Why swim distance swim workouts???

Hey, what about that Canadian woman who only swims open water doing butterfly? She'd need this training for sure, but it is unlikely anyone else would. I can't think of her name off-hand. She did Catalina Channel butterfly; can you imagine? Donna The womens name was Vicki Keith. She is the first to ever cross all of the five Great Lakes and did them in a 2 month period. She was the first one to swim butterfly across the English Channel and has the World Record as the Greatest Distance Butterflyer (Male or Female) ever at 80.2km. Many years ago after the 1983 Short Course Nationals I saw these two twins at the Hall of Fame a couple of days after the Nationals were over. They were boasting that they were the best flyers in the World. I had never heard of these guys and at that time the names Craigh Beardsley and Mary T Meager were considered that status. I ran into Tim McKee an ex olympian swimmer and asked if he ever heard of these guys. At the time he was a Life Guard for the City of Fort Lauderdale and he told me YES. That they recently swam 10 miles in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast there last summer and they were going to attempt to swim the English Channel all fly. These guys were pretty well known around the area. The names of these twins were James and Jonathan di Donato. They were known as the di Donato brothers and they never swam there workouts in a pool but would prefer to swim them out in the ocean. They would sometimes swim fly for over 4 hours in the ocean. At the time this was the first I had ever heard of anybody attemping this and they said they were the first ones to break ground so to speak on these kind of endeavors. They were at the ISHOF for some press and pictures because at that time there feat was recognized in the Guiness Book of Record Setters. I guess they failed in there attempt to swim the English Channel because I looked them up on the CSA website and did not see there names as finishers of the Channel. But they did set the World Record in the late 1980's swimming 40.6 miles of butterfly in the ocean. These guys were written up in Swim Swim magazine in the early 1980's along with Stella Taylor and as a farily new swimmer to masters I was just amazed at what these swimmers were doing. Stella Taylor set the record at 53 years old for swimming distance in a pool that has since been broken. She attempted to swim from the Bahamas to Florida but did not make it. She died in 2003 at the age of 71. As I went to CSA page I noticed a lot of names of masters swimmers , USMS forum members and Olympians. The #'s 624, 500, 337, 346, 275, 178, 603, and 470 are very familar names you will recognize. www.penguinscanfly.ca/index.cfm en.wikipedia.org/.../Vicki_Keith www.soloswims.com/CSA-E-F.htm

Hey, what about that Canadian woman who only swims open water doing butterfly? She'd need this training for sure, but it is unlikely anyone else would. I can't think of her name off-hand. She did Catalina Channel butterfly; can you imagine? Donna The womens name was Vicki Keith. She is the first to ever cross all of the five Great Lakes and did them in a 2 month period. She was the first one to swim butterfly across the English Channel and has the World Record as the Greatest Distance Butterflyer (Male or Female) ever at 80.2km. Many years ago after the 1983 Short Course Nationals I saw these two twins at the Hall of Fame a couple of days after the Nationals were over. They were boasting that they were the best flyers in the World. I had never heard of these guys and at that time the names Craigh Beardsley and Mary T Meager were considered that status. I ran into Tim McKee an ex olympian swimmer and asked if he ever heard of these guys. At the time he was a Life Guard for the City of Fort Lauderdale and he told me YES. That they recently swam 10 miles in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast there last summer and they were going to attempt to swim the English Channel all fly. These guys were pretty well known around the area. The names of these twins were James and Jonathan di Donato. They were known as the di Donato brothers and they never swam there workouts in a pool but would prefer to swim them out in the ocean. They would sometimes swim fly for over 4 hours in the ocean. At the time this was the first I had ever heard of anybody attemping this and they said they were the first ones to break ground so to speak on these kind of endeavors. They were at the ISHOF for some press and pictures because at that time there feat was recognized in the Guiness Book of Record Setters. I guess they failed in there attempt to swim the English Channel because I looked them up on the CSA website and did not see there names as finishers of the Channel. But they did set the World Record in the late 1980's swimming 40.6 miles of butterfly in the ocean. These guys were written up in Swim Swim magazine in the early 1980's along with Stella Taylor and as a farily new swimmer to masters I was just amazed at what these swimmers were doing. Stella Taylor set the record at 53 years old for swimming distance in a pool that has since been broken. She attempted to swim from the Bahamas to Florida but did not make it. She died in 2003 at the age of 71. As I went to CSA page I noticed a lot of names of masters swimmers , USMS forum members and Olympians. The #'s 624, 500, 337, 346, 275, 178, 603, and 470 are very familar names you will recognize. www.penguinscanfly.ca/index.cfm en.wikipedia.org/.../Vicki_Keith www.soloswims.com/CSA-E-F.htm