Book Suggestions: Swimming To Anartica

[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.