I have an uncompromising relationship with my goals.

If you want to touch the other shore badly enough, barring an impossible situation, you will. If your desire is diluted for any reason, you'll never make it.

If you can just immerse yourself in your life, it doesn't matter what you do everyday. Just do it intensely. Be in it, so that when you go to sleep you're exhausted every night and you say, 'Whoa, I just couldn't have done any more with that day.'

But for each of us, isn't life about determining your own finish line?

This journey has always been about reaching your own other shore no matter what it is, and that dream continues.

I am willing to put myself through anything; temporary pain or discomfort means nothing to me as long as I can see that the experience will take me to a new level.

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.