Book Suggestions: Swimming To Anartica

[theBruiser500]

Book is Swimming to Anartica, really great book she has many amazing stories, written great, nice and simple. She also seems like a great person, highly recommend.

http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0156031302/ref=s9_asin_image_3/104-0943474-4821510

[theBruiser500]

One thing that's pretty surprising to me about her is that she did some very impressive things swiming but was working normal day jobs and had no money, had no financial support to do what she did. She had to cash out everything from her own bank account a couple of times to do it. I've always assumed that if you do something that gets you in the news you get rich.

[MicroBob]

1 - Not sure why you would think doing something newsworthy like that makes you rich.

2 - I saw a story on her on 60 minutes a couple months ago. They were with her when she did the mile swim in the Antartica waters and talked about how scientists are studying how it could even be humanly possible for her to do this when it would kill just about everyone else pretty quickly.
I think they mentioned they knew of just one other person in the world who would be capable of surviving in some of those cold waters for as long.

She does seem like a generally likeable person on TV.

[theBruiser500]

After a quick search online I couldn't find any pictures or videos of her. Supposedly she is fat but how is it even possible for a long distance swimmer, someone who swims daily hard for hours? Also it would be cool to see her in action.

[lippy]

[ QUOTE ]
After a quick search online I couldn't find any pictures or videos of her. Supposedly she is fat but how is it even possible for a long distance swimmer, someone who swims daily hard for hours? Also it would be cool to see her in action.

[/ QUOTE ]

I saw the 60 minutes piece.

She was overweight, but not huge. I'd guess around 170-190lbs at 5'5". Watching her wasn't that interesting.

[tdarko]

I saw the 60 minutes clip of her as well. She was nice and all but I like Bob was kind of confused by everything, she seemed more lucky than inspirational to me. Someone inspirational to me is someone that fights through all odds and perseveres and in her case her body didn't react to the cold the way it was supposed to and her actual work done was a mile.

Now, I am not bashing her and that is why I said I was confused and that she "seemed" more lucky than inspirational b/c I haven't read the book and the little that I know of her, this is what I think. Maybe the book would enlighten me a little, but I just don't see how she wasn't more lucky than anything.

[toss]

After your recommendation for Blue Planet turned out to be a great one so I guess I'm getting this one too.

[theBruiser500]

"she seemed more lucky than inspirational to me. Someone inspirational to me is someone that fights through all odds and perseveres and in her case her body didn't react to the cold the way it was supposed to and her actual work done was a mile. "
she wasn't lucky she worked extremely hard. swimming to anartica was just one swim she did, and think about it, the water is 32 degrees and the temperature outside is very cold to, that is unimaginably cold to swim in. she had to fight through a lot to do what she did

[tsearcher]

[ QUOTE ]
After a quick search online I couldn't find any pictures or videos of her. Supposedly she is fat but how is it even possible for a long distance swimmer, someone who swims daily hard for hours? Also it would be cool to see her in action.

[/ QUOTE ]

I read an article on her either in the New Yorker or Outside Magazine. Anyway, she said the hardest part of her training was keeping her body fat content high.

[tsearcher]

[ QUOTE ]
I saw the 60 minutes clip of her as well. She was nice and all but I like Bob was kind of confused by everything, she seemed more lucky than inspirational to me. Someone inspirational to me is someone that fights through all odds and perseveres and in her case her body didn't react to the cold the way it was supposed to and her actual work done was a mile.

Now, I am not bashing her and that is why I said I was confused and that she "seemed" more lucky than inspirational b/c I haven't read the book and the little that I know of her, this is what I think. Maybe the book would enlighten me a little, but I just don't see how she wasn't more lucky than anything.

[/ QUOTE ]

She may have been genetically predisposed to handle cold better than most people but you can make statements similar to any successful athlete. She still had to work very hard at what she did.

She spent a lot of time acclimating herself to the cold. Things like not wearing a coat in the winter, sleeping in the cold and of course swimming in cold water. None of these things are pleasant activities.

I did not see the 60 minutes episode. But my experience with 60 minutes is superficial stories that are totally screwed up factually.

[theBruiser500]

thanks tsearcher, i was goin gto say thesame thing. the reason her body acted like that was because of very hard training on her part. i dont understand why you people dont want to believe in these athletes. when i posted about the ultra marathoner dean karnitz or whatever diablo called him a genetic freak, and a lot of pepole are vey sketpcail that lance armstrong did his stuff without drugs (sorry my keyboard is breaing)

[MicroBob]

I'm not sure I saw the whole 60 minutes piece, but if not I saw almost all of it.

I don't recall them mentioning as much about the training that she did involving sleeping in the cold, etc.

The piece made her out to be more of a freak of nature than anything else. That's why tdarko and I kind of think the way we do about her.

They asked her something like, "How is it even humanly possible that you can do this when practically nobody else can?"
And she kind of shrugged and said she wasn't really sure.
She didn't say it had to do with all the
prep-work she had put in.

They mention a lot of the other swims, and specifically cold-water swims, that she had done. and mention that most normal human-beings would die within 5 minutes in such waters whereas she can swim for 20 minutes or longer and not even get frost-bite and it was all just kind of strange.

Something like that anyway.

Point is, she didn't seem to disagree with the implication that she's kind of a freak of nature.

She's definitely overweight and it's kind of obvious.
5-5 and maybe 180 or 190 sounds about right to me.

She says that her body-fat probably helps her a ton in handling the cold as she does. I guess similar to whale's blubber or something like that.

She seems pretty easy-going and laughs at herself a lot.

The 60 Min piece not only is with her as she's doing the swim but is also there kind of talking to her while she's desperately trying to get warm after the swim.


I agree with tdarko that in the piece she doesn't look that especially inspirational or courageous. More of an interesting person who's kind of a curious freak-show for scientists to study.

This isn't to say that she really isn't inspiring or courageous in reality.
Just that she wasn't really presented that way by 60 mins.