Fresh off her historic Havana-to-Miami swim, 64-year-old Diana Nyad already has her sights set on her next aquatic challenge: Swimming for 48 straight hours in a New York City pool. NBC News with the details of the fundraising event:
Nyad plans to swim in a pool set up in Manhattan’s Herald Square for 48 straight hours to raise money for Hurricane Sandy relief. She’ll do it Oct. 8-10, around the one-year anniversary of the storm hitting the Northeast. Her Cuba-to-Florida swim took about 53 hours. “After the jellyfish and the ocean, that will be a piece of cake,” Nyad said on Today. “I’m going to invite all kinds of notable New Yorkers to swim next to me.”
The swim, dubbed the “Nyad 48”, was originally scheduled for May, and is expected to take place in a portable 50-meter pool. If you’re wondering, the 110-mile trip between Miami and Havana, which she covered in 52 hours and 54 minutes, is the equivalent of about 3,540 lengths in a 50m pool. (I was all set to make a joke here about the mind-numbing tedium of lap swimming until I remembered that I’d struggle to complete a Havana-to-400m-from-Havana swim, with or without a shark cage.)
After NYC, Nyad—who says she’s “through with the ocean“—plans to take her pool to Boston to raise money for the victims of the marathon bombing, and later to Moore, Okla., to raise money for the victims of a tornado that ripped through town last May.
