Good afternoon,

I’ve started running again! In practical terms this means that I spend 20 minutes per day wondering if my knees are “going”, if I will ever breathe again, etc, and my other 940 waking minutes thinking “I’m going to be doing ultra marathons soon. Definitely.” That’s one of the reasons why I was so encouraged to read this article on how great women are at extreme endurance sports, particularly swimming:

The elite men are still faster than the elite women. But at the amateur level? The middle-of-the-pack women are faster than the middle-of-the-pack men. That’s true even for the English Channel, Munatones said. “That was the first one I did, the English Channel,” he told me. “It was the easiest to compile, with 135 years of history.” (He consulted with a statistician for his pet project.) “The average female time was 33 minutes faster than the average male time,” he continued. “The average male time — that’s every successful English Channel swimmer — was a little over 13 hours. That means that the average woman finished over one mile faster than the average man.”

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/09/the-obscure-endurance-sport-women-are-quietly-dominating.html

This article also led me to the very very hardcore ultra swimmer Lynne Cox, the subject of the following quotation:

"We were able to confirm that she can maintain stable body temperature with her head out of the water and in water temperatures as low as 44 Fahrenheit [i.e. 6]," he said. "We've got one other person that we know can do that. He was an Icelander who swam ashore from an overturned boat."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/swimming-to-antarctica-12-02-2003/2/

So that’s almost certainly something I’ll be able to do soon too. I will be sure to keep you all updated.

Alex.