An addiction to superlatives

Some adventure stories set a bad example, but I can't stop consuming them

Hello friends,

I watched the film Nyad this week – and even though I don’t get to watch many films, of course I wasn’t going to miss this one, because it’s a story that involves a pair of sporty middle-aged lesbians, one of whom performs a feat of extraordinary endurance, while the other coaches her. And I found it just as inspiring as you might think – but also, almost unwatchable at points, for reasons it has taken me a while to understand.

This article contains moderate spoilers. I don’t think they’ll ruin the film for you (all the information was already in the public domain before it was made), but just in case you mind about these things, here’s your warning.

Reading time: 14 minutes

Diana Nyad’s swim from Cuba to Florida, when she completed it on the 2^nd September 2013, made a huge impression on me. As she emerged from the waves at Key West, I was still coming out of the terrible post-trip depression that followed my ride across Asia. In fact, digging through emails tells me it was at the end of that month that I flew to New York to spend some time with my old friend Nhatt: a trip that I generally consider the moment that I started to emerge from the clouds.

And here I am among them: photographed halfway up the 4,000m Ulugh Rabat pass in China, by Michael von Vliet.

It wasn’t just that the story of a 64-year-old woman, finally succeeding at an endeavour many had deemed beyond human capability, was wildly inspiring. There was also the specific detail that this was Nyad’s fifth attempt at the crossing. I couldn’t help but wonder how she had felt after the second, the third, the fourth… Now she was known globally for her success, but for much longer than that, she had existed in the uneasy space of having set out to do something, believed she could achieve it and tried very hard, but failed repeatedly. There was no guarantee the story would end well.

At that point I was midway through a period of failure myself.