In college one of my roommates was on the crew team. One evening he came back from practice and related the details of a team meeting his coach had called together that afternoon.

"Fellas," coach had begun, "it has come to my attention that some of you may be having motivational problems. This is unfortunate.

"Perhaps I need to remind you," he had continued, "why you row crew. You row because it hurts. It hurts because your muscles are being systematically worn down. When your muscles wear down, your body builds them again, this time stronger than before.

"So you tear them down to make them bigger. When you go to parties and people start ripping their clothes off, you can rip yours off too because you have big muscles under there. Women will see these muscles, and you will get laid. That is why you row crew."

For the remainder of the season there were no further problems with motivation. Not that the team necessarily took the right message home with them that evening - by the end of the year, the administration had the crew team on probation for excessive partying.

Why do you compete in triathlon? While getting laid is a very real and admirable goal, at some point you realize you're not in college anymore and you need to develop more sustainable reasons. Without them, this sport becomes rapidly overwhelming.

Motivation is a cliche in our society. People search for it their entire lives; for some it finds them. You can buy it in stores, apparently: 2,623 titles at amazon.com deal with this topic, including the macabre Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. For many looking for a personal coach, in actuality this is what they are after.

I want to know what makes you tick. I am spending the summer traveling throughout Europe as a writer and competitor of triathlon, learning what motivates people to do this sport so passionately, so obsessively. By talking with others, I will also be learning about myself. I have some thoughts on what keeps me going, and what keeps me from going further, but they are intensely personal reasons which are a far cry from what may be apparent at face value. In the autumn, I hope to gather all of these stories together into a publishable manuscript. As the tri season gets underway, let me begin by explaining my own basis for putting in the hours.

I was a swimmer in college. The 400 IM was my specialty, but I also did the 200 IM, 200 fly, and any of the distance freestyles that no one else wanted to do (I suppose the theory of going further when you can't go faster led me to triathlon). The college swim season ran from August to March, and then you were encouraged (but not required; as Princeton does not have athletic scholarships, everyone was there of their own free will) to continue training through the spring and summer. Whether it be the gift or folly of circumstance, it so happened that one of the top three swimming prep schools in the nation was down the road in Lawrenceville. The Peddie School used Princeton's long course pool for spring training. As Princeton swimmers, we were encouraged (but not required) to join the high school kids for their afternoon workouts.

Swimming with the high school kids of Peddie was like being a cow herded onto a truck destined for the slaughterhouse - you knew you were going to be pulverized when you got there. It was one of the best educations I have ever had in training effectively, and also hands-down the most exhausting. Finding the motivation to walk down to the pool for practice, when you knew what was in store, was oftentimes just as hard as the sets.

Let me try to give you an idea of what it was like. I attended the Peddie offerings on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday afternoons. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I also swam in the morning with Rob Orr, the Princeton coach, and usually two or three other swimmers. He knew what we were dealing with in the afternoons, so these workouts were largely recovery. On Friday afternoon and all day Saturday and Sunday, I let my body repair itself and did nothing physical while I caught up with my computer science coursework, which had suffered during the week. Thus, in effect I was doing four intense workouts each week.

But intense is not really the word I am after here. More like maniacal. Mondays were low-rest days: sets of around 4,000 meters each and intervals constantly adjusted so you never had more than 4-7 seconds of recovery on the wall. This laid the aerobic base for Tuesdays and Thursday, and a type of training the Australians have perfected in recent years: quality. Sets on these days were 3,500-4,000 meters long and broken into short distances. As I was an IMer, a typical set would be:

16 x 100 IM on 2:15
2 x 200 IM on 4:15
16 x 100 IM on 2:15

Each repeat was meant to be at race pace. All out. The coaches ran from lane to lane between repeats reaching down to take your pulse; if yours was below 180, your dedication was publicly questioned.

The idea was straightforward - teach your body to handle lactic acid buildup and clear it from the system as quickly as possible. The amount of rest between repeats deceives how difficult the sets really were - if done correctly, it takes 4-6 weeks for your body to be able to maintain speed for the duration of the set. The coaches awarded a "quality cap" to those turning in the best sets, male and female, of the day. On the final Thursday of the spring, I finally won mine.

If Tuesdays and Thursdays were four-star restaurant fare, Wednesdays were the all-you-can-eat buffet at Ponderosa. We swam from 2:30 to 6 pm and typically put in 13,000 meters. Sets were huge, complicated, and mind-numbingly excessive, like 40 x 200 or 10 x 600. At the end of April we were ordered a 10,000 for time, this after an initial set. For the first few weeks I would run completely out of energy somewhere around 10,000 meters and my muscles would fail to pull water; to combat this I started eating two lunches, one at 10:30 and one at 12:30. Often we would drag benches into the showers after the workout, too exhausted to stay standing. Before one Wednesday session, one of my compatriots nearly had a breakdown mentally and we encouraged him to go home - the mental load of such a consistently focused, extended effort cannot be taken for granted.

This steady cycle of low rest, quality, high mileage, and more quality followed by complete and uninterrupted rest placed my body in such fitness that it became difficult to get tired. The following year saw the best races of my life, simply because of the carryover. As far as tangible results, they were respectable but not headline-grabbing: finals in three events at Easterns, first team all-Ivy, qualification for the US Senior Nationals. But I was in the best shape of my life and I knew it. And I enjoyed every minute of it, for I had fully and truly reached my potential.

In contrast, let's jump forward to this past year. I swam with Burlingame Aquatics just south of San Francisco, and I have never known a finer master's swim team. I would make 3-4 workouts a week as part of my triathlon training and the coach, Doug Huestis, would consistently cook up sets of considerable quality. In short, it was perfectly adequate for my intentions (triathlon) but not anywhere near the load I was carrying with Peddie. Although I have sworn off swim meets for good due to overdosing on them in my formative years, Doug persuaded me to enter two of them in the Bay Area, for the good of the team.

Thanks to good friend and master's world record holder Jason Eaddy of Boston not swimming the 800 free or 200 back, my times and placings were good enough for All-America status and I was voted Pacific Master's Swimmer of the Year for the 25-29 age group. Although honored to have received this recognition, I cannot identify with either award. I swim now because I love the sport and it is necessary for triathlon, but no longer for fast pool times or national rankings.

I have been swimming competitively since the age of 8, but nothing in my career has given me more personal satisfaction than winning the quality cap on that inconsequential date in May. It still motivates me to attain a level of fitness I wouldn't have imagined I could reach. And if I reach that level again, no matter if I take 1st or 400th, I will be just as content.

That's my source of inspiration. I look forward to learning about yours.