Swimming unfathomable lengths in open water

Published Aug. 3, 2012

Melodee Nugent swims, and not in the short bursts of Michael Phelps or Missy Franklin. She swims miles, more than two-dozen of them in her latest race, the inaugural Extreme North Dakota Watersports Endurance Test. The 45-year-old mother of three from Mukwonago was one of a dozen competitors who ignored the adage "people don't swim in the Red River" and completed the 27-mile course from Grand Forks, N.D., to Oslo, Minn.