Sam thinks about doing scary things

Is there a thing you do that you always find scary but you do it anyway?

I’ve thought about that a lot over the years of this blog and I confess it’s mostly been in the context of trying to problem solve for Tracy and road biking way back when. She loves triathlon so much, I thought. Surely there ought to have been a way to get over the fear of road cycling? In the end there wasn’t, she gave it up. And that was the right choice for Tracy.

Since then I’ve often thought about fear and the role it plays in our lives, in particular in the role it plays in what physical activities we do. Downhill skiing anyone? Fat biking on ridge trails? Camping in areas of high bear activity? Paddling in wind and waves?

Back to cycling, for a minute: While I’m road cycling I don’t find cycling scary. I can zoom down big hills, ride fast in a group, and ride in city traffic without fear. The only cycling related fear I have is sometimes after a ride. Sometimes I play over the ride in my head and think about the ways things might have gone differently. Sometimes I get scared then but the activity itself is done. And next ride, I’m happy and relaxed and ready to ride again.

Here’s a thing that I find scary when I do it: small boat sailing, like Snipe racing.

There I’ve said it. I haven’t talked about this before. But here’s the thing. Although it’s present every time I get in a small sailboat it goes away after the first race or the first half hour or so that I’m out. I’m puzzled by it. I know it will go away. I no longer want to go in and get off the boat when it happens. I can’t figure out what it’s about. I get shaky. It’s very much a physical sensation. I kind of freeze in place and I feel like everything could go wrong.

What exactly am I worried about? You name it really. Capsizing, hurting my knee, hitting other boats. And these are all things that could actually happen. It wouldn’t be the end of the world. I know that but still, I’m nervous and shaky.

It goes away when I start to focus on the tasks at hand: making sure the sail is trimmed properly, making sure I’m in a good position on the boat, making sure that we have all of our lines untangled and running freely, making sure we’re in a good position comparatively speaking.

It’s different than the fear that led Tracy to stop cycling in three ways: I love sailing and in particular, sailboat racing. It goes away each time and I know that. The worst case scenario I imagine is not that bad in the scheme of things.

I keep waiting for it to go away. Instead, it persisted all summer and yet I kept sailing.

I’m curious to see if next summer feels different.