Somebody Call Guiness

107 billion human beings have lived on the planet Earth.  It would take a pretty extraordinary individual to be the one person to have ever accomplished a particular feat.  And it would have to be a pretty extraordinary feat.  Guiness World Records should know about this.  The feat that I have in mind is swimming more than 3,000 miles in San Francisco Bay during winter in nothing more than a swimsuit, swim hat, and goggles.  This means walking into Bay water from December 21 until March 21 and swimming mile after mile, day after day, and year after year when the temperature is as cold as 47 degrees and almost never warmer than 53 degrees Fahrenheit.  Laura Merkl is the solitary human to have done this.

Laura Merkl

Seeking a provocation to get other members to swim with him in the winter, Dolphin Bill Powning invented "The Polar Bear Challenge" in 1974.  Use of wetsuits is prohibited. Since its inception, members of the Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club of San Francisco have tracked the number of miles they swim in the Bay during the coldest 90 day period of the year.  Earning a "polar bear" has meant recognition with a gift of a three-quarter inch block of white marble inscribed with the number of miles swum that season.  Perversely, this trinket is not distributed until the November awards dinner.  The memento provides a timely reminder to participants of their previous winter accomplishment and tacitly encourages them to tackle one more frigid campaign.  It also provides a permanent record of the miles Laura accumulated during 34 consecutive Polar Bear seasons.

Laura Merkl graduated college with a degree in physical education and swam at a recreational level.  After a couple of years working in the phys ed field, she switched to a career in accounting.  The downside of this move was a sedentary day at a desk job so she joined the YMCA to swim with their masters program.  She met Laurie Weiner there and they began participating in open water swims at places like Lake Berryessa.  Soon, they left the pool behind and were swimming from the beach at Aquatic Park on a regular basis.  When Laurie joined the Dolphin Club, Laura followed in December of 1984 very much looking forward to the opportunity to swim from Alcatraz.  Although she swam through the winter, for the first couple of years of membership Laura remained unmindful of the Polar Bear mileage charts festooning the entry to the Dolphin Club.  Then, in the 1986-1987 season, she decided to partake.  Since she was living nearby the club and working downtown, she felt like the 40 miles required at the time for a marble block was insufficient and thought, "100 sounds good."  Sure enough, slightly more than 120 miles later, Laura had earned her first Polar Bear.

Laura's Polar Bear Stack

Then in the winter of 1993-1994, she was again on target for more than 100 miles.  When she attended the Old Timers dinner in February, Dolphins asked her about her aspirations to be the Polar Bear champion that season.  She said, "I don't know what that is."  Her friends excitedly told her, "Well, there's the Polar Bear and then there's the Polar Bear CHAMP!  You could be the CHAMP!"  Alerted to this possibility, Laura quickly learned that no woman had ever before been the Polar Bear champion.  She says, "I've never felt any negative being female at the club," but the idea of being the first woman champion held substantial appeal.

She and fellow member George Kebbe were closely matched in swimming speed and had developed a friendly and competitive relationship in the club-sponsored events.  As it turned out, George also had his eye on the Polar Bear championship.  In order to win the Polar Bear Laura had to swim more miles that winter than George and more winter miles than she ever had swum before.  Club members avidly monitored the race in slow motion, regularly checking the mileage log in the foyer as she and George spurred each other along through the remaining weeks of the Polar Bear. Their colored squares leapfrogged one another in a simulacrum of a fiercely contested Olympic event.  Laura had plenty of support.  Women would regularly find her almost sleeping in the sauna and bring her strong coffee.  Stan Hlynsky, president of the club the year before, would leave voicemails on her office phone with words of encouragement including advice to "eat more."  And eat she did.  She had recently started a new job and three bagels for a morning snack were common.  Her gobsmacked co-workers were left marveling at where she put all this food on her lean frame.  By March 21, 1994, her determination had produced 174 miles and the first woman's name to adorn the Polar Bear Champion plaque.

Champion Plaque

The next winter Laura cruised to a leisurely 101 miles.  Then she moved to San Carlos and took a job in San Jose leaving herself a daily commute of over 100 miles if she wanted to keep up her string of Polar Bears.  In the next four seasons, she swam 50, 78, 80, and 75 miles; admittedly short of 100, but still a mind-boggling display of discipline.  In the winter of 1999-2000, her commute dramatically reduced, she swam 150 miles and tied with Scott Haskins to once again affix her name to the championship trophy.

For the next six years, she posted 100 miles or more.  Then came a five year stretch during which her South Bay commute resumed and she could only manage to chart mileage in the 80's and 90's.  In the 2011-2012 season, the scourge of extreme athletes struck and she finished with a measly 68 miles and severe shoulder pain.  Of course, she postponed the necessary rotator cuff surgery until after the Polar Bear was over.

As she recovered from surgery and pondered her goals for the coming year, her accounting instincts kicked in and she realized that she had accumulated more than 2,600 winter miles in the Bay.  It occurred to her that people bike 3,000 miles across the U.S.  They hike 3,000 miles across the U.S.  No one can swim 3,000 miles across the U.S.  But isn't 3,000 a good number for Polar Bear attainment?  By March 21, 2017, she had racked up 3,035.75 miles.  She now has over 3,200 miles in her wake and has not formulated another goal beyond, "keep it up."  Guiness needs to know about this.