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Swimming Adventures
December 12 2008 by Neal Mueller
There is a whole movement of people who are discovering that swimming in nature's water beats swimming in chlorinated pool water. I recently got into open water swimming, and have spent a lot of my recent vacation time traveling to various places to swim in bays, lakes, channels and rivers.
Swimming is the only fitness activity that invokes every muscle in your body--the only full body workout. It's also a very efficient and joint-friendly way to get fit. Water is 900 times denser than air, and to me this makes the act of swimming feel like I am overcoming something tangibly difficult. It's addictive in a wonderfully healthy way.
Here's a list of audacious swims to jump into, starting with the Everest of swims:
Swimming Challenges
English Channel between England and France; considered the "Everest of swims"
Manhattan Island swim
Irish Channel between Ireland and Scotland
Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand
Molokai Channel between Oahu and Molokai Islands in Hawaii
Catalina Channel near Los Angeles, California
Tsugaru Channel between Honshu and Hokkaido in Japan
Strait of Gibraltar between Europe and Africa
Getting Started Advice
Just getting started with swimming? Have you thought about joining a swim club? These are typically called "Masters Swim Club", which is a huge misnomer because most clubs accept all comers, from dog paddlers to torpedoes. An intermediate option is to just hop in your nearby lake or river and see how you do. Checking the water quality of your local swimming hole is important and most cities have websites that describe daily water quality (Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco).
Got another swimming adventure in mind? Please share your additions in the comments!
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