King Takes On All Mother Nature Has To Offer In Swim From Block Island To Montauk

Back in 2004, Lori King started participating in open water swim races, eventually signing up for the Montauk Swim Challenge a few years later. A 2-mile swim in the ocean felt, she admitted, “terrible,” but still, she found herself seized by the desire to “see what farther feels like.”

What it feels like in the moment, she’s discovered, is often bad. So bad, that she finds herself thinking after it’s over that she never wants to do it again.

“But that feeling always fades,” she said in an interview last week, smiling. “And you’re left with a really good feeling.”

The push and pull of those complex emotions still exists for King, 47, and over the past few years, she has certainly explored what farther feels like.

King, a Rockville Centre resident who lives part time on the Napeague Stretch, is an accomplished ultramarathon open water swimmer with an eye-popping resume. She finished a swim around Key West — in a tropical storm — and has the distinction of being the first woman to ever circumnavigate the island of Bermuda. She’s also completed an overnight race in Hawaii — which means she swam for several hours in the darkness — and she’s done other long distance races around the world.

She recently pulled off one of her most impressive feats to date. On August 3, she completed a more than 20-mile solo swim from Block Island to Montauk. For nearly nine hours, King was immersed in the Atlantic Ocean, flanked by a support team surrounding her in a diamond formation that included two boats, a kayak, and a paddleboard. She swam alongside dolphins, whales and even a few curious sharks which, luckily, kept enough of a distance that they did not pose a serious threat to her safety. She dealt with the challenge of changing water temperatures from cold upwellings that made it difficult to maintain her kick at times, navigated the whims of currents and tides, and did her best to stick to an intricate plan that was put together over the course of six months, and was a collaborative effort among a team of experienced water women and men who were by her side for the entire journey.

King was grateful to everyone who joined her on the swim, including one of her most integral supporters, Amanda Fenner, a fellow ultramarathon open water swimmer. Fenner and King first met on what swim coach and fellow support team member Tim Treadwell described as “a blind date in the airport.”

King had heard about Fenner, who had completed her own swim around Key West, and was inspired to give it a try. Treadwell put together a plan for that swim, and when King told him she was interested in doing it, he connected her with Fenner, who volunteered to kayak alongside King when she did the race. They did not meet until arriving at the airport in Florida together for the race.

Tropical storm conditions greeted them that morning, but both Fenner and King agreed they were ready to meet that challenge head on.

Fenner said she wasn’t sure what to expect, having never met King or watched her swim, but her mind was put at ease quickly.

“She was fast,” Fenner recalled. “I was kind of fearless and so was she. When she swims, she swims like a machine. It’s just what she does.”

King outlasted the conditions that day and ended up finishing second among women in that race. It established a close friendship between Fenner and King, and when King was ready to start planning her swim from Block Island to Montauk, Fenner was one of the first people she called on.

King was a standout Division I swimmer at LaSalle University, and after taking a few years off from competitive swimming after college, got back into it as an adult. But as any swimmer will attest, racing in the open water, especially over a long distance, is an entirely different beast.

A more than 20 mile swim out in the open Atlantic — which took King right to the edge of the continental shelf — would require precise planning, and a strong working knowledge of the tides, currents and other conditions that would all greatly impact her ability to complete the swim.

The planning took months, and King credited Fenner with spearheading the effort, while adding that the work of Dr. Rondi Davies, a decorated ultramarathon open water swimmer who worked on tides and current modeling to get the day right, was absolutely crucial as well.

Fenner also helped put together the rest of the support team, which included her daughter, Sierra Joan Davidson (also an open water swimmer and lifeguard), Sinead Fitzgibbon, another veteran waterwoman who was by King’s side on a paddleboard the entire time, Marcie Honerkamp, another experienced open water swimmer, Janine Serell, a Marathon Swimming Federation Official Observer, Dr. Rondi Davies, who used her more than 10 years of experience planning swims in New York waters to provide all the modeling for the swim and made necessary adjustments the day of, Treadwell, a lifeguard, member of the East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad, and triathlon coach, Mike Martinsen, the lead boat captain aboard his Montauk Pearl, Amanda’s husband Richard Fenner, Mark Fischer, who piloted his boat, the Stella III, photographer Drew Maloney, Dan Farnham, Arek Zenel-Walasek, and Andrew Malinak.

