For previous generations, swimming the English Channel was the feat to accomplish. And that's been done.

It's been a grand, elevating, life-confirming experience these last two years.

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.

In swimming, especially training out in the ocean and open water, you got fogged-over goggles, you're stuck with your own thoughts - there's great benefits to that, deep thinking like that after many hours, but there's also tremendous loneliness. You burn out. You want to run, jump, ski, do anything. So at age 30, I was finished.

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

I've never been in any pain, ever, like that in my whole life. Now it's set me so far back, I just don't' have the lung capacity to swim the way I can.