Anxiety & and the art of a graceful bke mount

What the hell is a bike mount you might ask?! Well in the world of (sprint) triathlons, one should never come out of transition with bike shoes on ones feet and mounting their bike after the line only having ran several meters (sometimes hundreds of meters) in a uncoordinated manner as bike shoes have large plastic attachments called cleats. In the world of sprint triathlon, running out of transition barefoot saves you seconds. Seconds which may place you between coming first, getting a podium placing, top 10, top 20...you get my point.

Anyways getting back to the point of this entry, after training with tri alliance for over 2 years now, I have finally found a way to mount the bike with the shoes still clipped in without worrying if I am going to fall over and crash my woman bits on the top tube. Instead of doing the hop-hop method which for over 2 years I have tried to master, I am using the right foot on pedal and swing left leg over seat (aka reverse dismount) method. This method only works if I am on the large chain ring due to the momentum I get from a quarter turn of the 54 teeth chainring and I generally stay in the large chain ring for the entire race anyway. I am no longer spinning my legs over the small chain ring anymore coming into T2. Keeping my ride and spinning on the larger chainring is sufficient. I have not done a tri alliance dismount since my stack of BRW 2011 where I fell off my bike and had a concussion. I actually practiced it today and it is something which I am now comfortable doing in a race.

Alright, what about the Anxienty part? Well when coach Greg had us to demonstrate our bike mounts, I had an anxiety attack. My heart rate shot up and I could feel my heart beating out of my chest. I felt like I needed to spew and tears were rolling down my face. My anxiety stems from my fear of disappointment. This is something which I need to work on. I felt the pressure (especially being a coach) that I needed to know how to mount a bike especially as I have been training with the group for over 2 years. My fear of falling and bringing shame onto the group was playing havoc on my anxiety.

The anxiety attack went on for about 30 minutes or so, even after I had mastered the bike mount. I do need to practice and be more efficient at mounting, placing my feet on the shoes correctly, putting my feet into the shoes, doing up the straps and then doing all that backwards for the dismount part of the race.

I am so glad that I have learnt how to do this part of the triathlon and now I can practice on getting better at it and the other legs of the triathlon especially the run.