Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer Cox, Lynne. 1957- creator author. text my First Harvest edition. monographic may

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359 pages : photographs, maps ; 21 cm. December 1, 2003 Cox, one of the world's leading long-distance swimmers, has been a risk-taker ever since she was nine and chose the freezing water of a New Hampshire pool in a storm over getting out and doing calisthenics. After her family moved to California so she and her siblings could train as speed swimmers, she discovered long-distance ocean swimming. Her first open-water event, a team race across the Catalina Channel, convinced her to train for the English Channel. At 15, she broke the Channel record, and decided she needed a new goal. Up to this point, Cox's story reads like a fairy tale of hard work, careful planning and good support, crowned with success. It isn't until she competes in the Nile River swim that the tale turns ugly—she's swimming in raw sewage and chemical waste, fending off the dead rats and broken glass, so sick with dysentery she lands in the hospital. Undeterred, she plans more ambitious swims—around the shark-infested Cape of Good Hope, across Alaska's Glacier Bay—to prepare for her big dream, a swim from Alaska to the Soviet Union across the Bering Strait. While offering herself to researchers studying the effects of cold on the human body, her political goals are even larger: to bring countries and peoples together, using swimming "to establish bridges between borders." Cox ends her story with her swim to Antarctica, where she finishes the first Antarctic mile in 32-degree water in 25 minutes. Even though readers know she survived to tell the tale, it's a thrilling, awesome and well-written story. (Jan.) LYNNE COX A portion of this work previously appeared in the New Yorker. "A Cold Day in August" previously appeared in the New York Times. Cox, Lynne 1957- Biography Women swimmers Biography United States Long-distance swimming 797.21092 9780156031301 PPAK 190415 20190416104616.0 eng