Rising Tides

Swimming the Oceans Seven Challenge and the Tides of Life

De: Mariel Hawley

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

This book is a testimony to what the tide has generated in my life. It is a way to “save,” in a matter of speaking, the ocean patterns as part of my life, currents and countercurrents, the storms, and, above all, the transformation and continuous flow.

Rising Tides is not only the recount of each of the Oceans Seven Challenge swims: the English Channel, the Catalina Channel, the Gibraltar Strait, the Ka-iwi Channel, The North Channel, the Tsugaru Strait and the Cook Strait, but also the recount of many other swims I have done in my life, emotional swims through grieveing moments, through sadness and many others that will relate to your own life.

The testimony of the tides in my life allow me to come back, relive and remember them. I find this important because the mind is like an ocean of infinite waves and perpetual motion, but even in its greatness, it doesn’t always remember its patterns and its own tides. When that moment comes in my life, Rising Tides will be here to help remember and allow me to relive each memory. In the meantime, I hope Rising Tides travels the world and reaches you, keeping you company through whatever you are doing in your life. I hope it inspires you to be less of yourself and more of the sky, stardust, light, and, in essence, more of that which makes you happy and allows you to reach for your dreams.

Inspirational!

In this book, Mariel Hawley, one of the world’s greatest marathon swimmers, shares with the reader, her swimming adventures. At the time she wrote this book, she was the only Mexican, the first Latin American woman, and the sixth person in the world to swim a two-way route across the English Channel – from England to France and back to England continuously. She was the first Mexican woman to achieve the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming (Triple Corona). She completed the Oceans Seven, which involves crossing the 33.5 km English Channel, the 32.3 km Catalina Channel, the 14.9 km Strait of Gibraltar, the 42 km Molokai Channel, the 19.5 km Tsugaru Channel, the 35 km North Channel, and the 23 km Cook Strait. In this book, she demonstrates the point that although endurance athletes who undertake these unthinkable journeys have to dedicate basically their entire lives to their sport, “real life“ goes on at the same time and greatly impacts these athletes, the same way it does everybody else. She shares very specific and devastating examples of the loss of her father and the long-term illness and eventual death of her first husband while she was training. She talks about the impact of COVID-19 on her training and her life. The time jumping back-and-forth to the period of the pandemic does get a bit confusing at times. Overall, a very inspiring book for anyone. A must read for open water swimmers.