Catherine Breed, 33, didn’t look terribly exhausted when we caught up with her last Friday, even though she’d been swimming for more than 100 days. Every day, she chalked up more miles toward her dream of swimming the entire 900-mile length of the California coast. She relied on her solid training, her crew, and the process of discovering, recovering, pivoting, and getting out there the next day to move the needle a little farther every day. On Monday at 11:25:43 Pacific Time, she officially completed her historic Swim California effort. Nine hundred miles. One stroke at a time.
For three years prior to launch, she lived and breathed the swim details while holding a full-time job in medical device sales. She founded a nonprofit, Sea Dreamers, that supports women and girls in open-water swimming and raises awareness for ocean conservation. She put on six pounds of muscle on purpose.
Big swim adventures like hers take huge amounts of planning. She’s done plenty of marathon swims—the English Channel, North Channel, and 20 Bridges among them—and set the record for the fastest south-to-north Monterey Bay swim.
But over 111 days of swimming, the best laid plans only get you so far. The weather and the ocean often have other ideas. Pivoting, she discovered, would become a superpower.
“Before the swim, I wasn’t the best pivoter in life. I’m someone who has a plan and I do everything I can to stick to that plan,” she says. But with the enormity of this swim, “You can’t just stick to Plan A. You have to have plan through D. But as long as I’m within those, I know we’re moving the needle forward.”
For instance, she and the crew anticipated swimming most of the coast from north to south, going with the California coastal current. “But this year, with all of the energy in the South Pacific, with the Super El Nino, the California coastal current has kind of shifted,” she says, taking it from south to north. Hard pivot to boating south and swimming north in segments every day. “I really was not anticipating having to do that, but it’s a difference of going one mile an hour versus three miles an hour. In 900 miles," she says, "I don't have the time, either in the whole summer nor in a day, to be going one mile an hour."
She had a fear that doing the swim in segments that went from south to north instead of straight down the coast, “totally changed the spirit of the swim. I was really beating myself up about it and I remember posting on Instagram and thinking, ‘I’m going to get roasted here. And it was actually the opposite.’” She reminded herself that you don’t climb mountains like Everest in a straight line: “you zigzag and sometimes you down climb to climb up again,” she says.
She wasn’t expecting to have to pivot on nutrition, either. But early on, her largely liquid feeds were composed of a drink that was all fructose. It left her with what she believes was gout, so she worked with the medical team to switch to a different combination of sugars for some of the feeds. More of her challenges and adventures were documented and presented on You Tube through Allez Sports.
Physically, Breed felt ready for the swim’s 10-ish miles a day via her strength training (lifting heavy three times a week with moves like rows, deadlifts, and squats) and pool yardage (about 40K per week, which included a couple days a week of doing 10K in under 2:10). She knew she’d lose the muscle during the swim but wanted to prime herself for the event. Her nutrition and recovery were spot on; she says her weight stayed stable over the swim, a feat in itself when you’re swimming for that long every day.
Mentally, her strength was built over time, more than through any particular mental training routine. Does she have a regular practice, like meditation? “People ask me that all the time, because they want some answer to how do I be tough? How do I be resilient? How do I keep going? How do I avoid failure? And they want to know, what was my magic bullet? And unfortunately, I don't have an answer for them, other than I just kept doing it. I kept putting myself in situations where I could learn these lessons,” she says.
She kept learning throughout the swim. Early on, she says, she spent a lot of time worrying about failure. To help herself process it, she started to ask, “What am I certain of and what am I not certain of? I was certain every day I could at least go through the motions of having breakfast, having coffee, putting my wetsuit on, and trying,” she says. “And if I just did that, I’m certain I can get in the water and take a stroke. And then you’re like OK, I can continue taking strokes.”
When she got out of the water every day, she didn’t have a complicated recovery routine. “I’m really bad at recovery,” she says, explaining that it feels like a chore. Ironic, since many people think swimming back and forth in a pool is a chore and recovery a luxury. Post-swim, she’d opt for passive recovery (her mantra, she jokes, is “ABS: Anything But Stretching”) like Normatec boots about three times a week, cupping from a crew member when needed, and a massage when a therapist occasionally came on board.
When we spoke with her right before the finish, she was excited about her swim and a little worried about the post-event letdown. She’s put an Ironman on her calendar (“I kind of need something to start getting my body back into shape and my legs strong again”). But another swim adventure right away? When invited to swim the 400-mile length of the Maldives a few months from now, her without-hesitating-about-it answer was “absolutely not.”
She’s excited about diving back into the work world, and maybe a new career, building on the business and marketing skills she’s gained in putting this adventure together. “I think it’s going to be really cool starting from scratch, but a little bit as a new person,” she says. About that new person: “I hope to take away from this swim that when I do have to pivot in life, maybe I can be the version of Catherine that’s from Swim California and can be like ‘it’s all right. We’ll try again tomorrow, instead of the prior version where I’m like ‘oh my gosh, the sky is falling.’”
Marty Munson, currently the health director of Men's Health, has been a health editor at properties including Marie Claire, Prevention, Shape and RealAge. She's also certified as a swim and triathlon coach.