Dr. Caroline Block Doubles Down On WOWSA Live
36-year-old channel swimming pioneer Dr. Caroline Block has been pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland for several years now. She has helped people realize that a two-way crossing of the 35 km channel may actually be humanly possible.
Dr. Block, a multi-talented multi-faceted anthropologist, talked about her varied professional career and her channel swimming adventures with International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame chairman Ned Denison on today’s edition of WOWSA Live. Among many topics, she described the following:
* her sporting career as a competitive fencer in high school and college
* her time as an investment banker in New York City
* her travels to Jerusalem and legal fellowship the Cardoza School of Law
* receiving a Ph.D. in anthropology and a JD from Cornell University and teaching at Johns Hopkins University
* dealing with the venom of lion’s mane jellyfish who tentacles can be longer than a blue whale
* being challenged by fickle weather and changing tides and unpredictable currents
length of tentacle can exceed the length of a blue whale
* swimming across Lake George and Tampa Bay
* setting a junior world record two-way English Channel crossing in 1998 in 19 hours 25 minutes
* completing an Ironman triathlon and a solo English Channel crossing
* swimming almost 29 hours on her first two-way North Channel crossing attempt and 26 hours 30 minutes on her second attempt
* taking on the Isle of Man
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