Caving to my Demons

In my last post I said "I'm now at a point where swimming feels really good and my swim confidence is at an all time high...if I have a poor swim at Sunday's tri I'll be very disappointed." Well, I am disappointed. I had some concern going in, mainly with wondering how I'd handle the water temperature. Last year I freaked when I put my face in the cold water and had an awful swim. I did well at my OWS practice so I thought I'd be OK, but this was still sitting there in the back of my mind. I was also concerned with forecast of high winds that could kick up swells on the lake. The winds ended up being quite mild and the lake was calm and the water temperature was a "balmy" 69 degrees and was not a factor. Still, I had a poor swim. So, what happened? I don't exactly know, but I just couldn't relax and kept feeling like I simply could not keep the effort up. I swam decently on the out leg but after making the first turn I gave in to my demons and started doing side stroke. I tried switching back to free style a few times but kept giving it up and going back to side stroke. When I made the second turn and was heading back towards shore I forced myself to stay with free style and finished up decently. Last year I did most of the swim side stroke, back stroke, and breast stroke, just trying to survive and get out of the water; the swim took 20 minutes for 750 meters. My goal this year was to do freestyle the whole way and to cut the swim time to around 16 minutes. My official time was 15:10. I should be ecstatic...but I'm not. Sure, I beat my time goal but I failed in my other goal, to give my best effort. I should probably cut myself some slack and go woohoo over my time improvement but I was hoping for something more. I've lost some of my confidence. Give me some time for the disappointment to fade and I'll be fine but right now they are my wounds and I want to lick them a while more.