At 62, Marathon Swimmer Still Seeks Cuba-To-Florida Challenge

Marathon swimmer Diana Nyad has tried three times  to swim from Cuba to Florida, and three times she has failed. At 62, she’s not giving up. In the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the elegant writer Elizabeth Weil explains why Nyad won’t quit what she calls “the loneliest sport in the world,” a sport that “when it’s not lonely, it’s awful.” Weil reports that one thing that keeps Nyad going is the music she keeps in her head. Here’s Weil:

When Nyad swims in a pool, she counts in her head, ticking off laps, first in English, then in German, then in Spanish, then in French. (Nyad is fluent in all but German.) The goal is to focus her mind on repetitive thought, as a yogi does with a mantra. But when Nyad swims in the ocean for a long time — 8 or 10 or 12 or even 24 hours — she doesn’t just count, she sings. She’ll do “It Ain’t Me, Babe” 10 times, interspersed with the quatralingual counting, then sing “Paperback Writer,” 10 times, followed by quatralingual counting again. Nyad keeps in her head a playlist of 65 songs. Some are for daytime swimming; others for nighttime. Nyad knows each one intimately, how many seconds each takes, how many strokes. “When I complete 2,000 ‘It Ain’t Me, Babe’s, Bob Dylan version, I know I’ve gone 4 hours and 45 minutes exactly,” Nyad says. “I never lose track.”

Read more of Elizabeth Weil in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. For more on playlists, click here.