exact reverse fears start to creep in. What if I forget my drink bottle even though I planned on losing it. What if bananas are too expensive when I get back or they don’t have the fish that I’m planning to have for tea every day for the rest of the week because I’ve already planned my worst-case-scenario weight cut. What if I forget to make my breakfast for the next morning, and I have to have frozen berries because I didn’t leave them out to thaw. What if I have a shit sleep, which I obviously will because the thought of my berries not thawing in time will keep me awake, and my shit sleep leads to a poor training session which will start a devastating domino effect of events that will end with me bombing horrifically at Nationals 2020 and it will be all because on January 28, 2019, I didn’t make my next day’s breakfast in time for my berries to thaw.
I know that all this makes me sound like a complete fucking basket case. I find myself taking so many precautions to avoid feeling like my head is going to explode that I now just confine myself to doing literally the bare minimum of activities with the rare few who ‘get it’ and who understand that 7:30pm is too late for dinner and that playing things by ear is not something I am physically capable of. I appreciate the few who understand me so much because trying to pretend that I’m cool with last minute dinner plans or skipping a training session is just fucking exhausting. I know I constantly talk about mental strength and that putting yourself situations that make you feel fucking uncomfortable is the absolute key to personal growth, and I do firmly believe that. In less than a month I’m speaking at the Lorne Genome Conference, about how to build the mind of an athlete and use this strength to improve your life. It’s kinda funny given that just hours ago I barely held it together when faced with spontaneous muesli. But I think that so much of strength is being vulnerable, and admitting that you don’t always feel like you’re going to destroy the universe, and that things like surprise muesli and unripe bananas send you over the fucking edge. Pretending you’re cool with shit you’re not cool with doesn’t make you better or stronger. Acknowledging your weaknesses and reaching out to others that may share them brings strength, as does remembering to de-frost your fucking berries.
