Wow.

There is a woman out on Lake Ontario right now. She has been out there since Monday morning. That's more than 48 hours in the water.

No, she's not dead. Nor is she in trouble, although she may well be crazy. Her name is Vicki Keith and she's a marathon swimmer who, at 44, has decided to break her own world record by swimming 80 kilometres from Picton to Kingston. She's getting people to donate money so that the Kingston YMCA can build a new swimming pool with better handicapped access for Keith's swim team, the Penguins, who are children with disabilities (www.penguinscanfly.ca).

It's absolutely amazing. She hasn't slept, she hasn't gotten out of the water, she's not wearing a wet suit (it's against marathon swimming rules), she only eats chicken soup and peanut butter every two hours or so, and she spent most of the last night hallucinating and not actually making any progress in her swim because of a strong headwind and metre-high waves. She's expected to lose 20 pounds during her swim.

Did I mention she's doing the butterfly? Yes, that hardest stroke of all, the one that my friend Catherine (who's been on more than a few swim teams herself) swam for 100 metres and felt like she was going to drown. That's the stroke Vicki Keith's been doing for two days now.

So that's my story. Everything I do today (coil internet cords in residence, eat lunch, return library books, watch tv, pack for leaving Kingston, feel sorry for myself) I do with the image in my head of an exhausted 44 year old woman butterflying across Lake Ontario to raise money for kids.