Post-race depression? Breaking the cycle

I wonder if I’m onto something.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

I’ve been experiencing a general lack of motivation for many months that has had a serious impact on my ability to train.

At least that is what I thought until a few days ago. I was on my way to my therapist, who I’ve been going to now for a few months to help me figure out what to do about my bouts of anxiety and low mood. I have spent the last few months telling her about almost anything but my lack of motivation regarding sport. I’m sure I mentioned it a couple of times as a passing comment but not much more. While driving to my appointment, I was thinking about what the topic of this next session should be. And I thought maybe it was time to talk about my lack of motivation, as evidenced by my almost complete lack of desire to swim, bike, and run.

It was that last sentence that got me thinking. I’m not lacking motivation in general. I don’t lack motivation regarding my work, for example. I don’t lack motivation to go to my personal training sessions at the gym. I actually enjoy going to see Tom, partially because I like the challenge and I like feeling strong, and partially because he’s funny and makes me laugh, albeit usually at myself. Tom, for example, thought it was absolutely HILARIOUS that I’d like to work as a bodyguard. I think it’s hilarious that he thinks it’s hilarious. I’ll show you yet, Tom!

Back to depression.

That very short inner discussion made me realize that I’m not lacking motivation generally. There is something inside of me that has become very anti-triathlon.

Battling self through a half Ironman: A superman like no other

“Of COURSE, you can do this,” I told myself. “Not only can you do this, you can beat your

One second before crossing the finish line and breaking down into an ugly sob about how hard that race was.

time from last year.”

That’s how I convinced myself to stand at the start line of a half-Ironman distance event called the Outlaw Holkham Half in Norfolk (1.8km swim, 90km bike, 21km run) with very little relevant training.

I registered for the event last year, shortly after finishing my Ironman last September in a time that surpassed any of my expectations. Since then, I travelled frequently, fasted the month of Ramadan, went through a few bouts of therapy-worthy depression and anxiety, and lacked a general motivation to put in the necessary time to train for a half Ironman-distance event. So with a month to go before the event, I was telling myself that I might as well just pull out. I hadn’t trained for it and it was ridiculous to even give it a try. 

Odd questions of identity

I have always thought that I don’t have any real identity issues. Now I’m thinking otherwise.

I don’t like being placed into boxes of identity. Or so I thought until yesterday, when things I said in my session with my therapist—who I’m seeing to find ways to deal with anxiety— made me wonder.

I was telling her how I’ve been struggling with myself this year to calm down rising anxieties that I need to get everything done in a day: my work, my sport, and my house-related errands. These anxieties are not why I decided to see a therapist. I have much more complicated things happening in my life. But I’ve found it surprising how these seemingly unimportant things, things I know I can put off if I need or want to, are making me feel anxious. I know that the world won’t end if I don’t do that run today. So why is there something inside of me telling me that it absolutely will end?

My therapist said something about how I might be using my activities, such as work or sport, to displace my real feelings about other things happening in life.

What she said made me look back at various phases in my life. 

Sport and my mental health

I have suffered from anxiety for years. It’s the kind of anxiety that I can usually keep at

Feeling happy and relaxed after a day out on the bike.

bay. Most people won’t realize I have it because I hide it relatively well. Instead of thinking: Oh, she’s anxious; people probably just think: Huh. She’s a bit of an odd one.

Sport has played a huge role in helping me manage my anxiety. No matter how bad I’m feeling, if I can just get myself out that door and go on a run, for example, I know that my anxiety or stress will almost immediately dissipate.

I have found that the rhythm of sport—of running, of cycling, of hiking, of swimming—puts my mind almost magically at ease. Sport and my daily prayers are my form of meditation. They are how I cut myself off from the daily grind and tear myself away from one screen or the other, if even for a few minutes, to clear my head and start anew.

There’s a “but” coming up.

But, recently, as I’ve felt myself less and less able to manage my stress and anxiety as successfully as I have at times in the past, I’ve been reviewing my lifestyle choices to try to find ways to improve things.

I’ve always been an ironman

People who do Ironman races are not iron men. They are normal people just like you and me, but with an ironclad determination that can move mountains. Find that determination within you and you will move mountains too.

It was the most difficult part of the race by far. I had already done the 3.8 kilometer swim

Walking on air in those final steps on the red carpet across the finish line of Ironman Barcelona 2017.

and the 180 kilometer bike ride. Now, “all” I had left was a 42 kilometer run. I was tired. I was sweating in the Spanish humidity like a pig. I really wanted to get out of my tri-suit, which I had been wearing now for more than ten hours, and jump into a shower. My quads were cramping in a way that made me think they might soon snap off of my knee bones. Even so, I found myself thinking, “This really isn’t all that hard!”

I realize how ridiculous that sounds. But what it really meant at the time was that I felt that the training I had done during the months before the race had prepared me well. I didn’t feel anything I didn’t expect to. Most importantly, I was able to keep going.

The real Ironman experience, I believe, is in the months before the actual race.

The real satisfaction in training

Man, can perspectives change in a relatively short period of time!

How I look is exactly how I feel here. This is just after finishing what was probably my first triathlon-involving a pool swim. This shit is HARD.

