On Sunday night, 30-year-old Paula Stephanson plunged into the cool waters of Lake Michigan from a Chicago beach.
Twenty-six hours and 51 kilometres later, the Ottawa teacher emerged on the other side of the lake, staggering onto the sandy shores of Central Beach in Michigan City and becoming just the second person in the world - both Canadian women - to swim across all five Great Lakes.
It's a goal she's been swimming toward since 1996, when at the age of 17 she crossed her first Great Lake, swimming 23 hours from one end of Lake Ontario to the other. "I'm just excited that I finally met my goal," Ms. Stephanson said yesterday from Michigan City. "It's been a long time coming."
Ms. Stephanson said her Great Lake aspirations were partly inspired by the famed Kingston, Ont.,-based swimmer Vicki Keith, the only other person to have traversed all five Great Lakes using nothing more than her limbs and a swimsuit. Ms. Keith completed her lake odyssey in 1988.
Ms. Stephanson initially had no intention of tackling all five bodies of water, however, and figured Lake Ontario would be her first and last Great Lake crossing.
But as time passed, the water over in Lake Erie began to look more and more inviting.
"I thought, 'Oh, maybe I'll try Erie,' " Ms. Stephanson said. "And then a couple of years later, I said, 'Maybe I'll try Huron.' And then everybody was like, 'Now you have to do all five!' "
Ms. Stephenson has since been front-stroking her way across the Great Lakes, moving from east to west and knocking off another lake every two years or so.
After completing Lake Superior in 2007, only Lake Michigan remained. So this summer, Ms. Stephanson moved to Belleville and began training in Lake Ontario, practising three or four times a week as her mother watched alongside from a boat.
Ms. Stephanson originally planned on completing the feat by Saturday, but her initial attempt at swimming Lake Michigan was thwarted by bad weather. The waves wound up swelling up to 2½metres high and, seven hours into her swim, the attempt was cancelled by Ms. Stephanson's swim master, Bob Weir.
(All solo, long-distance swims in Ontario must be supervised by a swim master with Solo Swims of Ontario. The non-profit organization was founded in 1975 after the drowning of a 17-year-old who attempted to cross Lake Ontario.) Ms. Stephanson then "re-grouped" and tried again on Sunday, this time with clear, sunny skies overhead and water temperatures hovering around 21C.
Departing from Chicago's Rainbow Beach, Ms. Stephanson swam for 25 hours and 38 minutes straight, at a pace of 2 kilometres per hour. Two boats followed alongside, one with Mr. Weir and the other with friends and family.
Ms. Stephanson said she passed the time by singing songs in her head and drinking the occasional bottle of Gatorade or snacking on a granola chunk or banana slice.
The trip really got harrowing once the sun went down, however, and Ms. Stephanson stayed warm by drinking hot chocolate or chicken broth from a squirt bottle.
"The night was pretty rough just because I was cold," she said. "I was counting down the hours until the sun came up."
The final stretch of her swim was "really kind of torture" as the water grew choppy, making the shore seemingly impossible to reach.
When she finally lunged onto the beach - grumbling "I'm never doing that again" - Ms. Stephanson was met with cheers and warm blankets.
"It's really a mental game," she said. "You've got to believe when you start that you're going in one side and you're not going out until you reach the other."
Sore and exhausted, Ms. Stephanson headed straight back to the hotel where she had a hot bath and a good night's rest.
She now plans on "temporarily retiring" from her Great Lake adventures but Mr. Weir said he won't be surprised to see her back in lake waters soon.
As for Ms. Keith, she's thrilled to see Ms. Stephanson replicating her harrowing feat.
"That's cool, that's really cool," she said yesterday. "She's out there doing what she loves to do and I'm really proud of her for doing it."