A woman who’s considered the world’s greatest cold water, long-distance swimmer is delivering a motivational lecture in central Iowa tonight. Lynne Cox broke her first swimming record at age 15 and set her most recent record two years ago — at age 46. Cox says she hopes her talk helps others to realize everyone has the potential to do great things. Cox says the speech is about going for your dreams. “We’re here one time and the things that we do in our lives have to have some kind of substance. I think my swims and the different political things I’ve done to open borders between countries has been about following those things that people don’t always understand but once you do them, they get it.” Cox, who lives in coastal California, has done some 48 record-setting swims around the world and says there’s no particular feat for which she’s most proud. She says you start with small goals and then take bigger steps. Her first goal was to swim the English Channel and at 15, she broke the men’s and women’s records for her 33-mile swim of the channel. Next, she took on larger challenges, like swimming the Cape of Good Hope, the Straits of Magellan and the Catalina Channel. In 1987, she swam the Bering Strait, the channel that forms the boundary between Alaska and Siberia, opening the U-S-Soviet border for the first time in nearly five decades. Cox set another cold-water record in 2002, after which she was greeted by a flock of penguins. She swam one-point-two miles in Antarctica in 25 minutes in 32-degree water in a bathing suit, cap and goggles, something no one else has ever attempted. Cox manages to thrive in water that’s cold enough to kill other people in just minutes, in part, due to her body being a little heavier than most female world-class athletes.Cox says her weight helps to keep her warm in the water but so does her large muscle mass that helps her to work at a high rate and create enough heat to stay warm. She’s also become acclimated to the cold water by swimming in it routinely. Cox was in Iowa City on Thursday night and is speaking tonight (Friday) at 7 P.M. at Drake University in Des Moines. The event is free. Her book is titled “Swimming to Antarctica: Tales of a Long-Distance Swimmer.”