Yesterday evening I was feeling very tired. I’ve had weeks of hard training. Yesterday wasn’t any different. I did my morning gym session, came home to get some work done, then went back out for a very long bike fitting session to try to solve some of my on-going leg pain issues. I REALLY didn’t want to have to go to the lake for a swim. I was tired. I was cranky. It was dark and cloudy outside. But I’ve told myself that I was going to do everything possible to do all my training as best I could for the event that I am due to take part in in about five weeks time. My husband saw that I was tired and told me not to push too hard. I responded, “I’ve decided that I’ll only do four laps of the lake if I’m not feeling up to it.”

I’ll only do just four laps. That’s 1.8km. ONLY. My husband let out a “Ha! Times have changed!”

In May 2016, just over a year ago, we were driving towards another lake where I was going to participate in a triathlon for the first time that involved an open water swim. The few triathlons I had done before that involved pool swims. I cried the whole way there from anxiety.

Training: losing sight of the big picture

It’s very easy to get so caught up in one’s training for an event that one loses sight of the

It’s not about the event. But crossing that finish line sure does feel great when it happens! (This picture is from a past event).

big picture.

That “one” being moi.

I’ve been training for an event for months. Like so many others, I’ve put in a significant amount of time, effort and money to get myself to this event. The waking up early to do a training session before you start the workday. The going out in the evenings for a run or a swim in a freezing cold lake when all you want to do is sink into a couch to relax after a hard day of work. The visits to doctors and physiotherapists – and all the moolah that involves – in order to try to figure out what the heck is wrong with your foot and shin. The new gear – and all the money that involves – because it’s better than your old gear and might give you just a bit of a chance to finish your event. We invest A LOT in order to get ourselves to that start line.

But things intervene. Life intervenes. Family intervenes. Illness intervenes. Injuries intervene. And sometimes all we can think is: But this can’t happen! I need to train! I’ve already invested so much!

Just thinking that the event is the priority and everything else is an “intervention” or a hindrance is twisted. It’s TWISTED.

The Ramadan workout

I’ve been Ramadaning while keeping up a workout schedule probably for the past three

This was taken about two weeks before Ramadan. But it represents the same exact swim I did last Tuesday evening while fasting. It was actually quite an enjoyable swim!

years. I can’t remember what I did while I was in Egypt. If I did work out in Egypt during Ramadan, it will definitely have been at night after I broke the fast.

Since I moved to the UK, I’ve been getting more and more serious about my training. That means that it is very inconvenient to completely stop training during the one month of the year when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. A lot of fitness can be lost in a month.

But Ramadan follows a lunar calendar, and what that means is that in the few past and coming years, it’s happening in the summer months. That’s a real issue when you live in northern Europe. According to the timetable I’m following, it means I can’t eat or drink (yes, not even water) from about 3 AM till 9:30 PM. Also, the gyms in my area all shut around 10 PM and all the group training activities are held some time during the day.

So I’ve been testing my limits with working out while fasting for the past three years.

A good, gloomy day for an existential crisis

Today I woke up feeling like it’s one of those days when I need to have a full-blown existential crisis.

Don’t worry. These rarely last for more than a day or two.

I wish the writing bug bit me more often when I am in a solid, content state of mind. Being solid and content does happen to me sometimes, you know. Unfortunately for my blog readers, it’s my down states that make me feel like I REALLY need to write and get it all out there. Writing to me is what food can be to others. It makes me feel better when I’m down.

Ever since I woke up I’ve been asking myself: What the fuck am I doing with my life? And… Why does it seem like every single person who locks eyes with mine wants to drain my bank account?

When I find myself in this position, I’ve learned to ask myself another question: Well, what would you rather be doing?

Now that question is starting to feel like a trick question. 

Injuries: There’s always a way

In a few days time, a full year will have passed since I fell from my bike and dislocated my shoulder on a short training trip in Belgium. The following months were awful: I had chronic pain and rather than heal, my shoulder got worse. Eventually I was told that I had frozen shoulder. It was affecting everything. No matter how close I held my shoulder to my body, running led to shoulder pain so I had to stop. Cycling and swimming were out of the question. I couldn’t even drive. I was saved by a shoulder operation to break away the scar tissue that had formed inside my joint, preventing it from moving. Then I had to deal with weeks on end of real, chronic pain and physiotherapy. But I was determined to get better and to keep as much of the range in my shoulder joint as possible. That meant persevering with the painful, daily exercises.

The operation was in January this year. Since then, I did lots of training and participated in three triathlons, two of them Olympic-distance. I probably reached the fittest I had ever been. I recall saying the exact same thing just after I dislocated my shoulder and feeling utterly distressed because of all the fitness I would lose for lack of continuity in training. It’s different now. I’ve had a knee injury since the beginning of August and a shin splint just wanting to make a guest appearance on the Nadia show. Both of them have meant that I had to become very conservative in my training and when that didn’t make them go away, I stopped running, cycling and any gym-related work that put pressure/stress on my knee.

Now, that shoulder that kept me from doing anything at all not so long ago is one of the few things that’s allowing me to keep active.