Fear of the unknown...

I mentioned in a previous post that our family took a trip to Disney a few years ago.  My son, who was about seven at the time, was apprehensive about some of the "scarier" rides.  Roller coasters were on his immediate veto list.  For some reason, they scared the shit out of him.  Anything that he remotely perceived as a roller coaster was a no, so "Mt. Everest" and the unfortunately titled "Rock 'n Roll Roller Coaster" were out.  I was surprised "Space Mountain" didn't hit his fear factor radar, and figured I may be able to coax him into it, but that's a story for a different post.

Imagine my surprise when he proclaimed that "Tower of Terror" was the ride he was most looking forward to:

arguably the scariest ride in the park.  It was all I could do to not say, "Really dude??  I mean - c'mon - it's got the word 'terror' in its name."

In my previous post, I mentioned how he had a horrible experience on the dinosaur ride he was so excited about.  It was one of the first rides we went on, and I was worried that it might have soured him for the rest of the trip.  However, we explained to him that there was a place at each ride just before you get into the car where you can choose to leave the ride if you don't feel comfortable.  (Everyone calls this the "chicken-out line", but we of course didn't present it to him this way.)  He seemed cool with that, so off we went to "Tower of Terror".

I'm not sure if you've had the opportunity to experience a ride in a Disney park, but one of the things they love to do, especially for their scarier rides, is to try and scare the shit out of you while you are standing in line waiting for the actual ride.

By the time we were ready to belt ourselves into the ride car, we had been given a "tour" of the hotel, whereas it was explained to us that the hotel was really really old, lots of shit was falling apart, a bunch of people had stayed here and had never been heard from again, and now we're going to take an elevator up to the top floor where we can maybe start to figure out why this place is so fucked up.

So just before we belt in, I was positive we were about to exit via the chicken-out line.  My wife gives him one last "Are you sure you still want to go?", and he simply responds with a silent, wide-eyed, slow nod.

Belt in, and up the "elevator" we go.  As we reach the top, you can see that there are some doors that have been opened to the outside, and all you can see is blue sky as we slowly roll towards them.  Just as we are about to reach the doors, he looks over at my wife and I and says, "I want to get off."  I tell him it's too late, that we had to get off before we belted in, and he says "You lied to me!"  At that exact moment, the car jerks to a stop, we're outside the top floor of the hotel, and the bottom drops out.  Free fall.

Well, he loved it.  We ended up going on that thing a bunch more times, and he was quite proud of himself.  When I think back on all of this, I realize his fear stemmed from "the unknown".  In less than a minute, he went from "HOLY SHIT GET ME OFF THIS THING!!!" to "Let's go again!", and it was all because it transformed from an unknown to a known experience for him.

So what does this have to do with anything?  Well, I'm on week five of CT5K, and the third run this week is a 20 minute run, with no walking.  No lie - I'm actually losing sleep over thinking about this run.  Up to this point in the program, the longest I've run with no walk break is five minutes, and that was this week.  I can't believe how anxious I am over this.

But I've got to realize that my fear of this stems mostly from the fear of the unknown.  I was apprehensive about running at three and five minute intervals this week, for a total of 16 minutes per run, and now it seems like a perfectly fine run session.  I've been reading a lot of posts about running where people say it's a lot of "mind over matter", and I'm starting to believe it.

Tune in next week for the result - wish me luck!