People you might not know.

Coming from the tri world, just about everyone I know has heard and or can guess who is being spoken about when they hear the names "Chrissie, Craig, Rinny, Chris...etc. Now by no means am I taking anything away from those great athletes/"names" but I'm here to tell you about a few more that are pretty amazing also. Those are Jamie, Lynne, Lord Byron, Trudy, Gertrude..plus many more. (I'm still learning about new swimmers everyday) Who are these people you ask?? Well if you Google Open Water Swimming or Long Distance Swimming you will no doubt see all of these names.

They are some of the pioneers in swimming, they are some of the mavericks to a sport that is just now seeming to gain some traction in the public eye by way of the new Olympic event - 10k swim , which is considered a marathon swim. Now the above mentioned have swam much further than that and have set record after record within the marathon swimming records books, The Half Century Club, The Triple Crown of OWS and the biggy Ocean's Seven (no not the movie ).

According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Open water swimming takes place in outdoor bodies of water such as open oceans, bays, lakes, rivers, canals, and reservoirs. The beginning of the modern age of open water swimming is sometimes taken to be May 3, 1810, when Lord Byron swam several miles to cross the Hellespont(now known as the Dardanelles) from Europe to Asia. Today, open water swimming is considered the deadliest form of swimming.

Deadliest form of swimming??? As opposed to the pool or bathtub? Guess I have to keep one eye on my pull buoy and the other on my rubber ducky.