Donal Buckley who eloquently explains marathon swimming to a global audience is feeling it today, despite swimming 28.5 miles in water that is much too warm for his liking.

Buckley is swimming in New York City in today’s Manhattan Island Marathon Swim where his speed has ranged from 0 miles per hour when he was bucking the tidal flow near the start to a high of 3 mph when he was swimming fast up the East River past the United Nations Building with the swim nearly half over.

“The pain makes me feel alive, because I am overcoming something that will stop others. Sometimes there’s a very fine line where I can slip into a reverie at that point. Everything develops a clarity that only I can see for those periods. The pain can be a reward,” explained Buckley who has trained hard in both the pool and sea for his first swim in North America.

He recalled the concept of pain during one of his training sessions leading up to the famous circumnavigation in New York. “I was doing a 20k pool training session with a friend today, 19 years younger than me, and a little bit faster, including 8k total paddles. During the second 4k paddles, as my shoulders were feeling like home made pasta, I was thinking that all that is different about endurance athletes in any sport, is that pain doesn’t really matter. It’s there, you ignore it and just get on with it.”

The entire field in today’s Manhattan Island Marathon Swim can be followed via GPS here.

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