Summer Wesson has kayaked over 50 Catalina Channel crossings and is a founding board member of the San Diego Open Water Swimming Association. In this Going Long conversation she shares how to become a trusted open ocean support kayaker, the mistakes swimmers make when choosing support, and what it really takes to be the person in the water next to an athlete on the biggest swim of their life.

Dan Simonelli has coached and crewed hundreds of marathon swims from La Jolla Cove to the English Channel. He is a 2024 International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame Honor Coach and founder of the Open Water Swim Academy.

In this episode of Going Long, he shares the philosophy behind his coaching, what he actually does when a nervous swimmer wants to turn back, and the one mistake he sees on crew boats that ends swims that should never have stopped.

Sports dietician and seven-time All-American swimmer Jennifer Brunelli breaks down the most common fueling mistakes open water and marathon swimmers make, why you have to train the gut like you train the muscles, and what individualized sweat testing reveals about your hydration needs.

If you have ever wondered whether what you are eating is holding your swimming back, this one is for you.

Most swimmers either avoid strength training entirely or bail on it after two weeks. Dan Daly has seen it happen for twenty years. In this Going Long conversation, he breaks down exactly why that happens, and what it’s costing you in the water.

She built Team B*REAL for the people who were always told sport wasn’t for them. In this Going Long conversation, Adina O’Neill talks about where that mission came from, what forward is a pace actually means when you’re in cold open water and the finish line is nowhere in sight, and why her Open Water 101 session at BTB 2026 is the one this community has been waiting for.

He had no swim background at 30. A few years later he was a world champion. In this Going Long conversation, Peter Plavec talks about that first terrifying dip in the Danube, what cold water does to your body and your mind, and why the sport he discovered in his 30s took him to the top.

She's crewed more than 30 marathon swims. She’s the VP of MOWSA. She's won the International Swimming Hall of Fame's highest writing honor twice. And she was on the boat for every one of the 54 hours it took Sarah Thomas to make history in the English Channel. In this conversation, Elaine Howley talks about what it means to give everything you have to a sport, not just as a swimmer, but as the person holding it all together from the boat.

She swam 104 miles without stopping. She crossed the English Channel four times in a row. In her first Going Long conversation, Sarah Thomas talks about the swim that almost broke her — and the lesson she carries into every swim since.