PAUL PALMER

© ALLSPORT

WEEK 5
Date: August 28

A taste of the nerves to come

Have you ever had that sudden feeling of dread?

That moment of sinking realisation when the implications of what you are doing actually hits home?

It might be when your A-level exam begins or when the boss calls you into his office to discuss the results of your latest assignment. Whatever it is, there is inevitably a fleeting moment when your brain has a bit of a set-to with your stomach and you can’t help but think, "Stuff this – I’m off to the pub".

Everyone suffers from it from time to time and, call it what you will - nerves, butterflies, jitterbugs or whatever - mine joyfully bashed their way into my brain at the weekend.

All this occurred during a relatively innocuous meeting in Melbourne. The reason for being there was simple – to get some last-minute race practice against competitors who were going to be pretty tough to beat in Sydney – but the choice of event, the 100m freestyle, was slightly unusual.

It is at least 100 metres shorter than I normally swim and is over far too quickly for my slow-reacting muscles to really understand what is actually going on. However, it was a chance to work on speed – something that is vital for both the 200 and 400m freestyle – and so became an important race for me.

It was in those few minutes before the race that the nerves came. I suddenly found myself slightly reluctant to swim. I questioned my sanity, wondering why I did this infernal sport, and wistfully thought of friends back home that did not have quite the same pressures to face up to.

Think how nervous you get when your favourite football team are playing, and then imagine you were in the team and were playing in the European Championship final. How relaxed would you feel?

An Olympic final in a sport like swimming - where the result depends entirely on your own performance – creates a kind of pressure that is as great as that and just as unpleasant. Those are the feelings that I started to experience before the race and they will definitely be magnified come the Olympics.

As ever, though, you deal with the nerves in the correct way – channelling them to create the adrenaline that raises your performance instead of stifling it and, once the gun goes, calmness descends, the body goes into auto-pilot and the race almost becomes enjoyable.

The final placing in the 100 metres was not important (lucky considering I came seventh) but the feel of the swim was and so it was just as well that, whilst I may not have the natural speed of the sprinters, I felt there was enough to get me through the longer swims that I do.

With so little time to go until Sydney a race like this can be potentially hazardous - as a bad result can knock your confidence. However, for me, the pros outweighed the cons and I can now travel to the British Olympic Association’s holding camp on the Gold Coast confident that, although I will undoubtedly be nervous, there is no reason why these Olympics should not be a success for me.

Read Paul's diary for WEEK 1 ...

Read Paul's diary for WEEK 2 ...

Read Paul's diary for WEEK 3 ...

Read Paul's diary for WEEK 4 ...