{"id":68834,"date":"2016-10-07T23:31:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-08T05:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-woman-completes-82-mile-swim-of-lake-powell\/"},"modified":"2016-10-08T05:31:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T05:31:22","slug":"colorado-woman-completes-82-mile-swim-of-lake-powell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-woman-completes-82-mile-swim-of-lake-powell\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado woman completes 82-mile swim of Lake Powell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sarah
Sarah Thomas swims last mile of her nearly 82-mile swim across Lake Powell along the Arizona-Utah border on Oct. 6.<\/span>Associated Press<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t concerned about the distance. I had trained and worked for that part,\u201d Sarah Thomas told The Associated Press a day after completing what is believed to be a record-breaking marathon swim. \u201cBut how do you stay awake that long?\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas, who was still in bed after sleeping nearly 12 hours, said she credits the \u201clittle bit of caffeine\u201d in the liquid carbohydrate and electrolyte mixtures she consumed every 30 minutes during the swim.<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old from Conifer didn\u2019t stop swimming or get out of the water the entire time, allowing her to qualify for a possible record for an unassisted marathon swim.<\/p>\n

She had a team of 13 people with her who traveled by house boat and gave her food every half hour in the form of a water bottle tied to a cord.<\/p>\n

Thomas swam mostly freestyle but occasionally switched to backstroke or breaststroke to loosen up. The grueling swim made it difficult to walk afterward because her feet and body were so shaky.<\/p>\n

Exhausted and hungry, her first post-swim meal wasn\u2019t until breakfast the next day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis morning my husband tracked me down an omelet and some hash browns. I have to say it was the best food I\u2019ve had in my life,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n

Thomas had done six major marathon swims since 2010, including efforts in Lake Tahoe and the English Channel. But none were as long as her journey on Lake Powell along the Arizona-Utah border.<\/p>\n

She initially planned to swim in the ocean off the California coast but decided a lake might be better and began a search for the right one.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are not a lot of lakes that are big enough and logistically make sense,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She chose Lake Powell for its amenities and proximity to Colorado.<\/p>\n

Her training consisted of at least 25 hours of swimming each week since April. At the peak, she averaged 50 miles a week.<\/p>\n

She said she was able to commit the time to training partly due to being able to work from home in her job as a hospital recruiter.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco-based Marathon Swimmers Federation will have the task of verifying Thomas\u2019 swim.<\/p>\n

Co-founder Evan Morrison said two independent observers, who are well-known marathon swimmers as well, were present to see her swim.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have the knowledge and the credibility. It\u2019s not just Sarah asking her brother to come out and say \u2018Oh yeah, my sister did this,\u2019\u201d Morrison said.<\/p>\n

A federation panel comprised of 16 members from the U.S. and other countries will review logs, GPS tracking data and any photos and video.<\/p>\n

Morrison expects everything to pass muster, calling Thomas one of the most \u201cwell-respected and well-known swimmers\u201d in recent years.<\/p>\n

The current record holder for an unassisted solo, open-water swim is Australian swimmer Chloe McCardel. In October 2014, she swam 77.3 miles in the ocean in the Bahamas in a little over 41 hours.<\/p>\n

Thomas\u2019 swim was in a body of water with no current impacting her.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, in one sense it\u2019s a different category,\u201d Morrison said. \u201cIn another sense, 81.8 miles is longer than 77.3. If ratified, it will be the longest unassisted solo swim in any body of water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas has no plans for more marathons until the Cook Strait in 2018. In the meantime, she plans to just keep swimming. Distance, not speed, has always been the draw for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI may not be the fastest but I\u2019m happy to keep going and going,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas swims last mile of her nearly 82-mile swim across Lake Powell along the Arizona-Utah border on Oct. 6.Associated Press \u201cI wasn\u2019t concerned about the distance. I had trained and worked for that part,\u201d Sarah Thomas told The Associated Press a day after completing what is believed to be a record-breaking marathon swim. \u201cBut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3586,120,514],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-arizona","tag-colorado","tag-swimming"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68834"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}