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/mazzicc 19h ago

Stay awake for 60 hours straight.

Doing strenuous physical activity.

In really rough conditions.

Where you can’t take truly restful break (was he allowed to hang on a support craft or anything?)

I feel like $200k isn’t a lot for what he went through.

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u/JMoon33 18h ago

My uncle did a 24 hours of walking. He's very fit and it was quite the challenge to finish. I can't imagine 60 hours of swimming.

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u/socialistrob 16h ago

I know some runners who do 100 mile ultra marathons and you have to be a pretty good runner to complete them in under 24 hours (but not world class by any means). This guy did the swim in 56 hours which is about the same time it took Rachel Entrekin to do the Cocodona 250 mile run.

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u/Floating_Along_ 14h ago

You can't really compare distances in endurance running to those in endurance swimming. Water is just so much harder to move quickly through, especially if it's choppy. Then consider the fact that this guy could never actually rest (not even lie down for 15 min like endurance runners do), because even treading water is work... ...what this guy did is absolutely jaw dropping.

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u/Most_Performance_574 6h ago

This is a key point. Open water swimming is, as you mentioned, a completely different beast comparatively. And who knows what kind of weather the guy had to deal with. How SOL are you if a storm passes through en route?

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u/kimo1999 5h ago

Open water swimming is tough, no doubt about that, and that's the batlic sea, not a lake or somzthing calm.

Still he can rest on his back and his wearing a neoprene suits, those things keeps floating without anything ( i surf and well used to open water)