A Man Who Swam the Seine | Hacker News Reader

A Man Who Swam the Seine

gq.com

56 pointsColinWright22 comments

I remember reading about Ed Stafford walking the entire length of the Amazon 10+ years ago. The Amazon is the perfect exotic place to imagine adventuring and exploring- but in his travels, he's running into people all the time. It's exotic to me, but there are people living there who I'm sure find it as normal as I find my local park.

And that's what this reminds me of- I love the idea of exploring where you are.There are many things close to home that can be experienced, not just the foreign destinations I imagine from an adventure novel.

There's a great YouTube channel, 'Beau Miles' [0] with videos focusing on finding amazing places near your home:

Here's one he did on an old railway near his house: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxCghemtjjM

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm325cMiw9B15xl22_gr6Dw

Thanks for sharing, that's great! I watched the railway video and it's just what I mean- fascinating things that are too often ignored.

I have a project that got paused by grad school and kids that I hope to return to of walking all the streets of the suburb where I live in alphabetical order. I think one of the things that helped pause it is that the next street will be a seven mile walk once you factor in getting to the starting and ending points of the street.

As far as I got is at http://walkingoakpark.blogspot.com

A gentleman did something like that in NYC and a filmmaker made a documentary about it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Before_Your_Feet

Slightly different take on this - there is a dude[0] who attempts to cross countries (Wales, Norway) on foot in a straight line. His videos are highly entertaining

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoWizard

Last year there was a guy in Rotterdam who moved there and decided to get to know the city better… by running through every street! I’ve met the guy once when I was out running myself and pretty much the only thing he used was a small pocket map and a marker to track where he’d been.

Took him a while to complete all of it but it sure sounded like a cool project.

Edit: I’ve just found this: https://runallthestreets.com/resources/ turns out that there are way more people doing this.

I remember this one time I went kayaking with this hipster manly man type that had a wierd looking purse-like waterproof bag.

It was obviously a prop for him so that people would ask about it so I played my part and asked him about it.

Sure enough, he replied "that's not a purse and I went on an adventure with it on the Amazon".

So I replied "Adventure purse it is, then! What kind of adventure was that, were you in danger at any point?"

> Once he obtained all the necessary permits to swim in the river—an ordeal in itself as he’d be swimming through 360 communes, each of which required its own approval process

That says so much about life in France - the fierce independence of even the smallest bureaucracies, and the stalwart patience of the citizens dealing with them.

An amazing achievement but he has a way to go before he’s even close to Martin Strel - the Big River Man.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Strel

Wow:

> Strel swam the Amazon River, commencing on 1 February 2007, finishing 66 days later on April 7, 2007. This was a record-breaking distance of 5,268 kilometres (3,273 mi), longer than the width of the Atlantic Ocean. He had escort boats that were prepared to pour blood into the river to distract meat-eating fish such as piranhas.

The swim is absolutely an accomplishment, but this is laying it on a bit thick:

> He seems to feel pride about having achieved autonomy—from society, his parents, higher-level institutions, and the pressures to conform.

And what does this autonomy from society and his parents look like?

> Paris’s 15th arrondissement, near where he lives in a small studio apartment attached to his parents’ home

Ah yes, it's the autonomy of being 19 and having an apartment in a trendy, arty bit of central Paris (Montparnasse), paid by your mom the Mayor.

Montparnasse is not trendy, arty, or in central Paris. No one who has spent any amount of time in Paris would say that it is.

Parisian studio apartments are also roughly the size of an American bathroom. It is not a luxurious life.

> Typically Germain credits his achievements to a guru of a different kind: “I have learned how to master my emotions by following the Wim Hof method,” he says of Dutch adventurer Wim Hof’s three-pillar technique using the breath, exposure to cold temperatures, and a mix of commitment, will power, and self-control to survive in tough situations. “When things are hard,” he continues, “I can take pleasure in suffering. Not just in swimming, but in life. I was having so much fun that I wasn’t even counting the time.”

If you floated on your back and didn't swim at all, how far would that river take you in one day?

Would probably suffer hypothermia in that case.

I'm not French and never swam in the Seine myself, but according to https://ijc.org/sites/default/files/migrate_default_content_... it seems the temperatures of the river after June should be at least 16 degress, so you shouldn't get hypothermia in that case.

Nearly anyone can get hypothermia in 16deg water. Especially if you're in the water for hours and are fatigued.

Having swam (sometimes not voluntarily) in water temperature from 6deg C upwards, No, 16 deg is hypothermia territory.

20deg C is where you started to be able to swim for extended amount of time (i.e. 1 hr). But the water still feels very cold if it's not a sunny day. Wearing swim shirt is usually recommended.

27-28deg C is the temperature of majority of the pools.

30 deg C is about the temperature of water where you can not move and still feel warm.

4 km/h on average, less in Paris, more during floods. If he swims four hours a day, that’s 16 km or 10 miles. That’s comparable to a good swimmer.

That’s why this part felt interesting:

> if he could maintain an average of 10 miles a day, he would need just over 50 days to complete

It’s not very warm, so I’d definitely exercise to keep some heat but I don’t know how much of the feat was drifting.

"The man was quite literally in-seine"

-Alan Partridge

I wanted to note that GQ spent the time to separate the motivation of the feat, distinguishing a call for autonomy, sport and environmentalism. With the local context, it’s too easy to project one image while there’s much more of a Terrence Mallick-like introspection in the daily reality of the track. Few journalists give time to that distinction.

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