Across The Pond And Down The Mighty Mo

Dave Cornthwaite, a British adventurer, stopped in Yankton on Wednesday. He is swimming 1,000 miles down the Missouri River from Chamberlain to St. Louis to raise money for breast cancer awareness. (Jeremy Hoeck/P&D)

British Man Visits Yankton On 1,000-Mile Swim For Cancer

By Andrew Atwal
andrew.atwal@yankton.net

A British adventurer traveled through Yankton on Tuesday as part of his journey of swimming 1,000 miles down the Missouri River to raise money and awareness for breast cancer.

Dave Cornthwaite began swimming the 1,000 miles in Chamberlain on Aug. 10. He will wrap up the journey in St. Louis at the beginning of October. The rest of his team will make the journey either by canoe or stand-up paddleboat. No members of the team will have any form of motorized transportation for the trip.

Cornthwaite and his team hope to raise $150,000 for CoppaFeel!, a breast cancer awareness organization. The charity was founded by his close friend Kris Hallenga, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 23 after having been misdiagnosed two times in that previous year. The charity aims to educate young people about breast cancer symptoms and how they can prevent late diagnosis.

“So far, it has been a real challenging journey, but it has been going well,” Cornthwaite said Tuesday after he reached Riverside Park. “We all made it to Yankton in one piece.”

The group has traveled about 180 miles — with about 820 still to go. Cornthwaite and his team have been averaging about 10 miles a day without currents, but when they have the current guiding them downstream, they average closer to 25 miles a day.

“We have done with 180 miles so far, most of which with no current at all,” Cornthwaite said. “We have battled headwinds, and I had a pretty bad ear infection only after a week into the journey.”

Cornthwaite is no stranger to adventurous journeys like this one.

From August 2006 to January 2007, he skateboarded 3,618 miles across Australia. He also kayaked 1,540 miles in the Murray River in Australia. In 2011, Cornthwaite and his friend pedaled a tandem bicycle from Vancouver to Las Vegas, a total of nearly 1,400 miles, in just 14 days. He also broke a Guinness World Record in 2011 by paddling the Mississippi River for a total of more than 2,400 miles.

Despite all the adventures he has gone on, Cornthwaite insisted he did not do that much training for this trip.

“Slowly, my body is getting used to being a swimmer. I never really swam before,” he said. “This is just a big challenge and we are all learning as we go.

“I didn’t really do a huge amount of training. I love these journeys, and I’ve done a few before in the past.”

Cornthwaite said he decided on the Missouri River trip because there is no river big enough in the UK, and he wanted to do a 1,000-mile swim journey. He added the Missouri River had been on his mind since he passed its meeting point when he was on his Mississippi River journey last year.

“Swimming is a really difficult sport. It uses every muscle in your body,” he said. “I was ready psychologically, I knew if I could swim 10 meters — and I knew I could because I tried the week before I started the journey — then I could swim 1,000 miles.”

“It’s really just a case of being positive, knowing I could do it and slowly building up my fitness.”

One big inspiration for him on the journey is his mother

“My mom got me some swimming goggles for Christmas, so I decided to use them well on this journey,” Cornthwaite said.

During the times when the team is not swimming, they camp out on sandbars and along the banks of the river in each town at which they stop.

One thing that Cornthwaite really likes about these adventures is meeting new people along the way that help support his team and the cause they are fighting for.

“I love adventures where I have not visited the place before, so everything is brand new,” he said. “Every person we meet is a brand new friend in the making. We’ve had so much support and we’re doing the trip for a really great cause.

“Everyone we meet helps us achieve that goal of raising $150,000 for breast cancer and also helps make a little bit of noise about our journey. We want to meet as many people as we can along the journey,” Cornthwaite added.

The next leg of the journey will take the team 80 miles to Sioux City by Friday.

For more information, follow the team on Facebook at facebook.com/expedition1000 or at swim1000.com.

You can follow Andrew Atwal on Twitter at twitter.com/andrewatwal

http://www.yankton.net/articles/2012/09/05/community/doc5046c9f5eff24068291835.txt