Into The Pool!

Michael felt a bit excited, so he did a back-flip entering the water. As soon as his entire body got submerged into the water, Michael felt as if he was finally back home, the feeling of water is something Michael will never forget.

After enjoying the water to his heart's content, Michael finally got to warming up.

After warming up by swimming 800 meters, Michael was now ready to start his mission.

The pool Michael is currently swimming in is a 50 meter long pool, to finish his mission he needs to swim 5km/day. So he needs to do 50 laps in the pool, with each lap not taking any longer than 1 minute and 11 seconds.

(1.2/35km)

(2.7/35km)

(4/35km)

'My arms hurt so much' Michael screamed in his mind, his arms felt like they were burning and about to fall off. Every single stroke caused immense pain, but whenever Michael felt pain, he would remember what he felt like when he kept losing every single time.

'This pain is nothing compared to the pain of losing and having my dreams crushed. I would stay in this pain for years if it meant I would be able to win.'

With his unshakeable willpower, Michael finally completed his daily quota.

(5/35km)

After spending some time in the pool to cool-down, Michael got out of the pool, and started to do his dry-land exercises.

(Swimmers call any exercise that's on land 'dry-land')

He started off by doing the 150 sit-ups, It was surprisingly not that hard, as Michael already has strong core muscles from swimming. Then, he found a nearby fence that was a bit taller than his own height, perfect for a pull-up.

Michael had to divide the 15 pull-ups into 3 sets of 5, as his muscles are still too weak to do 15 at once.

After finishing all his missions for today, Michael went to the restroom to take a shower and change into his clothes, almost all swimming pools have a restroom with showers near them.

-------

(5 hours later)

Michael could be seen sitting in his room, with a desk in-front of him that is fully covered by all types of books, he was writing in one of the many books around him.

After a few minutes, Michael closed the book, and sighed while massaging his temples.

'Why am I even in college? Aren't I guaranteed to become a professional athlete? How will school help me at all?' Michael asked himself these questions, and eventually came to a realization.

'Education is useless!'

'I will just wait until I finish my mission, then I will drop out out. I want to put all my focus on swimming and the system'

Michael opened his phone, and looked at the time. It read 5:30PM.

'I have nothing else to do, might as well have some fun'

He unlocked his phone, and started to call Kai.

"Hey Kai, do you want to come with me to KFC?"

"Are you asking me out on a date?!" Kai responded as if he was flustered.

"Shut the f*ck up, do you want to go or not, answer with a yes or no." Michael responded, clearly furious at his friend's antics.

"Yes, Yes I wi-"

"I will be there at 6"

Michael immediately hung up after setting a time, he didn't know what kind of weird sentence his friend will say next.

Arriving at KFC, Michael walked into the restaurant.

"Hey Michael! Here!"

Michael looked to his left and saw Kai waving to get his attention, walking over to him, Michael sat opposite to him.

"Hey how have you been Mike?"

"Very good actually"

"Don't worry I'll cheer yo- Huh?" Kai stopped himself mid sentence in disbelief.

"You're fine? how? you usually become a depressed zombie for 2 weeks after every swim meet."

"I found motivation and a way forward" Michael said with a proud smile.

"That's good, I'm happy for you man" Kai responded with a genuine smile.

"Anyways, are we gonna talk about the fact that I'm now dining with a world record holder?"

"What is there to talk about, your friend was always the best in the world, nothing changed." Kai said with a puffed chest.

"I would say you're very narcissistic, but you're unfortunately correct this time."

--------

After eating with Kai, Michael went home and immediately crashed into his bed, as his eyes were slowly closing, they suddenly shot open.

'The stretches!'

Michael wiped the cold sweat that suddenly started to form on his forehead, he had almost lost his life from forgetting to do his mission.

Michael did his shoulder stretches, and he then did stretches for his legs as well.

'I'm already doing stretches, might as well do it for my whole body.'

After having that close encounter with death, he had quite a few troubles with sleeping, but eventually managed to fall asleep after an hour of tossing and turning in his bed.