Wild Ideas Worth Living · Tuesday, September 1, 2026
During a difficult moment in his Molokai swim, Rob Lea used a mental chant of "56, 56, 56," inspired by Sarah Thomas's incredible 54-hour English Channel swim. Lea used Thomas's endurance as motivation to push through his own challenges in the ocean.
“But when I'm swimming and I'm having doubts that I'm going to get it done, whether that's just all in my head or my body's having issues, I'm getting cramps or those kinds of things. Um, on my Molokai swim, I particularly remember, uh, having this, um, chant in my head, and that was 56, 56, 56, 56.”
“That comes from a friend of mine, an open water swimmer, Sarah Thomas. I consider her the GOAT of open water swimming. She, uh, she's a huge inspiration of mine, and she swam the year that I swam the English Channel. And I was thinking, "Hey, that's pretty cool. I swam the English Channel." She swam it four times in a row without stopping. She was the first person to ever do that. And I believe that swim was 54 hours.”
“And I just kept chanting that to myself, thinking, "Okay, if Sarah can do this for 54 hours, I can swim for another hour, two, three."”