Guy swimming length of Amazon--daily average 48 miles!

I don't know much about swimming, but isn't he going down stream with the current? I would guess it would help out, but 50 miles a day is a lot.

The pirahna will get him.

or the snakes

Amoebic dystentery. I hope to heck he has some medics with him.

Yikes! When I was a life guard ooh so many years ago I thought I was doing well at a mile a day :o)

John Erickson wrote:

Did anyone see this?

Martin Strel, a legendary Guinness record marathon swimmer starts his swim on Feb 1st 2007 & plans on doing 3,375 miles of the Amazon in 70 days.

This averages out to close to 50 miles a day!

Is this possible???

Web site:

http://www.amazonswim.com/

What about the huge waterfalls, how does one swim those.

But seriously. F-that.

Who knows what's in there.

He won't make it

Snakes & pirahna are not the main concern---its a 'needle fish' that gets in ya & starts munchin!

My thing about the trip is I do not think he can go that far a day time wise---dosen't swimming take about 4 times as long as running for the same distance?

Wouldn't he need to be in the water for over 20 hours a day???

The amazon varies in width a lot so there is no steady current speed. at the narrow places it's up to 5 miles per hour so that 50 miles should be just floating for 10 hours trying not to get eaten by the nasty things that live there. where it slows to 1 mph he's going to have to do some work himself and swim. average in rainy season (he'll be at the start of that) is about 3mph. if he can swim to add another 2 mph - he'll do his 50 miles in 10 hours.

"Despite the low slope of the Amazon, the river currents can be surprisingly strong. In the lower Amazon (with the lowest slope), current speeds range from 0.5-1.0 meters per second at low water, and twice that at flood stage. In localized areas, current speeds can reach as high as 3 meters (9.8 feet) per second."

That works out to 1.1-2.2 mph in the slowest part of the river at low water, and up to 6.7mph in other parts of the river. He may average over 40 miles/day just from floating.

"piranha"

He already has swum the Yangtze and Mississippi at the same rate of speed.

I heard Dean Karnazes was planning to do this, but this guy is beating him to it. :)

(Think Pam Reed and the 300 miles or Sam Thompson and 50 in 50 in 50.)

Can some biologist post something about the things that can kill him? What about alligators?

I went to S. Africa over christmas and heard story after story of people getting killed by Hippos. Granted they don't have those in the Amazon but I assumed there is something that could kill you if you swam 1 mile much less thousands.

He's probably a lot more likely to die due to a sickness from something in the water than from an animal attack. He'll no doubt have a boat in the water with him, which will scare off fish, crocs, and the freshwater attack-dolphins that ply the Amazon.

"freshwater attack-dolphins???" is this an Al Qaeda or a CIA thing?Crocs/caimans aren't such a major thing in the Amazon-the Nile would be a very different matter.

Go Badgers wrote:

He's probably a lot more likely to die due to a sickness from something in the water than from an animal attack. He'll no doubt have a boat in the water with him, which will scare off fish, crocs, and the freshwater attack-dolphins that ply the Amazon.

Go Badgers wrote:

He's probably a lot more likely to die due to a sickness from something in the water than from an animal attack. He'll no doubt have a boat in the water with him, which will scare off fish, crocs, and the freshwater attack-dolphins that ply the Amazon.

Fresh Water Dolphins do not attack man

Schooling: Although rarely seen in groups of four on more, Inia(fresh water dolphin) is most often observed as a solitary individual. Loose aggregations have been observed at feeding areas. Most groups of two are apparently mothers and calves. In the survey done by Magnusson et al. (1980), from Manaus to Tefé 81% of the sightings were of a single individual and only 3% of sightings were of four or more animals. Of 407 sightings we made from Manaus to Tabatinga, 69% were of one animal and 3% were of four or more. In surveys from Leticia, 58% of sightings were of one animal while 14% were of four or more (Best and da Silva, 1989). Although more often a solitary feeder, Inia sometimes form loose groups that fish in a coordinated fashion to herd and attack shoals. These groups may also include the tucuxi (Sotalia fiuviatilis) and the giant otter Pteronura brasiliensis. Similar group relationships can develop with man in his fishing canoe. Fishermen, on their part, use dolphins to localise shoals of fish and the dolphins use the human fishing operation as a means of disrupting the shoal to their advantage (Best and da Silva, 1989).

I thought I read somewhere that swimming 1 mile is the same as running 3 in term of aerobic capacity, etc etc. granted the bodily impact is about one tenth, but is swimming really 3 times more work than running?

Chicago-Dave wrote:

I thought I read somewhere that swimming 1 mile is the same as running 3 in term of aerobic capacity, etc etc. granted the bodily impact is about one tenth, but is swimming really 3 times more work than running?

Not if you point your nose downstream.