Barbara Cocci didn’t spend much of the first day of August on land. Instead, she swam in the East, Harlem, and Hudson rivers for 11 hours during the 20 Bridges Swim around Manhattan event.
“I like having to focus, I’m retired, and I’ve really enjoyed learning more about swimming and open water swimming, which I really love,” Cocci said. “Thankfully, it all worked out.”
The 68 year old Fuller Village resident performed her first “marathon swim” last year, when she swam the Boston Light Swim, which is an 8 mile course that starts at the Boston Light lighthouse on Little Brewster Island and ends at the L Street Bathhouse in South Boston.
After completing the initial marathon, her friend and crew member Maura Twomey encouraged her to do the Manhattan swim, which is a 28.5 mile route around Manhattan Island that goes under 20 bridges including the iconic Brooklyn and George Washington Bridges.
A crew is a group that follows a swimmer on a small boat as a safety measure. In addition, there is also someone on a kayak to ensure a swimmer’s safety.
“I enjoyed the training, and I thought if she [Twomey] said, I could do that, then, I’ll work towards that,” Cocci said. “Then I ended up spending the winter into the spring mostly in pools, and then moving outside as soon as it got ‘warm enough’ for me to be outside.”
She first got interested in swimming in 2010 when a co-worker and friend asked if she wanted to work out with her at the pool. As she got more and more into swimming outside, she began doing one mile events around Massachusetts and built up to doing more over time.
Once she helped Twomey train herself for the 20 Bridges event in 2023, she says she knew she could handle swimming a marathon length.
“Now I call them little events,” Cocci said. “They were big to me at the time.”
She trained five to six times a week for the event, with a swim coach and the Fitness and Aquatics Director at Fuller Village, Jen DeLeonardis, who helped prepare her muscles for the swim and was part of her crew for Boston Light and 20 Bridges. DeLeonardis had also previously helped train Cocci to climb to the top of Mount Washington with three other women…..
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