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Starting before dawn on Thursday, eight women between 55 and 71 years old will take turns swimming almost all of the roughly 32 miles from one end of Lake George to the other.
One of them is Dr. Kate O’Keeffe, 68, an OB-GYN who recently retired from her practice in Glens Falls. She and her husband, Dr. Jim Fuchs, have a home on the lake in the hamlet of Pilot Knob.
“I probably swim six days a week for an hour,” O’Keeffe said. “So I’m pretty lucky.”
O’Keeffe wants to promote the health benefits of swimming to others, especially older women. That’s why she just last week began organizing the relay swim with her seven friends, including former patients.
“I’ve always advocated to my patients to age healthy means to exercise and find something you like to do,’’ she said. “I had wanted to do this last year, but then COVID came and I wasn’t sure. I called up (her friends) and said this is COVID-friendly, so let’s do it. Everyone was on board with it. It sort of gets you something positive to think about doing.”
Liz Collins will begin the relay from Million Dollar Beach at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday. Each swimmer will go for 1½ hours before giving way to a teammate. The other women are Shauna DeSantis, Trish End, Barbara Joudry, Carol McGrath, Cathy Painter and Margaret Wallace.
For safety, each swimmer will have an orange bubble swim buoy and be accompanied by a boat, usually piloted by a spouse.
“It’s definitely a community effort,” O’Keeffe said.
None of the women is another Katie Ledecky.
“We have a spectrum of people,’’ she said. “Only one of the eight women is a competitive swimmer. Everyone else is just recreational swimmers and that is part of my point. You don’t have to be a professional to get out and swim. It’s great exercise and it’s very friendly as you’re an older person, male or female, because it’s good on the joints.”
She said the octet will take a break to sleep Thursday night and will finish on Friday. They plan to end at Roger’s Rock beach.
“The very end of the lake is very shallow and weedy so we’re not doing the very, very end,’’ O’Keeffe said. “But we’ll probably end up swimming at least that, if not more, because we have to zig a little bit in order to get through islands and in good swimming positions. So it’ll be a good 30 miles.”
O’Keeffe said they’ve picked a good day for a long swim with a high temperature of 78 and sunny skies forecast in Lake George on Thursday.
“It’s just a promotional thing to tell, particularly women, to go do something every day,” she said. “It’ll improve your mood, it’ll improve your energy, lowers cancer, heart risk, Alzheimer’s. It’s better than any vitamins or pills you can take.”
msingelais@timesunion.com • 518-454-5509 • @MarkSingelais
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