A 33-year-old endurance athlete has done something that has never been done before. Catherine Breed swam the entire coast of California, from the Oregon border to Mexico, finishing the roughly 900-mile journey in 111 days. Breed started her journey in the Pacific Ocean on the Oregon-California border on July 1, then finished in Imperial Beach on the California-Mexico border on Oct. 18, with a ceremonial finish in Coronado on Oct. 19. Just after 3 p.m. on Oct. 19, Breed swam ashore on Coronado Beach, where there was a welcoming party of people there to greet her with cheers, hugs, flowers and words of encouragement. After thanking her supporters on hand, Breed told NBC 7, “So thrilled to see people, but not surprised because Californians and ocean lovers and people really showed up for this swim and what it meant for this coastline and for inspiring women and girls to get out there. It was amazing.” Breed swam roughly 10 miles a day, swimming for three to six hours a day, often in brutal conditions like sub-50 degree water, dangerous currents, high winds, 7-foot waves and the potential danger of sharks. Gruesome is the adjective to describe her swim, but that probably doesn’t do the accomplishment justice. “It is like doing a trail 50K or a half Iron Man every day for about 110 days,” Breed said in a social media post. Breed’s reasons for doing the swim were to raise awareness for ocean conservation and to inspire women and girls to do amazing things. One of the biggest challenges came at the very end of the swim, Breed said, navigating through the polluted ocean water off Imperial Beach at the U.S.-Mexico border, which she called “some of the dirtiest water in the United States, if not the world.” She described it like “swimming through sewage.” “Everyone’s been so fixated on sharks,” Breed said in a video posted on her Instagram on Sunday. “We are so scared about these animals that live in the ocean that have no interest in us, and we are more fearful about that than we are about the damage and destruction that we are causing to our own home,” Breed said. The project of Breed’s journey was called “Swim California.” On the journey, Breed was accompanied by a team of people on a 52-foot sailboat where they slept, ate and lived for over three months. As Breed swam the length of the state, the sailboat sailed close to her as she made her way down the coast. ...read more read less