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Swimming to Antarctica - Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer

4 stars (Amazing story) - The only reason I am giving this 4 instead of 5 stars is that it didn't include any pictures. I would have liked seeing some pictures taken during the author's many amazing swims. This book tells the story of a girl who didn't fit the typical athletic profile - she is chunky and doesn't appear to be an athlete. This couldn't be further from the truth. Her unique body makeup (she is the same density as sea water and her temperature is different from most people) allow her to withstand immersion and exertion in mind numbingly cold water. The reader learns about Lynne Co'xs many accomplishments - English Channel records (as a teenager!), swimming in heavily polluted rivers (she punched through a dog carcass as she swam), and most of all swimming in seemingly deadly cold waters (the crowning achievement of her carreer). I was left completely awestruck by this story. 5 stars (Lance Armstrong's Peer as an Endurance Athlete...) - ...May be Lynn Cox. As detailed in her gripping 2004 autobiography, Swimming to Antartica. In 1972, at age 14, yes, 14, she broke the record for swimming the English Channel - male or female. Then when someone broke her mark, possibly by cheating, she came back the next year and broke it again. She was the first human to swim the Strait of Magellan - the wild waters off Chili that have sunk hundreds of ships -- and the Bering Strait, the latter while dodging icebergs: without a wetsuit. During the swim from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans around South Africa's Cape, her frogman speared a tiger shark as it attacked her. And yes, she swam to Antarctica - going just a mile, but in dense, 32-degree water that felt like plastic to swim through, and caused short-term damage to the skin's nerve endings. These adventures all get their own chapter, in clear, direct, detailed prose that puts you right next to the athlete doing these very dangerous feats. Lynn has some Lance-like, superhuman physical traits. Afte...
Harvest Books :: Biography & Autobiography & Sports :: United States :: Swimming :: Swimmers :: Sports - General :: Personal Memoirs :: Long distance swimming :: Cox :: Lynne :: :: Bi :: Swimming to Antarctica - Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer