Story of Elizabeth Moore
This is the story of one Elizabeth Moore. Elizabeth Moore is a Junior Elite female, racing for Multisport Explosion and an NCAA athlete at Transylvania University at Lexington, and is transferring to the University of San Francisco. When I sent out the Google Forms, Elizabeth jumped on the opportunity to help and even asked me to reach out to her. This was how I got my very first interview.
“I was diagnosed before I got into triathlon,” Moore said. “For depression and anxiety and it just kind of lingered.” Moore was diagnosed with depression and anxiety her sophomore year of high school (she’s now finishing up her freshman year of college). She had been doing competitive swim for eight years and eventually burned out, and, in some part, leading towards her struggle with mental illnesses. Moore took a year off from swim and started running, joining her high school cross country team and not thinking about the dread of swim. Then she found out about triathlons.
“Swimming wasn’t something I wanted to do,” Moore said. “I joined high school swim my senior year, which isn’t very competitive, and I picked up master swimming.” The steady transition back into swimming helped Moore find her love for the sport again. In high school all she had was three, 45-minute practices and she joined master swimming. the less-competitive master swims helped ease her back into the very sport she burnt out of a year prior. This paved the way for her triathlon career and helped her handle her depression and anxiety.
“I’ve been on medication since my sophomore year and that really helped, and I also see a sports psychologist,” Moore said. “It helped me think more rationally about quitting and coping with the loss of friends, like when I quit swim. My sports psychologist has helped because she understands depression and anxiety within the context of high-level athletics. She understands how the two go together.”
But before Moore had the help she needed and deserved, she was self-diagnosed. “I was probably self-diagnosed for a year,” Moore said. “And I knew other people could see it. I had a teacher email my mom before I started going to therapy.” As Moore got help, it seemed that her mental health issues stemmed unrelated to sports but as she grew into more competitive triathlon, it grew with her. Moore had to drop out of two races because of panic attacks. She got out of the water and the pressure and stress on the race handicapped her from going on.
Knowing this information, I asked Moore a very important question. “How has triathlon worsened or helped your mental health?” (A lot of the questions asked were very similar to the ones on the Google form.)
“That’s a very complex question.” She said. “When I first started triathlon, I threw everything into it (January 2018). By the end of the summer I was just worn out by triathlon, triathlon, triathlon. Only triathlon. And it didn’t help that I was on team a few hours away. I didn’t have the environment. I was by myself in this little triathlon bubble.”
That was a pattern I noticed in the Google forms and through my years of triathlon experience. Athletes, KIDS, are just put under so much pressure to perform that they lose the joy of the sport and they lose the thrill of the race. They only feel the pressure that’s put on them by their surroundings.
“Then going into NCAA did not help at all,” Moore said. “It was much too long of a block without a break. I was going from the first weekend of March till the end of November with no real break from the high-volume training. I just felt super, super discouraged. I didn’t want to even get out of bed to go train.”
Hearing this left a sick feeling in my gut. I had heard from other athletes that the felt the same way and I had felt the same way before. Every athlete will probably go through this phase, but it doesn’t make it any less terrible that we must go through this, in part because of the pressure put on us.
“I just lost all kinds of motivation,” Moore said. “Towards the end of the season I coupled with how long I’ve been going and that was just the recipe for a burn out.”
Now, Moore did not and has not burned out, but continuing that path, she would have. She followed the same path day in and day out of just training, training, training, and no time to relax and enjoy yourself. Sure, we all want the podium. But what are we willing to sacrifice for it? Are we willing to sacrifice our mental health to stand on the podium and achieve everything we dreamed of? Or is the dream to high a price?
Yours truly,
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