Diana giving a swim clinic at Club Med in Cancun, Mexico. The gay travel outfit Olivia brings Diana and Bonnie on their trips often to present their fitness company BravaBody.com Bonnie is prepping for knee surgery on Wed so Diana handled this one solo.

Along with gym workouts and tips at the pool, Diana entertained the crowd with funny stories last night at the theater….and they gave her a long standing ovation and chanted her name when she told them she was going for Cuba ONE MORE TIME!!!!

United Health Care had their annual national symposium in Palos Verdes, CA, today. I joined them as their keynote speaker. As I looked around the crowd, it seemed many were about my age……and they were ready to soak up a message of trying our best to live lives of “No Regrets”. One man told me his wife was just this morning diagnosed with breast cancer. He is of course making plans to get back to Chicago asap but he did hear my speech and said he was texting his wife all the way through, preparing for their fight, determined to live every day to its glorious fullest along the way.

Bonnie narrates end of the first 13-hour session here in Mexico.

Water about 82 degrees which was nice. Very bumpy day. Wavy all the way. That wasn’t so nice. As I say, 60 is going to be unreal…..but even 13 isn’t easy.

Logic dictates that, if you’re preparing for an event that’s going to last some 60 or 70 continuous hours, then 13 hours would have to seem almost easy once you’re in near-top form.

But I’m here to tell you that 13 hours of non-stop swimming, especially in a fairly rough sea, is NEVER, EVER easy. It’s a long grind of a day. I’m getting there, for sure. The muscles recover by the next morning. But the 13 hours themselves. NEVER, EVER easy.

My Team’s in Shape!

These two local dive-boatmen in Puerto Morelos are in charge of my safety and decisions as to where we train while here in Mexico. It’s a bit tricky, in that the Yucatan Channel flows at a fierce speed to the North. Closer to shore, where the currents are not so strong, there’s a long, long reef and when it’s wavy, it’s dangerous to swim too close to it, in fear of being thrown up onto the sharp coral.

Now, it’s certainly not the same as being with my close friends Mark and Angie Sollinger who run my training camp in St Maarten. That’s family….along with our intrepid teammate Fred Steele there. But to meet these two for the first time the day before our first 13-hour swim and then to witness them help handlers Bonnie and Allison with every possible detail all day long…..to see their wonderment and respect for someone working so hard…. to have them take me out into the strong currents and waves but somehow still time it, to the second, that we arrive back at the starting beach in 13 exact hours, they’re impressive…and I’m grateful for their professionalism and their enthusiasm.

So here’s the swimmer and her Head Handler Bonnie after 13 hours in a rough Mexico sea.

OK, I’m not winning any beauty contests but, ice packs on most body parts, we’re still laughing!!!

I have happily and successfully been training in St Maarten with the Sollinger family all winter and spring. But this week we’ve switched it up and have installed our camp in one of Mexico’s most charming, authentic old country towns, Puerto Morelos, just South of Cancun.

The tip of the Yucatan peninsula here is almost the exact distance from Cuba as is Key West. The Gulf Stream that is our impediment between Cuba and Florida actually originates here, called The Yucatan Channel. So the waters replicate quite closely what I’ll be facing this summer.

I don’t like to know how much time has elapsed. Too depressing. But truth is, even though I don’t wear a watch and can’t see a clock at any time during these long hours, there’s an inner clock, working like a metronome. I’m not at any time too far from knowing the precise minute, just by instinct.