There is no way I'd be able to swim 15,000 to 20,000 yards in a day.
From the article: "It's a very dark question for me. Swimming has been a security blanket," he said. But, "I haven't balanced out my life. I realized I had to prioritize other things and had to let swimming take a back seat -- I'm looking at the next phase." That makes total sense to me, because that's the reason why I'd quit: to have a life. Many people like to imagine that they'd sacrifice anything for an Olympic gold medal or a world championship, but in fact, very few people do take themselves to their personal extremes to see just how far they can go in competitive sports. If you do so, no matter what level you achieve, you'll find that you have to make some big sacrifices. If you make your athletic excellence the number one priority in your life, such that anything else can and will be sacrificed for it, you end up missing out on a lot of other things: having a family, having -- if we're being honest -- probably any kind of really worthwhile primary relationship, getting an education, pursuing other pastimes, living where you want to live, spending most of your time at home. The argument is that you can always do those things later, but past a certain point, I can see where no amount of potential gold medals would make up for not having all those other things that us ordinary folks take for granted, and seeing the years go by that you'll never get back. As the saying goes, life begins when you get one. Best of luck to Thorpe in making the transition -- I can imagine it's going to be a huge challenge -- and may his internal compass guide him to the next thing.
There is no way I'd be able to swim 15,000 to 20,000 yards in a day. They do it in two or more workouts. When I was competing in college, we'd have a morning and afternoon workout. I never got to the top levels, but I did do a few long days. For the last ten years or so, there's been a big backlash against the "put in the yards" long workouts. If you read books like Total Immersion, or check out the author's site, you'll see the approach used by most good coaches now. There's more emphasis on drills that lengthen and balance your stroke. They use drills that teach you how to roll using your hips and reach far forward and "trade hands" in the front of your stroke. In other words, they now teach you to swim like the Thorpedo. If you watch him, he looks like he's barely working (25 sec. YouTube), switching back and forth so smoothly. Even the 50m sprinters use his style, although it's hard to see when they're moving so fast.
Great stuff, dusted. Thank you.
Sure thing.
I have a friend who swims at Oakland University, he used to be a bit chubby but college swimming got rid of that.
