I swam the Manhattan 20 Bridges swim! This swim is a 28.5 mile lap around Manhattan, New York, and was my final leg of the Triple Crown! The swim is intentionally timed to be assisted by the 3 rivers that wrap the island, so it only took me 7hr33min03sec to finish.

For our swim, we started at Mill Rock, which is just north of Roosevelt Island in the East River. Then we swam counterclockwise: up the Harlem River, then down the Hudson, then back up the East River. In the water, I could really feel the difference between the various rivers, the East River felt the chilliest, the Harlem River was in the middle, and the Hudson was easily the warmest.

On the Hudon River, we whipped past the west side of the city. I saw a flew buoys flying by quickly, and realized that the buoys were not moving: I was.

This swim was different from a lot of the other marathon swims that I’ve done, in that it was a group swim. The organizing group, New York Open Water, arranged for each of the 16 of us swimmers to have a boat, observer, and kayaker. A group swim means it’s possible to more directly compare swim times compared to the others that day, I’m pleased to report I had the fastest time that day. I finished second, but that’s because we started in waves and the first swimmer to finish started about 10 minutes before me.

There were a ton of familiar faces in this swim! Fellow South Ender Melissa Blaustein also swam and she brought a small possee of South Enders as her crew, in addition to the 3 other South Enders who were part of other swimmer’s crew.

Glad to have knocked this one off my bucket list! I tagged a few things with #MargsTakesManhattan on Twitter and Instagram too.