Just getting in the pool for seven straight hours is unbearable to me.... It's grueling. There's nothing physically pleasurable about it. If you're doing a hard workout, you're throwing up in the gutter. At night you cling to your pillow and just hope that your body revives before you have to go back and do it again.
Swimming is probably the ultimate of burnout sports. It's ironic because millions of people who swim as their regular exercise love the meditation aspect of it; you don't wind up with any orthopedic injuries. But when you swim at a world class level for hours and hours - the loneness of the long distance runner.
From age eleven to age sixteen I lived a spartan life without the usual adolescent uncertainty. I wanted to be the best swimmer in the world, and there was nothing else.
Swimming is probably the ultimate of burnout sports.
I think I'm going to my grave without swimming from Cuba to Florida.