It took a lot of work to analyze the tides, currents and other elements to plan out a route and a day and time that would work best, and King said that considering everything that could go wrong, the swim was a great success.

Of course, those 8.5 hours in the water were not without challenges. For starters, King’s route took her out over the continental shelf, where there is a lot of “fish activity,” as she called it.

Swimming in the presence of marine life is not something new for King. She was once pulled from a race when a pair of bull sharks were spotted circling her, and giant jellyfish and other sea creatures are always a concern, one she has learned to push out of her mind.

“I know these things are there, and you just have to prepare as best you can,” she said. “You think about the suit you’re going to wear, take your jewelry off, no nail polish, but then you just have to put it out of your head.”

Of course it’s inside the head where the battle is won or lost in a long distance open water swim. As part of her training, King will sometimes do long pool swims with goggles that leak, or will refrain from allowing herself to touch the wall, to try to simulate the challenges she’ll face on the open water. “Being comfortable with being uncomfortable” is part of the process, she said.

“Once you stop thinking about the end or the distance, your mind does kind of settle,” King added, saying she tried to just focus on getting from one food and water break — which came in half-hour intervals — to the next.

One bit of advice has stuck with her.

“Someone told me once to turn your worry into wonder,” King said. “Like, I wonder what I’m going to see out there. It does work.”

She admitted that the presence of sharks — and potential for encountering a Great White, in particular — was in her mind, but she did her best to not let it affect her. She told her crew early on not to let her know if they saw a shark, and to only give word if they felt it was an imminent threat and she needed to hop on the kayak and then get on the boat as soon as possible, which of course would have marked the end of the swim.

After the fact, King learned from her support team that they had spotted a Great White, but were able to keep on going until the shark swam away. The crew maintained a protective diamond formation around her, and the support boats — the Montauk Pearl in front and the Stella III bringing up the rear — formed a protective barrier to ward off the threat.

King said that it was actually delightful that “all the creatures showed up,” including a pod of dolphins with baby dolphins. She did not see them, but heard their calls to each other under the water. There was a whale nearby as well, and when King swam through a school of mackerel at one point, several of them were leaping out of the water around her.

King credited the support team with maintaining a steady, supportive presence no matter what was going on around them, allowing her to focus her mental energy on the swim. She said she also did not find out until after the swim that Fitzgibbon had been battling seasickness the entire time, while paddling on her proneboard, through the constant presence of rolling waves and swells. King credited Fitzgibbon for powering through that challenging situation.

One of the most challenging moments for King came during the portion of the swim that took her out over the shelf, where she experienced some significant temperature changes that started to take a toll on her physically.

“I started to get cramping in my hips, and at one point my right leg stopped kicking,” she said. “I started shivering and knew I had to control it. But I knew I was okay. I was just uncomfortable, because my core was fine.”

Eventually, after more than eight hours, King had the Montauk Lighthouse in her sights. The conditions took her a bit farther away, making Camp Hero her ultimate landing zone. Waiting for her on the beach was her husband, Michael King, and her children, Ryan, 16, and Anna, 13, as well as Anjelika Cruz, another friend, standout lifeguard and waterwoman.

At the end, Sierra jumped off the kayak and swam the last few strokes to shore with King.

King said she usually does not get emotional when she finishes her marathon swims, but this time was an exception.

“I was so relieved,” she said.

“It was such an important swim, doing it in my backyard, where it all started,” King added. “And being with this crew, we had an amazing and beautiful experience that bonded all of us. Everybody was so caring and good at what they did.”

Those crew members expressed similar feelings about being part of the experience.

Treadwell said he was honored to be part of the team, and was beyond impressed with King’s ability to conquer the swim.

“To see how she did that and how she maintained her stroke rate for eight-plus hours, and kept it up from feed to feed, and how she went through different sea life and upwellings and cold water spurts, it was just incredible,” he said. “To be there from point A to point B and then hit the beach in Montauk, it was a great moment in my life that I’ll never forget. It was such an incredible mental and physical feat of human endurance.”

“It was the perfect storm, in a good way,” Fenner said. “The wind was perfect, the tide carried us out as we thought it would. We didn’t quite catch the pull back in, but it just worked out so perfectly, that I’d be nervous to ever do it again. We were all blessed and I’m so grateful that it worked out, and that everyone was safe.”