Samantha Farrow (@sfarrow93) broke the women’s record swimming 72.8 km across Lake Geneva between France and Switzerland in 22 hours 48 minutes in August 2024. The 31-year-old broke 40-year-old Helen Conway‘s 2017 record of 25 hours 37 minutes.

How does one swim fast for 22 hours straight?

Farrow trained mostly in a pool for her Lake Geneva crossing. The mother of two children explained, “I started properly in December and doing 30-40 km a week with a mix of sprint, threshold, and endurance sets. I train alone because there are not many long distance swimmers local to myself so my training is quite a lonely program. I have to time my rest weeks with school holidays so I had quite a long taper in to Geneva as it was summer 6-week school holidays in the UK.”

Farrow was able to do her mega distance training in a pool because she has a lot of Big Swim Memory that served as a large physical and mental reservoir for her all-day and all-night crossing. She was part of a 13-way crossing of Lake Windermere with for the SwimYourSwim team with Tracy Mistry, Claire Poole, and Caroline Saxon after their 13-way crossing of Lake Windermere that took a total of 77 hours 39 minutes to swim a total of 219.7 km in September 2022. She also completed the Scottish Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming that includes marathon swims across Loch Awe, Loch Lomond, and Loch Ness in Scotland.

“I wanted to see what I could do,” explained the new Queen of Lac Léman afterwards. 

© 2024 Daily News of Open Water Swimming

“to educate, enthuse, and entertain all those who venture beyond the shoreline“

A World Open Water Swimming Federation project.