The [Antarctic] swim itself was extremely beautiful and harsh, ... The harshness of knowing that if you stay in the water a moment too long you can go into cardiac arrest. There's a knowledge that you really are on edge here, and that you can push yourself too far.
"Lynne Cox" is an American long-distance open-water swimmer and writer. In 1971, she and her teammates were the first group of teenagers to complete the crossing of the Santa Catalina Island, California/Catalina Island Channel in California. She has twice held the record for the fastest crossing (men or women) of the English Channel (1972 in a time of 9h 57 mins and 1973 in a time of 9h 36 mins). In 1975, Cox became the first woman to swim the 10 °C (50 °F), 16 km (10 mi) Cook Strait in New Zealand. In 1976, she was the first person to swim the Straits of Magellan in Chile, and the first to swim around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.
Cox is perhaps best known for swimming 2h 5 mins in the Bering Strait on 7 August 1987, from the island of Little Diomede in Alaska to Big Diomede, then part of the Soviet Union, where the water temperature averaged around . At the time people living on the Diomede Islands—only 3.7 km (2.3 miles) apart—were not permitted to travel between them, although the Eskimo communities there had been closely linked until the natives of Big Diomede were moved to the Russian mainland after World War II. Her accomplishment eased Cold War tensions as Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev both praised her success.
More Lynne Cox on Wikipedia.I swam for four hours in 50-degree temperatures, and my body temperature went from 97.6, a little bit lower than normal, to a 100.2.
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