Author: Lynne Cox
Epic swim after epic swim, Lynne Cox describes her experiences in such vividness that one can almost feel the water when reading her book. Perhaps the most accomplished distance swimmer in the world, she is her best in bodies of water never thought swimmable like The Bering Strait, Glacier Bay in Alaska and Lake Baikal in Russia. Basically, Lynne loves swimming in really cold water.
The book is mostly chronological, describing Lynne’s progression from her days as a little girl on a local swim team to her love of big, open-water swims. Most chapters are dedicated to a particular swim, starting with classics such as the Catalina Channel swim off the coast of California and the English Channel swim, and then getting increasingly more spectacular in terms of locations, conditions, and logistics. For each swim, she provides wonderful descriptions of the “why”, what it required to organize (the support operation is quite complex for some of these swims), and what she experienced and felt during the swim itself.
It’s definitely an entertaining book for anyone curious about open water swimming. I read it when I was just getting into the sport after joining an open water swim club when I lived in Hong Kong, and it served to motivate me to get out there in the ocean for more swims. Besides its entertainment value, it’s an interesting story about how someone can develop (or in Lynne’s case, perhaps just innately have) an incredible passion for something, and continue pursuing it to such impressive extremes. As for me, I think I’ll just stick to a few occasional swims in warm water!