Just Add Water: My Swimming Life

The Memoir Spot

A snapshot review of a book related to the Non-fiction Feature

Also in Bulletin #50:
The Non-fiction Feature: Endure by Alex Hutchinson
The Product Spot: Ted Lasso

The Pithy Take

If you don’t know who Katie Ledecky is, you might at least recognize the iconic images of her at Olympic swimming events: the lone swimmer, so far ahead of her competitors that the TV screen can’t even capture them all in the same frame.

If Endure is about physical endurance generally, with a focus on running, then Just Add Water is a micro-look at the mentality of one of our generation’s most gifted athletes, with a focus on swimming. There are incredible details about her races, and section after section of the people and coaches and communities who lifted her up and instilled in her the values of perseverance, working hard, and being a good person.

To thrive in distance swims, you have to train yourself to focus on nothing, or on something constructive, otherwise your brain will default to a self-preservation cycle of registering that your body hurts–signaling to you to stop doing whatever it is that is hurting your body and sending messages to all corners of your mind to quit swimming already!

In short, if you can’t harness your thoughts, you become your own worst enemy in the pool.