Posted on 02/08/2009 6:22:12 PM PST by Steelfish
Woman scores Atlantic swim first
A 56-year-old American athlete has become the first woman on record to swim the Atlantic.
Jennifer Figge took 24 days to swim from the Cape Verde islands off Africa to Trinidad. The exact distance she covered has yet to be calculated. She swam inside a cage to protect her from sharks.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
My first thought was this is incredible. Funny I didn’t even notice her age. She must have looked awful at the end of it all, the ocean water will take a toll on your skin.
It’s not a small feat, though it is a little out of whack the way the media goes nuts about all this stuff.
I don’t know who in the world started out with all this endurance stuff where you get to swim 8 hours a day and break for 5 minutes every hour. Personally, I think it is ridiculous. You should have to swim until you begin to sink.
They didn’t take rests when they were swimming the English Channel!
To that I would add there is a tremendous amount of effort and time and money that goes into this sort of thing and, for the most part, I think such ventures have more to do with cash on the barrelhead than they have to do with personal endeavor, record breaking or thrill seeking.
That being said, it is still a pretty amazing feat of endurance. Miss Figge will certainly follow it up with the rounds on the AM tube, a book and a marketing blitz.
It is a lot of swimming, but it sure as all beats the hell out of working!
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