I started, dare I say, a lively discussion over at Marathon Swimmers forums about all these interesting "groupings" of swims. Or series. Or what have you. You know. Like Ocean's Seven. Or the SoCal Eight. Or my recent interest, the Still Water 8.
So I thought, What other possible groupings are there out there? How about one centered on rivers? There's my next big adventure, the 10-mile Swim the Suck, in Tennessee. Or the race the Spanish put on, the 5K Descenso a Nado de la Ria de Navia.
Or we could concentrate on North American rivers. Besides Swim the Suck, there's the Ohio River Swim, the Potomac River 7.5 in my soon-to-be neck of the woods, the multiple NY river swims, a 12-miler in Alabama called That Dam Swim. Probably many more.
If we just looked at lakes, we'd be swimming for years. Besides the Finger Lakes in NY state (The Six Fingers anyone?), we could try and cross the top 10 largest lakes in North America. Lake Michigan would be a doozy. There's a small group of Arizona swimmers planning to do four AZ lakes, dam to dam. One of the marathon swimmer forumites is planning on swimming the largest lake in Ireland and each nation of the UK. He's thinking of calling it The Five Ponds. And of course, for the truly crazy, how about swimming 120 miles in 7 days, under 8 bridges in NY?
I think my favorite suggestion from the forums was a series of prison swims, christened the Triple Crown of Prisons by Loneswimmer: Alcatraz in the San Fran Bay, Spike Island in Ireland, and Robben Island in South Africa.
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