People who are already over 100 and 200 miles for the year?!

The vast majority of those swimmers are not only USMS members, but they are also channel swimmers. Many of them will easily knock out 5 ~ 10 miles a day during their weekday swims. Then, they knock about 20+ mile swims over the weekend. Some of them will knock out the same kind of mileage in the pool when the ocean is inhospitable. A 20 mile swim is 35,200 yards. To put it in more conventional pool swimming terms, this is 352 x 100s. Now let us say that some of these guys can hold this pace on 1:20 and take no bathroom breaks or stop for a sip of water or a bite of food. 352 x 100 on 1:20 would take 469.20 minutes to complete, or 7.82 hours. There are not that many pools around here where a person can get a lane where he or she doesn't need to circle swim and swim continuously for nearly 8 hours. More power to them, and more power to your swimming facilities out there, but I must say I find this a little hard to believe. I also find myself wondering if at least some of the more prodigious mileages posted on GTD are "guestimates" of Open Water distances and/or done in one of the Endless Pool treadmill kind of thingies where exactitude is difficult to know for certain. This said, my friend John Kuzmkowski, in first place overall as of yesterday (John Kuzmkowski M59 ALMT 303.69) swims all his yards in the Greensburg YMCA. Moreover, he is obsessively "moral" about his counts. If he loses count, he always goes back to the previous lap count rather than assuming he's done an extra one. His longest single day yardage to date, I am fairly certain, is 17,600 yards, or merely 176 x 100. His pace is slower than 1:20--I would guess he averaged somewhere between 1:30-1:40, and I think he split it up into a morning and an evening swimming session. Assuming he stuck to the slower, 1:40 pace, he could have completed (still prodigious) amount in 4.88 hours, or a bit under two, 2-and-1/2-hour sessions that day. This strikes me as a little easier to believe. But who knows? Maybe our east coast swimming nutcases are less nutty than your west coast swimming nutcases?

The vast majority of those swimmers are not only USMS members, but they are also channel swimmers. Many of them will easily knock out 5 ~ 10 miles a day during their weekday swims. Then, they knock about 20+ mile swims over the weekend. Some of them will knock out the same kind of mileage in the pool when the ocean is inhospitable. A 20 mile swim is 35,200 yards. To put it in more conventional pool swimming terms, this is 352 x 100s. Now let us say that some of these guys can hold this pace on 1:20 and take no bathroom breaks or stop for a sip of water or a bite of food. 352 x 100 on 1:20 would take 469.20 minutes to complete, or 7.82 hours. There are not that many pools around here where a person can get a lane where he or she doesn't need to circle swim and swim continuously for nearly 8 hours. More power to them, and more power to your swimming facilities out there, but I must say I find this a little hard to believe. I also find myself wondering if at least some of the more prodigious mileages posted on GTD are "guestimates" of Open Water distances and/or done in one of the Endless Pool treadmill kind of thingies where exactitude is difficult to know for certain. This said, my friend John Kuzmkowski, in first place overall as of yesterday (John Kuzmkowski M59 ALMT 303.69) swims all his yards in the Greensburg YMCA. Moreover, he is obsessively "moral" about his counts. If he loses count, he always goes back to the previous lap count rather than assuming he's done an extra one. His longest single day yardage to date, I am fairly certain, is 17,600 yards, or merely 176 x 100. His pace is slower than 1:20--I would guess he averaged somewhere between 1:30-1:40, and I think he split it up into a morning and an evening swimming session. Assuming he stuck to the slower, 1:40 pace, he could have completed (still prodigious) amount in 4.88 hours, or a bit under two, 2-and-1/2-hour sessions that day. This strikes me as a little easier to believe. But who knows? Maybe our east coast swimming nutcases are less nutty than your west coast swimming nutcases?