Even after working full-time as a biostatistician of pediatrics and a mother of three children, Melodee Nugent keeps wanting more.

The Wisconsin dynamo started as a 100-yard butterfly specialist in high school, but the marathon swimmer is now stepping up her range. After a series of increasingly longer swims, she completed the 27-mile (43 km) Extreme North Dakota Watersports Endurance Test (END-WET) in the Red River from North Dakota to Minnesota.

Her longest swim took her 9 hours 23 minutes where she finished third overall, but she has the wisdom of a lifetime to assess her motivation. “I’m not competitive. It’s more for myself. My first goal is to finish, then to place in the middle of the pack. I like the challenge.”

A master of data analysis, Nugent knew what she had to do in order to prepare for her marathon swim. Every weekday at 4 am, she swam for 3 hours in a pool before heading to work in the Department of Pediatrics at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She also built up to a 6-hour open water swim on the weekends in a local lake.

Calm, cool, collected as she commits to her challenges.

Copyright © 2013 by World Open Water Swimming Association