Into the Jaws of the Beast

Today I’m going to talk about fear. We’ve all experienced it at some stage or another. Watching horror films, nearly stepping out in front of a moving car. It makes you feel sick. It’s a cold feeling in the pit of your stomach, a sour taste on the back of your tongue. It usually passes quite quickly; a horror film is only an hour or two long; a car blasts its horn and is gone in a few seconds. You move on with your daily life, think nothing more of it. But have you really thought about it properly? What is fear? (Rory, philosopher, help me out here) Where does it come from? In an evolutionary sense, how does feeling sick help you deal with sabre-tooth tigers? It doesn't! It's completely useless. It's probably some side-effect of having a heap of adrenalin dumped into your system.

Yesterday I did my first slide of the season. I hadn't been on a sled in nearly 8 months. I have new runners on my sled, and the track here in Lake Placid chewed me up and spat me out nearly every time I went down it two years ago. I'm not going to lie, I was as nervous as hell.

And that's when I start to think that fear is completely and utterly irrational. There is no immediate threat to my personal well-being. There are no cars or sabre-tooth tigers bearing down on me. All I have is an idea of danger, a vague image in my mind of something going horribly wrong, of someone standing in the track when I go down, of a corner flipping me into a girder. None of it is real. None of this should have any effect on me. But it does.

I feel sick, I can't stop pacing up and down. Fortunately for my cool, composed exterior no-one can see my stomach churning, and my pacing looks like I'm doing a warm up.
Then I actually do my warm up, put the upcoming slide to the back of my mind.

There are ten people sliding before me.
I put my speed suit and a couple of armour pads on.
Then nine people.
I lean forward, close my eyes and visualise a run down the track.
Then seven.
I put my spikes on. My heart rate is still elevated from the warm up, and it's not going down.
Then six.
I hop around some more to loosen up as much as possible
Then five.
I do another visualisation.
Then three.
I put my gloves on.
Then two.
My heart rate keeps rising, I take deep breaths, try to relax.
Then one.
I pick up my helmet, walk outside into the cold.

As the last person pushes off. I take my sled and carry it over to the start, resting it on one end behind the starting block. I stand and look down the track. The ice crunches under my spikes as I shift from one foot to the other. My heart is hammering, I breathe deeply and flick through the sequence of corners one last time in my mind.

I try to push the fear out of my mind. Make way for the single point of focus, the here, the now, and the 19 corners waiting for me below.

The green light comes on, the track is clear. I put my sled down, shift the runner into the groove and feel the fear surge like a last breaking wave.

Sixty-four seconds later its all over.

The fear is forgotten. God, I love this sport.