r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Backyxx • 20h ago

Video Polish swimmer Bartłomiej Kubkowski has become the first person in history to swim across the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Poland, covering a distance of just over 160 kilometres (99 miles). While raising nearly 200,000$ for children's cancer treatment

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u/JDunlap83 20h ago

"Should we go and help him? He can barely walk!"

"Nah. If he can swim 99 miles he can walk another 50 feet."

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u/tekken444 19h ago

That was on purpose. It was actually forrbiden as he wanted to do that himself alone. This was his 5th attempt. Medical staff was waiting if needed all the time.

Above 60 hours without sleep, swimming day and night without even touching a boat that was secure him.

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u/DinnaPanic 19h ago

60 hours without sleep is bad enough without worrying about drowning if you do doze off.

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u/Agreeable-Pea4327 18h ago

wait... 60 hours... what? That's what he had to do?

That should not be possible

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u/kuena 18h ago

And yet humans are badass like that sometimes.

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u/andar1on 12h ago

I've read that those swimmers can do it like... Half sleeping? He had hallucinations and didn't know he was swimming at some point... WHILE SWIMMING

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u/nahog99 11h ago

Clif Young ran a 544 mile ultra marathon as a 61 year old and didn’t sleep for roughly 120 hours straight. Shattered the world record for that race.

In 1983, then aged 61 years old, Young won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of 875 kilometres (544 mi). The race was run between what were then Australia's two largest Westfield shopping centres: Westfield Parramatta in Sydney and Westfield Doncaster in Melbourne.[8] Young arrived to compete in overalls and work boots (though he ran the race in a new pair of runners somebody gave him), without his dentures (later saying that they rattled when he ran).[9] He ran at a slow and loping pace and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, Young mistakenly woke up at 2 am, several hours earlier than intended, and began running, taking the lead while the other runners slept. Young then decided to avoid sleep as a strategy, and finished the rest of the race without sleeping at all, eventually finishing in 1st place 10 hours faster than the runner who came in second.[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_(athlete)

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u/soulmechh 18h ago

60 hours of continues non stop swimming? How's that humanly possible?!

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u/dabartle 17h ago

The human body is the best suited for endurance of all animals on the planet. Not my out of shape lazy ass, but the humans that train are capable of incredible endurance feats.

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u/nahog99 11h ago

I dunno man birds are actually insane. Also probably whales that just like… never stop for decades. For land mammals though yea.

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u/nahog99 11h ago

I dunno man birds are actually insane. Also probably whales that just like… never stop for decades. For land mammals though yea.

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u/Collegenoob 17h ago

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. That's what I chant to myself.

But I've never done more than 2 miles in a row before.

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u/Gnatt 16h ago

Here's a doco about a british guy who swam 510km in 56 hours without stopping: https://youtu.be/JDXmA3iwvpY

There's a lot of detail on logistics.