In this third episode, she details the hardness of endurance sessions, the 50-kilometer swimming weeks and the need to know what the goals behind this workload are.

"I gave up the World Short Course Championships in December in Australia, even though I had qualified. I felt very tired and didn't feel ready to swim fast. I thought it was better for me to preserve myself and stay in Marseille to train hard. It did me a lot of good. We took the time to build things, not to be in haste. The choice that has been made is to make much more volume. So we developed endurance, the ability to train well. In fact, I trained myself to train better. It may sound silly but now I can do more hard work without needing to recover every time. It can be interesting for the second half of the season."

. The right intention

"It's quite new for me to do so much over such a long period of time. Over a week, you can do up to 50 or 55 kilometers. It's probably not much for bands like Philippe Lucas', but for me it's consistent and it's a job I've never done. So I'm quite happy and proud to have done that, to see that my body has coped well. On a session, it means spending two full hours in the water. There are themes on each session, either pure endurance, leg work, or butterfly technique. So we have focus points. We have the warm-up, the main menu and dessert a few more things to finish us off (laughs). To this, we must add bodybuilding and there is therefore a lot to digest. It's been busy weeks but now is the time to do it. But hey, making terminals is good, but it's not what makes you swim fast. It must be done with the right intention, without changing things too much technically and without paying less attention to details under the pretext that there is more volume. The idea is to make more quality with more volume."

France's Marie Wattel poses with her silver medal in the 100m butterfly at the European Aquatics Championships in Rome on August 15, 2022 © Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP

. "No or little fun"

"So we are in the middle of a period of charge and very intense volume. Personally, that's not what I like. What I like is doing short sprinting, taking time between each training element. So it's not easy because I don't take pleasure, or little pleasure. And I told my coach that I needed him to remind me of the value of this work. I need to understand, to see where it will take me. Because these are extremely hard sessions, rather on my weak points. So it can be a lot, even if that's also how we progress. In the middle of all this, there are still some competitions, like recently in Lausanne or the Giant Open currently. It allows you to get back to 100% on the race. When you do six or seven kilometers all the time in training, you lose a little bit of this ability to be 100% on a shorter effort, to race. That's what competitions are for, to find that feeling of racing with girls of very good level."

French swimmer Marie Wattel prepares to compete in the 50m freestyle heats at the World Championships in Budapest on June 24, 2022 © Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP

Interview by Stanislas TOUCHOT

© 2023 AFP