The water's all the way up to the roof and it's just one of those things you've never seen. It's hard to describe,
Speed eventually neared its peak. The records forced me to work ever harder to drop a less and less time. These time trials came to feel like races, which are fun to run sporadically but not daily.
I feared the verdict of the watch, where I either lost the race against time that day or would lose it soon by making the record even harder to break. The time trap had snapped shut.
The natural urge when running a distance is to push harder and finish sooner - to race against time. Every second behind a deadline is a little defeat.
The records fell easily at first. Dozens of seconds peeled away with every running of a course, and I could hardly wait for the next chance to improve.