Chatterbox: Down to Earth

I need help, but first, let me put my frustration into a story format.

The girl stands before the tall, windswept cliff, staring up at the expanse of sand coloured rock. Wind swirls around her as she steps forward. And pauses. Slowly, she reaches out her hand, fingertips brushing the rough stone. Placing her foot firmly into the first foothold, the girl slowly, carefully begins to climb. This is already one of her better attempts at scaling this impenetrable wall. On some of her others, she couldn't even force herself to take the first step. With a shout of frustration, the girl drops back to the ground. How can this be so difficult? Why is this such a challenge, when coming back down the cliff is as easy as breathing? The girl could jump off a cliff one hundred feet in the air without a second thought, yet taking the first steps to go back up it proved to be tremendously difficult. Yet the girl would try. Over and over and over again. Maybe one day, she would get it right. You wish for wings, yet you're afraid to fly, the girl berates herself. One day you'll be granted wings then you'll know exactly what to do with them, another voice whispers back.

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Alright, so let me explain my situation. In triathlon, nearly every successful athlete out there is able to do something called a flying mount. It's when you run with the bike and just... Jump on it, without stopping or slowing from whatever speed you were running at. It's a fairly simple thing to do. I learned how to do it last summer, and it wasn't hard at all. Then, I had a really scary crash during a bike race. It really wasn't that bad. My bike got pretty messed up, but I was able to walk away with just a ton of scrapes and bruises. This was around mid summer. Fast forward to last week, when I try to practice a flying mount because I want to be as efficient as possible at this huge triathlon I'm going to in Virginia this weekend (ugh, I have to be in a car for 8 hours to get there!). The thing is, I suddenly just... can't do the flying mount anymore. It's like, every time I try to do the actual jump part of the mount, I get like a mini panic attack or something. It only lasts a second or so, but I feel like anything that feels anything like the feeling of flying through the air before hitting the ground is just off-limits to my brain. I know exactly the process, I know what I have to do. I've watched a million videos, my coach has tried to help me (he doesn't know about my mental struggle, though), I've spent time trying to practice it at a walking pace. Nothing seems to be working!!! It's like there's this wall in my mind, and I can't figure out how to get over it and just JUMP. You would think that it would be easier for me to do it on the grass, where I won't actually get hurt, but that doesn't seem to ease my mind's stupid fear either.

My question is, how do I keep myself from feeling like a failure? How do I get around my fear? My coach tells me that it's okay that I won't be able to do it this weekend and that we'll figure it out over the summer. He says not to beat myself up over it, but I don't think he understands just how big of a deal this is to me.

I'm really stressed out about this, and I'm really nervous for the race this weekend because it's my first national level race (people are literally coming from the opposite side of the country to be in this, but only 75 people are allowed per age group per gender). 

I'm not sure what I'm looking for by posting this, I just... I don't know. Help?

Thanks for reading my rant.