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Rachael Myrow: This is Forum. I’m Rachael Myrow, in for Mina Kim.
From swimming the length of Lake Tahoe in record time to becoming the first person to swim from the Golden Gate Bridge to Half Moon Bay, Catherine Breed has built a reputation for tackling swims most people wouldn’t dare contemplate. Now she’s preparing for her most audacious challenge yet: starting in July, a three-to-four-month swim along the California coast from the Oregon border to the Mexican border. Breed joins us now in studio to talk about endurance, fear, meticulous preparation, and why her team calls this unprecedented journey a love letter to California. Catherine, thank you so much for joining us.
Catherine Breed: Thank you so much for having me, Rachael.
Rachael Myrow: My first question is perhaps the most obvious. Why do you want to do this?
Catherine Breed: That is probably the most common question I get — why. And I think there are two factors: the intrinsic and the extrinsic.
Starting with the intrinsic: I grew up on this coastline. I was raised sailing. I learned how to surf in Pacifica, at Ocean Beach. At one point in my life, I think I had swum and sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge more times than I had driven over it. This coastline has been there for me in good times and in hard times. There’s a deep emotional connection — I want to learn more about this place. I recreate in it, but there are so many nooks and crannies along this coast, and so many issues happening, that I’m not fully aware of. The swim is like this amazing lesson plan, and I love being in the ocean. I love it so much. What a gift, to spend four months exploring this coast doing something challenging. Seeing how tough you are — that’s a privilege.
But the internal reasons alone aren’t enough when things get really hard. So there has to be a bigger why. For me, that comes in two parts. One is the mission of the swim itself: to tell stories through sport — about the people, places, and problems along our coastline. Women’s sports is having such a moment right now — actually, it’s not a moment, women’s sports is here to stay. We’re going to use that platform to storytell through our media partners, and then turn the mic over to local conservation groups to talk about the work they’re doing on the ground and how people can get involved in their own backyard.
The other reason is that I founded a nonprofit called Sea Dreamers, which aims to get more women and girls into the ocean. Women represent only about one percent of the seafaring and maritime industry, and yet studies have shown they are some of the loudest voices for conservation. So the swim has all these tendrils — ocean conservation, empowering women, empowering people — and also just the joy of spending time in a place I love. That’s probably the best long-winded answer I can give you.
Rachael Myrow: It makes sense. It’s a kind of apotheosis. You’ve done so many things people called impossible before you did them. In 2022, you became the first person ever to swim the twenty-seven miles from the Golden Gate Bridge to Half Moon Bay — cold water, heavy currents, shark country, a swim a lot of people thought couldn’t be done. You hold the overall speed record across Monterey Bay, men and women included. What drives you to keep pushing yourself so hard?
Catherine Breed: When I started in marathon swimming, I had been a pool swimmer my whole life. I still loved the water, but I didn’t want to race anymore. I got introduced to the Dolphin Club and fell in love with it. The members there said, “You should do the English Channel.” I actually remembered that in high school I’d swum a 5K open water race, gotten out, and told my mom I hated it and would never do it again. So it’s funny that years later, when Dolphin Club members were encouraging me toward the English Channel, I was skeptical. But with enough gentle peer pressure, I decided: alright, I’ll swim the length of Lake Tahoe.
It went really well. I broke the overall record and became the first person to break nine hours. And during that swim, I genuinely enjoyed seeing who I was when things got hard. I enjoyed getting to know that person and being proud of her. Truly challenging yourself is a privilege — not everyone gets to do these crazy endurance events, and I feel lucky to be able to explore that.
Then as I kept going — the English Channel, the North Channel — after Monterey Bay in 2020, people started reaching out. Someone said, “Because of you, I got back in the ocean.” Another person said they’d lost fifty pounds. A dad messaged me during the swim to say his daughters and he had stayed up all night watching my tracker. And I thought — wait, I get to have this platform that inspires people? So it became this culmination of everything. For me, success is someone saying, “Because of you, my life changed in a positive way.” I get to do something I love and create a positive impact at the same time. Why not go full gas while I can? I want kids one day — I won’t always be able to do this. So it’s fun right now to explore it fully.
