Keep Calm and Swim to France
Keep Calm and Swim to France

Author: Mark Ransom

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2018-07-23

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9781719209922

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Swimming across the English Channel is regarded as one of the world's toughest endurance challenges. During a night out with friends, Mark Ransom made a drunken pact with one of them that they would swim the English Channel the following year. At the time he had no idea just what this was going to entail and it proved to be the toughest year of his life. This is a blow by blow account of Mark's journey throughout that year where he had to organise and train for this monumental event. He soon realised that this was not just about the challenge of swimming the English Channel but was also about overcoming many personal challenges and confronting his inner demons along the way. Mark talks openly about his low moments when he wanted to give up altogether and also his high points and the comical situations he found himself in. From the intimate details of a child's beginnings to a man's fears and troubles, Mark's story is so captivating and honest. Mark discloses his innermost thoughts and feelings including those he experienced during the swim itself. Following on from his successful solo swim Mark returned to the Channel a few years later to organise two relay teams to race to France. The final part of the book details the organisation of this challenge and finishes with an account of the race itself. Mark Ransom's book aims to entertain, inform and inspire. This is as close as you can get to experiencing an English Channel Swim without actually doing it!

Swimming to Antarctica
Swimming to Antarctica

Author: Lynne Cox

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2009-09-09

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0307547876

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this extraordinary book, the world’s most extraordinary distance swimmer writes about her emotional and spiritual need to swim and about the almost mystical act of swimming itself. Lynne Cox trained hard from age nine, working with an Olympic coach, swimming five to twelve miles each day in the Pacific. At age eleven, she swam even when hail made the water “like cold tapioca pudding” and was told she would one day swim the English Channel. Four years later—not yet out of high school—she broke the men’s and women’s world records for the Channel swim. In 1987, she swam the Bering Strait from America to the Soviet Union—a feat that, according to Gorbachev, helped diminish tensions between Russia and the United States. Lynne Cox’s relationship with the water is almost mystical: she describes swimming as flying, and remembers swimming at night through flocks of flying fish the size of mockingbirds, remembers being escorted by a pod of dolphins that came to her off New Zealand. She has a photographic memory of her swims. She tells us how she conceived of, planned, and trained for each, and re-creates for us the experience of swimming (almost) unswimmable bodies of water, including her most recent astonishing one-mile swim to Antarctica in thirty-two-degree water without a wet suit. She tells us how, through training and by taking advantage of her naturally plump physique, she is able to create more heat in the water than she loses. Lynne Cox has swum the Mediterranean, the three-mile Strait of Messina, under the ancient bridges of Kunning Lake, below the old summer palace of the emperor of China in Beijing. Breaking records no longer interests her. She writes about the ways in which these swims instead became vehicles for personal goals, how she sees herself as the lone swimmer among the waves, pitting her courage against the odds, drawn to dangerous places and treacherous waters that, since ancient times, have challenged sailors in ships.

Diary of a Super Swimmer
Diary of a Super Swimmer

Author: Shamini Flint

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

Published: 2014-01-02

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 174343670X

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Marcus Atkinson is a super swimmer (not!). But his dad is convinced that Marcus has magic in his arms and legs. Marcus is a maths whiz who is not good at sport. His dad is a self-help author who thinks Marcus can achieve anything he sets his mind to, with hilarious results. In illustrated diary format, Marcus's gentle, satiric humour and comic drawings will have readers laughing out loud while learning a surprising amount about sport.

Insiders' Guide® to North Carolina's Outer Banks
Insiders' Guide® to North Carolina's Outer Banks

Author: Karen Bachman

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2012-01-10

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0762775815

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Insiders' Guide to North Carolina's Outer Banks is the essential source for in-depth travel and relocation information. Written by a local (and true insider), it offers a personal and practical perspective of this beautiful coastal land and its surrounding environs. Published annually, this guide is fully revised and updated and features a new interior layout and a new cover treatment.

The Night Swimmer
The Night Swimmer

Author: Matt Bondurant

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-08-07

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1451625308

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A suspenseful novel about a young American couple--Elly and Fred--who win a pub on the southern most tip of Ireland and discover the body of an eccentric villager Elly knows floating in the sea. Was it a suicide?

Triathlete's Edge
Triathlete's Edge

Author: Marc Evans

Publisher: Human Kinetics

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9780736046534

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Triathlon coaching pioneer Marc Evans has trained pros and age-group triathletes for over 20 years, and he knows what it takes to be successful. His system is divided into phases that can be customized to fit various training seasons and racing objectives. The base preparation phase sets training goals and develops endurance, strength, flexibility, and technique. Base transition adds new workouts, introduces transitions, and increases the volume and intensity of your training. The third phase, race preparation, includes specific swim, bike, and run workouts tailored to your fitness level that will condition your body to put it all together in the approaching competition. The final phase, peak transition, prepares you physiologically and psychologically in a taper that will sharpen your body to peak on race day. Triathlete's Edge contains much more than training programs. Complete assessment tools allow you to evaluate mobility, posture, gait, strength, and flexibility to make improvements through event-specific exercise drills. Swim instruction covers stroke improvement and hand entry techniques and offers tips on mass starts and exits. You'll improve your position on the bike, perfect your posture, and study cadence and gearing on the bike. The running section will sharpen your efficiency with drills for arm movement, foot strike, and running stride. Evans reveals the professional training secrets that have defined him as the triathlon training authority. Mark Allen, Karen Smyers, Mike Pigg, and Sue Latshaw are just a few of the legendary triathletes who have benefited from Evans' mentoring. Now you can incorporate his knowledge in your own training program to give yourself the triathlete's edge

Black and Blue
Black and Blue

Author: Tom Adelman

Publisher: Hachette+ORM

Published: 2010-05-30

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 0316075434

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Baltimore 1966. Suffering through a summer of heated racial animosity, baseball fans look hungrily to the Orioles to bring new respect to their once-great city. Their young team of no-name kids and promising prospects appears to have been strengthened by the recent addition of veteran slugger Frank Robinson - but the former National League MVP is bad news (it is rumored), washed up and unreliable. To lay these rumors to rest, Robby must play harder than he's ever played before. In his first year in the league, against unfamiliar pitchers in new ballparks, he resoundingly proves his worth -- to his city, his team, and himself -- by delivering a Triple Crown performance. Aided by a hilarious and memorable cast of characters -- the gentlemanly southerner Brooks Robinson and the wickedly inventive prankster Moe Drabowsky, a pitching staff of unknown kids like Jim Palmer and Dave McNally, and a gargantuan yet nimble fielder called Boog" -- Frank Robinson delivers his new team to its first World Series. But before they take it all, the Orioles must unseat the reigning champion Los Angeles Dodgers. With America's cities in mounting turmoil, Los Angeles seems like another world altogether, a sunny land of surfers and movie stars. Comfortably dwelling in this higher plane is pitching ace Sandy Koufax, arguably the greatest lefthander in baseball history, behind whom the Dodgers have won two of the previous three World Series, replacing the Yankees as the sport's dominant team. Though battling agonizing arthritis throughout the season, the godlike Koufax has nonetheless persevered to win twenty-seven games in 1966, a personal best. Few outside Baltimore give the Orioles more than a fighting chance against such series veterans as Koufax, Don Drysdale, Maury Wills, Tommy Davis, and the rest. Experts are betting that the Dodgers can sweep it in four. "What transpires instead astonishes the nation, as the greatest pitching performance in World Series history is capped by a redemption beyond imagining." -- Book Jacket