Chad Le Clos finds training boring at times. Over the past 10 years or so, he has swum more than 25,000km, or the equivalent of crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Cape Town to New York and back again.
He covers between 45km and 65km a week.
Welcome to the life of SA's most decorated Olympian, with four medals.
Even when spending a few days at home in Cape Town this week before returning abroad for another block of training, the 26-year-old was at the pool and in the gym.
There's no respite.
But Le Clos loves the sport, and he knows it inside out.During our interview poolside at the South African short-course championships at the Kings Park pool in Durban last week, Le Clos watched the men's 1,500m freestyle final, keeping a close eye on Josh Dannhauser, a former stablemate from his days at the Seagulls club in Lahee Park, Pinetown.
In the middle of the race, the swimmer turned and his time popped up on the electronic scoreboard.
To the layman it was just a time, but for Le Clos, who knew how many laps had been completed, those numbers meant something and he immediately got excited.
"He's on pace for the qualifying time," he said, referring to the world short-course championships in China at the end of the year. "Come on, Josh!"
Then he switched back to the interview.
"There are times when it's boring, for sure, but like any job, it can be quite boring, I guess. It depends on what you want to achieve from it.
DRIVEN BY MY GOALS
"I'm just driven by my goals and my success, you know. I'm motivated by that.
"Would I be swimming this hard for fun? No . Would I be swimming when I'm 65 for fun? Sure. Maybe every day. But I won't swim for two and a half hours every day. There's a big difference between swimming 3km and 6km."
For every minute of those long swims, Le Clos has to concentrate. "I focus on my efficiency and technique."
The cocky 20-year-old who slayed the world's greatest swimmer, American Michael Phelps, at the 2012 London Olympics has grown into a confident man who is identifying fresh upstarts so he can cull them at Tokyo 2020.A new world order is forming and they're already overtaking Le Clos.
In the 200m butterfly, 18-year-old Hungarian Kristóf Milák recorded an impressive 1min 52.71sec that tops Le Clos's lifetime best, the 1:52.96 he posted to beat Phelps in London.
In the 100m butterfly, in which Le Clos's best to date is 50.56sec, there are two new stars. American Caeleb Dressel, who took the 100m world title from Le Clos last year, boasts a best of 49.86, and Olympic champion Joseph Schooling of Singapore, in action at the Asian Games in Indonesia at the moment, has yet to improve on the 50.39 he achieved in Rio.
"There's no way I should win the next Olympics, on paper," said Le Clos, the reigning 200m 'fly world champion. "If you're a betting man you won't bet for me. I'll be 28 years old in Tokyo. These kids will be 20 and 25 or whatever, and in their prime.
"But the race is not run on paper. These guys are a lot better and faster than me right now, but we'll see what happens.
"I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. I think I will surprise people in Tokyo . I can't see myself losing."CONFIDENT HE'LL GET FASTER
Le Clos is so confident that he'll get faster that he's talking about breaking two of the toughest world records out there, the two butterfly marks that Phelps set in 2009, at the peak of his powers while wearing the full-body suit that was later outlawed. Of swimming's 20 men's records, 14 still date back to the suit era.
"I feel I will definitely get the 100m 'fly record. I'm still 26 years old and I still have a good four, five years left to break that record," said Le Clos.
"I think the 200m 'fly's the one which we've got a bit of a time frame on. We've got two, three years, maybe four maximum, to get it, or I'll die trying."
In his bid to improve, Le Clos changed coaches after the Rio Games, from Graham Hill to Italian Andrea Di Nino.
Le Clos spends most of his time out of SA. He's either with Di Nino in the town of Caserta, where "they make the best pizza in the world", or at their Turkey-based Energy Standard Club, which houses other top swimmers, including English speedster Ben Proud and Sarah Sjöström of Sweden.
For fun, the Manchester United fan plays pool and table tennis, watches football and indulges in PlayStation. "I still play a lot of PlayStation. It's just something I do to kind of relax. But living in Cape Town these days, I tend to socialise a lot more than I did in Durban."This week in Cape Town he and father Bert hooked up with a friend who bought them at an auction for charity some time ago.
"He's a good friend of ours. I was auctioned off for a dinner date. He bought it and then offered to pay double to the charity if my dad came along. It was a package deal."
Poker is another popular pastime in Turkey. "We'll play for a few euros or ice creams or to carry the winner's wet bag. So if I win, then all the losers will take turns during the week carrying my wet bag," said Le Clos, whose best hand to date was a straight flush of the four to eight of hearts.
In an interview with the Sunday Times years ago, when he was still a teenager, Le Clos made of point of saying he was single and available. When I asked him now if he had a love interest, he hesitated before replying gingerly: "Ja, there's someone I've got my eye on . I'm kind of taken."
Le Clos didn't offer more details about her, but he later pointed to a brunette sitting with his parents on the concrete stand on the other side of the pool deck.WHAT WENT WRONG AT RIO
Le Clos prefers to keep his private life, well, private. But he has a swimming secret too: what went wrong in the 200m butterfly final at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
He went into the final on a high, having taken silver in the 200m freestyle the night before, but was unable to repeat his golden heroics of 2012, relinquishing his crown to the man he'd taken it from, Phelps, as he finished fourth.
That hurt him. That was the only time I've seen him walk past the media without giving an interview; he looked ahead and marched past.
"I didn't cry. I don't cry for losing, only for winning," said Le Clos, who picked up the 100m 'fly silver in Rio to add to his 200m 'fly gold and 100m 'fly silver from London."In my mind it should have been a gold and two silvers [in Rio]. I can live with that, but I can't live with the fact that my last 50m was 30.9sec and in London it was 29.0."
Had he repeated that time in the final lap in Rio he would have scored a crushing victory.
Just days after the disaster he said there had been problems, but he refused to disclose them.
He hasn't spoken about them yet, although he plans to do so after the Tokyo Games. "I don't want to make excuses. I don't want to be seen as the guy that made excuses for the Olympics.
"After I win in 2020, then I can talk about what happened, because that's not an excuse then. I would have done my time, waited for four years and got back what I deserved.
"Then I'll talk about it."
Also a top-class 100m freestyler, Le Clos could consider four events for Tokyo, but he's adamant the 200m 'fly is his chief focus.
He's waiting for the Tokyo swimming schedule to be released, but if it resembles Rio, where he swam the 200m freestyle final on the same night as the 200m butterfly semifinals, then he'll drop the freestyle race.
WANT TO HAVE ONE BIG CRACK AT IT
"If the programme fits, I'll definitely swim all four. But I don't want to swim the 200m free just before the 200m 'fly again.
"I want to have one big crack at it and see what I can do, what time I can go, try and win the race, give myself the best chance."
Le Clos offers no suggestion about when he might quit. In 2022 he wants to become the most prolific Commonwealth Games medal-winner of all time in Birmingham.He ended the Gold Coast showpiece on 17 medals, just one short of the record 18, held by two retired shooters.
Le Clos has, however, started looking towards life after swimming, by going into business with a cousin and opening a "dessertery" called High Five in Kloof, Durban. Outlets are planned for Cape Town and Johannesburg.
"I love ice cream," he admitted. "I'm getting into businesses so when I finish swimming I'm OK."
At one point Le Clos spoke about possibly competing for another decade. If he manages another six years or so he will effectively have swum around the world...