Why is Swimming so much more exhausting?

So to give some background, I’m an athlete and fitness enthusiast who trains daily:

-Weightlifting ~5 times a week (push pull legs abs) 40min-60min

-Running 3-4 times a week (1X HIIT, 1XIncline, 1X Tempo, 1X distance) 20-30 mins on average

-Elliptical ~3 times a week (30-60min)

-Swimming ~3 times a month (20-30 min)

Now, none of the aforementioned workouts tire me as much as swimming does. I burn roughly 8-10 calories/min when I do the elliptical and roughly ~15 calories/min when I run. I’m gonna leave aside the Elliptical for the following discussion. Even though my runs are extremely intense, they never exhaust me as much as swimming does.

To give an idea, 20 mins of swimming fatigues me as much as or probably even more than 30-45 mins of running does (even though I burn 1.5 times the calories/min while running). And honestly, I’m perplexed as to why this happens. Is it because I don’t swim as much as I run? Or is it natural for swimming to be more intense and exhausting?

So today, I swam for 20 mins and I was panting and fucking tired at the end of it, and my pace wasn’t too great either (0.46miles/735m freestyle in 20 min, 2’43”/100M). Whereas, when I run, even though it’s intense and the sweat makes it look like I fell into a pool of water, it’s much lighter on me. To give more detail, I run at a pace of roughly 7.20-7.60 mile/km (4:30-4:45 min/km) for 3-4.5mile (5-7km) runs, but I’m never panting as much as I am after swimming.

Is this natural (lower calorie/min for swimming and yet, it being more exhausting than any other conventional workout)? Or is it because I run so regularly and intense that swimming simply seems harder?

I’m a 154lbs (70kg) Male

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