I have been looking around at a lot of different distance open water swimming sites lately and then looking at the times. It seems to me that the times are way to fast. Then again I'm not an open water swimmer, though that will change this year. I'm still confused by the times and speed I seem to be seeing. Here are just a couple of examples:
Little Red Lighthouse swim, best time: 1:07 for a 7.8 mile swim!
Manhattan Island Marathon Swim, best time 5:45 for a 28 mile swim. Heck you have to finish in 10 hours.
And then from here: 47-year old Slovenian ...He also broke the world record for non-stop swimming when he covered 313 miles of the Danube in just 84 hours in 2001. That's an average of 3.7 miles an hour.
I can see that the tides and water flow would help, but still I have seen a lot of averages of 3-4+ miles an hour. Those would be close to 1500 WR times in a pool. How can people sustain such speeds for so long? What am I missing here because I'd like to be able to do those kinds of speed.