Rachael Myrow: You swam at Cal as an elite competitor. What’s the difference between swimming in a pool and swimming in the open ocean?
Catherine Breed: They are completely different sports. In a pool, you’re in a confined box with a black line on the bottom. I do love pool swimming — I still do it all the time. It’s a great way to build fitness, and I love going fast and beating my times. In the pool, you’re the master of control.
In the ocean, it’s completely different. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from my swims is that you cannot bring hubris or expectations into the ocean — whether you’re surfing, spearfishing, sailing, or swimming. You can’t. When I get in the ocean, it’s a full surrender. You’re completely present. Your only job is to put one arm in front of the other and be at peace with whatever the ocean gives you that day. I really enjoy that. They both have their place, but open ocean swimming — wild swimming, as people call it — is something really special.
Rachael Myrow: So you’re not bringing your phone into the water. How do you stay sane swimming for hours offshore?
Catherine Breed: That’s probably the second most common question I get — what do you think about? My life is incredibly busy right now. I’m wrapping up a full-time career I’ve had for ten years, founding the nonprofit, and planning this swim, which has been three years in the making with the help of so many people. The number of emails I have to answer every day — don’t look at my inbox. So swimming is actually the little gift I get each day, a chance to shut my brain off. During Swim California, I’m going to get to be truly present — enjoying the scenery and focusing on the task at hand.
I also do math problems sometimes. And I’m really bad at math, so they take up quite a bit of time.
Rachael Myrow: Math problems? Did I hear that right?
Catherine Breed: Not like “what’s four plus four.” More like: if this is my pace and this is how many miles I have left, how long will it take me to get there, how many strokes will I take in that time, what’s my ETA? It’s all conjecture, because I don’t really know exactly where I am — but it does occupy some mental space.
Rachael Myrow: Internal GPS. Can you dial the clock back and explain how swimming with the Dolphin Club got you on this route, so to speak?
Catherine Breed: I was actually just there this morning. I’ll tell this quick story because it’s so lovely: there was a little seal floating in the water while I was floating, and it looked at me and swam right over to my toes and started circling them. I put my face underwater to see if I could spot it, and it put its face about six inches from mine. I could see its little whiskers. That’s how I started my day. It doesn’t get more special than that.
But the Dolphin Club — I was introduced to it in 2016. On my first swim, I walked around Muni Pier, jumped in, swam back, and thought: sign me up. I’m in. The Dolphin Club is living history, a living museum, and this amazing cross-section of San Francisco society. All different types of people, all ages, all with their own goals. I’ve given talks on longevity, and I think that challenging yourself consistently over the years is one of the keys to it. You see that at the Dolphin Club — members well into their eighties and nineties still showing up every day. I’ve wondered with friends whether it’s the cold water that preserves them or the community. I think it’s both.
I’ve been surrounded by open water and marathon swimming greats for the past ten years, and when you surround yourself with people who see sparks of potential in you, you want to start exploring that. I’ve gotten that at the Dolphin Club and also at the Olympic Club, and I’m deeply grateful for it.
Rachael Myrow: It sounds like, as much as open ocean swimming seems like a solitary sport, it really isn’t. You’re never alone.
Catherine Breed: Ocean marathon swimming is the furthest thing from a solo sport. The only solo part is when your face is in the water. It requires a huge team — a captain, a co-captain, an official observer, someone to feed you, two or three kayakers. The minimum crew for one of these swims is about five people. And it’s exhausting for everyone on the boat too, because these swims typically take place overnight — we start around nine or eleven PM — so they’re staying up all night.
Rachael Myrow: You’re a race car with a pit crew.
Catherine Breed: Exactly — a pit crew. And you cannot do it alone. I have the best friends in the world. The best people have accompanied me on these swims, and Swim California is the epitome of that. The number of people who have given their time to help must be in the hundreds by now.
Rachael Myrow: We’re talking with Catherine Breed — ultra-endurance swimmer and president and founder of Sea Dreamers — about her audacious 900-mile swim along the California coastline, coming up this summer. We want you to join the conversation. Have you ever attempted a tough endurance event? Maybe not something on this scale — but what did you learn about yourself from it? Email your comments and questions to forum@kqed.org, or find us on Facebook or Instagram at KQED. Whatever you do, stay with us.
