Douglas McConnell Talks About Virtual Teamwork
Courtesy of Douglas McConnell, Vissant Capital Corporation, Illinois.
A Long Swim has raised US$500,000 for ALS research, dedicated to the groundbreaking and collaborative research at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago, one of the top ALS research laboratories in the world.
Douglas McConnell announced the new realities of A Long Swim. McConnell explains, “In addition to our marathon swims, we have raised money with our series of lake swims. Those lake swims are held in the lakes and are intentionally structured to appeal to triathletes, and have become pretty popular as they generate more proceeds for the charity and ALS research.
With COVID, the plans have changed. It won’t be safe to hold at least one of the swims, so our plan is to host a Virtual Race. I’m sure that all of your training partners are seeing similar things. We offer the choice of swimming (2.4 miles, 1.2 miles or 750 meters), cycling (distances that would equate to the time ranges that the swimmers would expect) or running (ditto), to be completed any time during June. If the swimmers can’t find open water, they can use long course or short course pools, or even being tethered in a backyard pool.
Lots of choices; all you can eat for US$35, with incentives for recruiting other swimmers, a digital goody bag. Frankly, it is a good opportunity to have a challenge and some fun, during a time when fun can be a little hard to find.
Obviously, we are throwing a lot against the wall here, as it is testing our creativity to raise money for ALS research. Perhaps best of all, we are suddenly not restricted to swimmers who are just in the Chicago area. There are lots of people around the country who are missing out on events for which they have trained, and others who are very passionate about ALS – we want to be able to include them, too.“
Learn about how open water swimming is the ultimate team sport via McConnell’s www.ALongSwim.org.
McConnell’s latest TEDx Talk, Tides, Teams and Transactions, is below:
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