The Night-Shift Swimmer

1When Michal Avrahami finishes a twelve-hour night shift in the emergency department of a hospital in northern Israel, most of her colleagues go straight home to sleep. Michal drives to the beach. By seven in the morning she is already in the water, swimming steadily parallel to the shore while the city wakes up behind her. "People think I'm crazy," she laughs. "But after a night of other people's emergencies, the sea is the quietest place I know."

2Michal, 41, did not grow up as an athlete. She learned to swim properly only at the age of thirty-five, when a back injury forced her to give up running. Her physiotherapist recommended swimming as gentle exercise. At first she could barely complete two lengths of the local pool without stopping. "I was embarrassed," she admits. "Teenagers were overtaking me in the slow lane." Yet she kept returning, three mornings a week, and gradually the distances grew.

3Two years later, a friend persuaded her to enter a short open-water race. The experience changed everything. Swimming in the sea, with no walls and no black line on the floor to follow, was frightening at first, but it also gave her a sense of freedom she had never felt in a pool. Soon she was entering longer and longer events, and last summer she completed a twenty-kilometre marathon swim, which took her almost seven hours.

4Marathon swimming is as much a mental challenge as a physical one. Swimmers are accompanied by a support boat, but according to the rules they may not touch it or hold on to anything. Food and drink are passed to them on a rope or a long pole, and they must eat while floating. Cold water, jellyfish and waves that push a swimmer off course can all end a race early. Michal believes her work as a nurse has prepared her well. "In the emergency room you learn to stay calm when everything around you is chaotic. In the sea, it's the same. You stop thinking about the finish line and just concentrate on the next stroke."

5Her colleagues have become her biggest fans, and several of them now join her for early-morning swims. Michal hopes her story will encourage people who believe it is too late to start something new. "I'm not the fastest swimmer, and I never will be," she says. "But I've discovered that being stubborn is a kind of talent too."