By Emily Sampl<\/p>\n
BOULDER, Colorado, November 19. EVERY year, the city of Chicago hosts the annual Big Shoulders open water swim on the banks of Lake Michigan. For the past couple years, few women have been able to keep up with 31-year-old Joy Stover. In this year's race, held Sept. 8, Stover completed the 5K swim in one hour, four minutes, 47 seconds, good for 13th overall and third among women. Each year she participates, Stover consistently places among the top women, and she does it despite having little open water experience. <\/p>\n
"I hadn't done any open water swims until after college," she said. "The first time I did Big Shoulders it was only the second open water race I'd done." <\/p>\n
Besides Big Shoulders, Stover has also swum at the Alcatraz open water event, as well as the open water portion of the 2006 Masters World Championships in San Francisco, where she finished 10th. <\/p>\n
Being a Chicago native, however, she never passes up the opportunity to return home.<\/p>\n
"I used to live in Chicago. I don't live there anymore, but I love the opportunity to go there for a weekend. The meet is always really well run, and the water's a good temperature, usually in the high 60s or low 70s," Stover said. <\/p>\n
Stover said she enjoys the challenge of open water swimming, and the fact that it's much longer than any race in the pool, so there's plenty of time to develop a strong pace. <\/p>\n
"Plus it's cool because you can see another city from a perspective most people don't get to experience," she added. <\/p>\n
Next year's Big Shoulders swim is still 10 months away, so in the meantime Stover is focusing on her next challenge: Masters World Championships in April in Perth, Australia. At the 2006 World Championships, Stover had four top-five finishes, including second in the 400m and 800m free, third in the 200m free and fourth in the 200m back. This time around, she's hoping for higher places and faster times.<\/p>\n
"I'd like to improve my times from 2006, and if I could move up a couple places that'd be great," she said. <\/p>\n
Accomplishing either of these goals would surely put Joy Stover head and shoulders above the rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Emily Sampl BOULDER, Colorado, November 19. EVERY year, the city of Chicago hosts the annual Big Shoulders open water swim on the banks of Lake Michigan. For the past<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-masters","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n