She did it

I swam two kilometres a couple of weeks ago, pathetic.  Diana Nyad just swam 110 miles!!!!!!!!!!!!  This amazing 64-year-old swam from Cuba to Miami!  What an accomplishment.  Google her and you will see what a heroine she is to me.  Here's the coverage: 

"KEY WEST, Fla. — Looking dazed and sunburned, U.S. endurance swimmer Diana Nyad walked on to the shore Monday, becoming the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the help of a shark cage.

Nyad swam up to the beach just before 2 p.m. EDT, about 53 hours after she began her journey in Havana on Saturday. As she approached, spectators waded into waist-high water and surrounded her, taking pictures and cheering her on.

“I have three messages. One is, we should never, ever give up. Two is, you’re never too old to chase your dream. Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it is a team,” she said on the beach.

“I have to say, I’m a little bit out of it right now,” Nyad said. She gestured toward her swollen lips, and simply said “seawater.”

Her team said she had been slurring her words while she was out in the water. She was on a stretcher on the beach and received an IV before she was taken by ambulance to a hospital.

“I just wanted to get out of the sun,” she said.

It was Nyad’s fifth try to complete the approximately 110-mile swim. She tried three times in 2011 and 2012. Her first attempt was in 1978.

“It’s historic, marvelous,” said Jose Miguel Diaz Escrich, the Hemingway Marina commodore who helped organize the Cuba side of Nyad’s multiple attempts.

“I always thought she could do it given her internal energy, her mental and physical strength, her will of iron,” said Diaz Escrich, whom Nyad has described as a longtime friend.

“More than the athletic feat, she wants to send a message of peace, love, friendship and happiness … between the people of the United States and Cuba,” he said.

Nyad’s journey began Saturday morning when she jumped from the seawall of the Hemingway Marina into the warm waters off Havana. She stopped from time to time for nourishment, but she never left the water.

The support team accompanying her had equipment that generated a faint electrical field around her, which was designed to keep sharks at bay. A boat also dragged a line in the water to help keep her on course.

Sumaya Haddin, of Miami, had been tracking Nyad’s swim before her family’s trip to Key West this weekend. She was surprised to see Nyad’s flotilla from a parasail off Smather’s Beach on Monday morning."
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I am in complete awe of this woman!