Lewis Pugh started his source-to-sea 507 km stage swim down the Hudson River on August 13th.
He plans to finish the Hudson Swim on September 13th in New York City where his swim will dovetail nicely with the United Nations General Assembly Week, Climate Week NYC 2023, and the UN Secretary General’s Climate Ambition Summit.
His goal of this arduous stage swim is to highlight the critical role rivers play in a habitable planet.
But he did not start stroking right away.
His swim began with a hike in a torrential rainfall. Instead of stroke-by-stroke, Pugh started step-by-step under very heavy rains.
He said, “It was an ordeal to get to the source. Every path became a river. It’s a miracle that no one sustained a serious injury. One team member twisted his knee badly and will have to go home.”
You can follow Pugh here at www.lewispughfoundation.org.
Pugh, a former Special Air Service (SAS) reservist, is accustomed to forging through thick and thin, land and water. During his selection phase to become a special force member in the British military, he had to pass the Aptitude Phase (otherwise knowns as the 4-week mountains or hills phase) held in the mountainous region in Wales among 200 potential members.
He first completed a Personal Fitness Test which consists of 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes, 60 push-ups in 2 minutes, and a 2.4 km run in 10 minutes and 30 seconds. They he completed an Annual Fitness Test that included a 13 km march in 2 hours while carrying 11 kg of equipment. Then, he marched cross-country, increasing the distance covered each day, culminating in a test known as the Endurance where he marched 64 km with full equipment before climbing up and down the 886m mountain Pen y Fan in 20 hours. By the end, he had to run 6.4 km in 30 minutes or less and swim 3.2 km in 90 minutes or less.
Little did he know back in his youth, he would be doing something similar in America down the Hudson River for the benefit of humankind.
© 2023 Daily News of Open Water Swimming
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