Jamie Patrick - 90-mile Lake Michigan swim

@Jamie just announced he will attempt to swim 90 miles in Lake Michigan next August, from Milwaukee to Chicago.
This will be a Channel Rules swim, and he is declaring his rules ahead of time - see here:
http://www.thegreatlakeswim.com/#!the-swim/c1ktj
Good luck, Jamie!
This will be a Channel Rules swim, and he is declaring his rules ahead of time - see here:
http://www.thegreatlakeswim.com/#!the-swim/c1ktj
Good luck, Jamie!
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Please join the Lake Issyk Kul Swimming Federation on FB!
Would it be the longest lake swim ever? I don't know... probably? I can't think of a longer one.
Do we need to define it even more precisely? e.g., "longest one-way lake swim" ? What if someone jumped in a one-mile long lake and swam back-and-forth 91 times consecutively? Would that "break" a 90-mile Point A to Point B lake swim? Personally I'd say they're not comparable swims.
As you can see, the issue of "world records" in OWS gets complicated very quickly. In fact it's been discussed before on this Forum:
http://www.marathonswimmers.org/forum/discussion/152/what-constitutes-a-world-record-in-ows You'd think so, right? But actually, the only organization that maintain such records - the Guinness Book - lists the record for "longest distance ever swum without flippers in open sea" as belonging to Veljko Rogošić, who apparently swam 140 miles (225km) in 50h 10m in the Adriatic Sea (at 65 years old!) in 2006.
Of course, his average speed of 2.8mph seems impossible without a current assist - and Rogošić acknowledged benefiting from one.
And of course, "without flippers in open sea" is, as far as I know, not a swim category recognized by any recognized marathon swimming organization in the world.... hmm...
More here:
http://marathonswimmers.org/forum/discussion/681/veljko-rogosic-longest-ocean-swim-ever
So what to do about currents, given that any large body of water has them? Do we set a limit for net current assist, similar to what track does with maximum wind assist? Or is it a matter of whether the current is predictable? e.g., some California Channel Island swims (Catalina Channel, Santa Barbara Channel) benefit from currents, and some are hindered by them -- often in the same swim! In other words, they are not predictable, so these swims are considered non-current assisted.
Of course, many of us thought Cuba-Florida was a cross-current swim! So some currents may seem unpredictable... until someone figures out how to predict them :) The International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame does not recognize world records. An excerpt from an email from Steve @Munatones, chief administrator of IMSHOF and advisor to the Guinness Book: So in my opinion, the most legitimate body/organization for judging records that are not specific to any local governing body would be....
The members of this community.
evan.marathonswimmers.org
Thanks so much for taking the time to thoroughly answer my questions. Learning. Always learning. :-)
But how about that Jamie Patrick swimming 90 miles from Milwaukee to Chicago...
flippin' awesome.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ofs/lmofs/now_cur.shtml
I use this all summer long to decide which direction I'm swimming on any given day. The Lake currents swirl on my side of the lake (SE corner). I believe that they pevail southerly on the western side of the lake.
-LBJ
“Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.” - Oscar Wilde
Are these included as standard equipment because this is what I'll be wearing from now on.
Also, there are definitely currents in the Great Lakes, but they are inconsistent, so they may work for you or against you. I would just call them "lake swims", rather than ocean or river swims which have different current and tide effects.
Cheers, Rob
Cheers, Rob
www.darren-miller.com Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania U.S.A.