Swimming to Antarctica

Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long Distance Swimmer by Lynne Cox is a non-fiction book by an Olympic long distance swimmer who writes about her desire to swim, her training and experience in long distance swimming, and the journeys she made across various famous bodies of water, including the Mediterranean Sea. The book is a lyrical sports memoir and meditation not just on competition and breaking records but on the act of swimming itself.
 
Lynne Cox has been swimming for nearly as long as she's been alive, and her memoir begins with the realization of her dreams as a young girl and her discovery of long distance swimming. Cox was born in New Hampshire, and her parents were interested in preparing their kids for swimming events at a young age, after many of their children demonstrated interest in the sport. Cox began her training when she was nine years old, and remembers in the early chapters of her book choosing to stay in a frigid New Hampshire swimming pool during a storm for her training, rather than getting out to do calisthenics in a more hospitable environment. This choice was indicative of the kinds of decisions and challenges she would set for herself in years to come.
 
Cox's family moved to Southern California soon after, because the environment was better for competitive swimming. Originally, her parents anticipated their children would participate in speed swimming, but in California Cox discovered long distance ocean swimming, and immediately fell in love. Her first event was a team race swimming the Catalina Channel, and that swim made her realize that she was prepared to start training to swim the notorious English Channel.
 
Cox trained with an Olympic coach in the Pacific, swimming five to twelve miles a day. And by age fifteen, before most people have accomplished much of anything in their lives, Cox had broken every record for swimming the English Channel that had ever been set – both the men's and women's records. Confident in her ability to continue to take on every swimming challenge thrown at her, Cox promptly set her sights on new goals.
 
Since her English Channel swim, Cox has taken on remarkable feats in swimming. In 1987, she swam the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia, which according to leader Gorbachev helped relieve tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States during the last years of the Cold War. She swam off the coast of New Zealand with a pod of dolphins, and narrowly avoided a shark attack off the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. She had a setback when she attempted to swim the Nile River, and the water was so horribly polluted that she spent most of the swim batting away broken glass, dead and bloated rat carcasses, and finally was hospitalized with dysentery from swallowing the dirty brown water. Despite this experience, Cox maintained her love for swimming and continued to set challenges for herself, swimming across the Mediterranean Sea and using her swimming to travel the globe in search of “unswimmable” waters.
 
Cox's crowning achievement as a swimmer was her most recent – she swam a mile in the waters off the Antarctic, the coldest in the world, wearing only a swim cap, goggles, and a swim suit. The water was only thirty-two degrees, and no swim of that kind had been attempted without a wet suit. Cox achieved her goal.
 
Cox's memoir, as well as being a travelogue of the many locations she has visited in search of the next best swim, is a story about setting goals, overcoming challenges, and striving to push yourself in search of ever-reaching dreams. She writes in a lyrical way about her love of the act of swimming itself, and how it feels like flying through water. She talks also about her hope that long distance swimming can bridge the often tense divisions between warring or conflicted nations by helping them realize that they share borders with the same populated seas. The main takeaway of Cox's memoir is that her goals are not about proving herself to others or breaking records. Rather, she writes, her interest is in pushing herself and always competing against her last big swim, to guarantee that she is always improving and working toward becoming a better person, and a better athlete.

Lynne Cox is a long distance swimmer, writer, and motivational speaker. She was the first person to swim between the United States and Russia. She has won a number of awards, including the Glamour Woman of the Year Award, and others. She is the author of Swimming to Antarctica, Grayson, South with the Sun, and other books. Many of her books are suitable for both teens and adults.