The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Swimmer

By Richard Martin, 8-14-06

	Caption: And they thought Lord Byron was brave.

Long-distance, open-water swimming -- an athletic pursuit that, to say the least, doesn't receive a lot of press attention in this country -- will experience a surge in visibility in two years at the Beijing Olympics, which will include a 10-kilometer open-water swim championship. In advance of that event, the solitary pursuit of open-water swimming held one of its biggest annual events last Saturday: the 10K national masters championship at the Horsetooth Reservoir, near Fort Collins.

The Horsetooth Open Water Swim has been going on since 1999, when 15 hardy men and women crawled, dog-paddled and breaststroked the 6.2-mile course in 68-degree water. This year more than 90 swimmers completed the course. The winning time (turned in this year by Brooks Felton, who at age 20 was ineligible for the masters' championship) has dropped by almost 18 minutes in the race's seven years.

One of the swimmers at Horsetooth was Boulder resident Matthew Moseley, a Friend of New West who is also a former statehouse operative and a current marketing executive in Denver. I've swum some workouts with Matt, and what he lacks in world-class speed he makes up for in smooth form and just plain doggedness. Or "fishedness."

"I grew up in the Louisiana bayou country. Water is our source, our spirit, it's everything to us," Moseley tells the Daily Camera's Clay Evans. "I wanted to be part of the water, a full creature of the water, not just looking at it from a boat, or splashing around, but really immersed in it."

Moseley was referring not to his swim at Horsetooth (in which he finished 15th overall and 3rd in his age group) but a much more prodigious feat: a 47.5-mile swim down the Colorado River from the Moab boat ramp to the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers in Canyonlands National Park. Supported by a crew of four, who rotated swimming with him and paddling a raft, Moseley completed that swim in just under 17 hours, spread over two days last month. (That's about 2.8 miles an hour, if you're keeping score.) According to the National Park Service, no one else has made that swim in recorded Colo. River annals.

The records of outdoor feats are filled with gratuitous and glory-seeking stunts -- first man to crawl naked across Antarctica, first double-amputee to summit Everest while eating a beef burrito, and so forth -- but Moseley apparently swam the Colorado out of purer motives: the river's there, and he wanted to swim it.

Next can only be a full headwaters-to-Gulf descent of the entire 1450 miles of the river. C'mon, it'll only take you 65 days at 8 hours of paddling a day -- How 'bout it, Matt?


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