From Age Eleven To Age Sixteen I

I Want To See All The Countries In The World And Learn All The Languages. I Want To Have Thousands Of Friends And I Want All My Friends To Be Different. I Want To Play Six Instruments. I Want To Be The Best In The World At Two Things. I Want To Be A Great Athlete And I Want To Be A Great Surgeon. I Need To Practice Very Hard Every Day. I Need To Sleep As Little As Possible. I Need To Read At Least One Major Book Every Week. And I Need To Remember That My Seventy Years Are Going To Go By Too Quickly.

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.

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.

When You Achieve Your Dreams It's Not So Much What You Get, It's Who You Become.