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!

Young Woman and the Sea
Young Woman and the Sea

Author: Glenn Stout

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 0618858687

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THE PERFECT MILE meet SWIMMING TO ANTARCTICA in this compelling tale of how nineteen-year-old Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel.

The Crossing
The Crossing

Author: Kathy Watson

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1472236149

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*Now a Major Film* On the night of 24 August 1875 Matthew Webb, a 27-year-old British Navy captain, launched himself into the English Channel at Dover. Twenty-one hours and 45 minutes later he became the first man to swim the English Channel. In this acclaimed biography, Kathy Watson shows how Captain Webb was instrumental in bringing the sport of swimming into the modern era. It is also a study of the Victorian drive to push back the boundaries of endurance. In THE CROSSING, Watson uses this great British eccentric's extraordinary life as a springboard to explore themes of obsession and failure and the emerging force of the media, and swimming's place in our psyche.

Swimming in the Sink
Swimming in the Sink

Author: Lynne Cox

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2017-06-13

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1101971835

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In this stunning memoir of life after loss, the open-water swimming legend and bestselling author tells of facing the one challenge that no amount of training could prepare her for. A celebrated athlete who set swimming records around the world, Lynne Cox achieved astonishing feats of strength and endurance. She was the first to swim the frigid waters of the Bering Strait, the Strait of Magellan, and the coast of Antarctica, and she was the fastest to swim the English Channel. But it is a different kind of struggle that pushes her to the brink. In a short period of time, Lynne loses her father, and then her mother, and then Cody, her beloved Labrador retriever. Soon after, Lynne herself is diagnosed with a life-threatening heart condition that leaves her unable to swim and barely able to walk. But against all odds, and with the support of her friends and family, Lynne begins the slow pull toward recovery, reaching always for the open waters that give her the freedom and mastery that mean everything to her. What follows is a beautifully poignant meditation on loss and an exhilarating celebration of life as, to Lynne’s surprise, she begins to find, within the unfamiliar space of vulnerability, the greatest treasures—like falling in love.

Godspeed
Godspeed

Author: Casey Legler

Publisher: Atria Books

Published: 2019-10-15

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1501135767

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“A memoir for our times.” —Michael Stipe “A coming-of-age drama captured through poetic prose and convincing honesty.” —Kirkus Reviews “I swim for every chance to get wasted—after every meet, every weekend, every travel trip. This is what I look forward to and what I tell no one: the burn of it down my throat, to my soul curled up in my lungs, the sharpest pain all over it—it seizes and stretches, becoming alive again, and is the only thing that makes sense.” At fifteen, Casey Legler is already one of the fastest swimmers in the world. She is also an alcoholic, isolated from her family, and incapable of forming lasting connections with those around her. Driven to compete at the highest levels, sent far away from home to train with the best coaches and teams, she finds herself increasingly alone and alienated, living a life of cheap hotels and chlorine-worn skin, anonymous sexual encounters and escalating drug use. Even at what should be a moment of triumph—competing at age sixteen in the 1996 Olympics—she is an outsider looking in, procuring drugs for Olympians she hardly knows, and losing her race after setting a new world record in the qualifying heats. After submitting to years of numbing training in France and the United States, Casey can see no way out of the sinister loneliness that has swelled and festered inside her. Yet wondrously, when it is almost too late, she discovers a small light within herself, and senses a point of calm within the whirlwind of her life. In searing, evocative, visceral prose, Casey gives language to loneliness in this startling story of survival, defiance, and of the embers that still burn when everything else in us goes dark.

Modern Sports around the World
Modern Sports around the World

Author: David Asa Schwartz

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2021-06-14

Total Pages: 515

ISBN-13:

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Modern Sports around the World focuses on the history, geography, sociology, economics, and technological advancements of 50 sports played from India to Ireland. Sports have become an international spectacle that influences nations' foreign policy, world economies, and regional morale. Hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake as governments and multinational corporations rush to make sure they have a place at the table. And yet, sports come from humble beginnings. We are fascinated by who can run the fastest, lift the most weight, jump the highest, swim the farthest, and act with the most precision. The history of sports is the history of the world. Modern Sports around the World examines 50 of the world's most popular sports. Each chapter features one sport and details that sport's origins, global migration, economic forces, media influences, political environment, pop-culture inspirations, scandalous moments, and key individuals. Sports history is a tapestry of sociological variables; Modern Sports around the World weaves them together to create a unique history book that explains not only where humanity has been, but where it might be going.

Swimming in the Dark
Swimming in the Dark

Author: Tomasz Jedrowski

Publisher: HarperCollins

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0062890026

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Named A Best Book of 2020 by NPR! “Imagine Call Me By Your Name set in Communist Poland and you'll get a sense of Jedrowski's moving debut about a consuming love affair amidst a country being torn apart.” — O, The Oprah Magazine “Captivating both for its shimmering surfaces and its terrifying depths. Tomasz Jedrowski is a remarkable writer.” — Justin Torres, bestselling author of We the Animals Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of Communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide—a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of André Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst. When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful, natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive Communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable. Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly coveted government position. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse. Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart, Swimming in the Dark is a potent blend of romance, postwar politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and intense, Tomasz Jedrowski’s indelible and thought-provoking literary debut explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.

Find a Way
Find a Way

Author: Diana Nyad

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2016-06-28

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0804172919

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NOW THE NETFLIX FILM NYAD, STARRING ANNETTE BENING AND JODIE FOSTER Hillary Clinton said that Find a Way would stay with her through the general election: “When you’re facing big challenges in your life, you can think about Diana Nyad getting attacked by the lethal sting of box jellyfishes. And nearly anything else seems doable in comparison.” When Diana Nyad arrived on the shore of Key West after fifty-three hours of grueling swimming across an epic ocean, she not only set a world record—becoming the first person to swim the shark-infested waters between Cuba and Florida with no cage for protection—she also succeeded in fulfilling a dream she first chased at age twenty-eight and at long last achieved when she was sixty-four. Now, in a riveting memoir, Diana shares a spirited account of what it takes to face one’s fears, engage one’s passions, and never ever give up. For no matter what life may throw at you, or how many times you may have experienced defeat, it is always possible—as long as you commit to living life to the nth degree, no regrets—to “find a way."

Provence Glory
Provence Glory

Author: François Simon

Publisher: Assouline Publishing

Published: 2021-03-01

Total Pages: 5

ISBN-13: 1614289824

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From cities to quaint towns and everything in between, Provence has something for everyone. Swim in the crystal clear waters of the Calanque de Sormiou in Marseille. Drive with the top down through fields of lavender in Valensole. Experience a bite of just-out-of-the-oven fougasse, a Provençal classic. Stand in awe of the beautiful, white Camargue horses native to the area. Located in the South of France, Provence is uniquely positioned to be a cultural blend of the Mediterranean. Roman landmarks still prevail from the 1st century AD alongside châteaus from medieval times—a varied legacy brightened by the indigenous mimosas and cypresses.