After more than 48 hours of swimming, Diana Nyad is just a few miles shy of a goal she's been chasing for more than 35 years.
The final strokes will put her up against two familiar and formidable adversaries: fatigue and jellyfish.
Nyad, 64, on her fifth attempt to swim the 103 miles from Cuba to Florida without a protective cage or flippers, was roughly 2 miles from Key West by late morning Monday, according to her website.
This is the farthest she or anyone else has gone without a shark cage, and the wear on her body is showing. Around 7:30 a.m. ET Monday, she was slurring her speech because of a swollen tongue and lips, her support team reported on its website.
As the team called her around dawn for her first feeding since midnight, she took longer than normal to reach the support boat, the report said.
Though she slurred her speech, the words were understandable. Before resuming her swim-crawl to Key West, her team applied a "sting stopper" substance to her forehead and cheeks in the hopes of warding off jellyfish stings.
"Don't get it on my nose or eyes," she said, according to her website.
Nyad, who began the swim from Cuba on Saturday morning, may be in position to reach land between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET, the website said earlier Monday morning.
Jellyfish stings have helped thwart her attempts before, so divers are swimming ahead of her, collecting jellyfish and moving them out of Nyad's path.
When instructed Monday morning to follow the path that's been cleared for her, she flashed her sense of humor, replying: "I've never been able to follow it in my life," according to the website.
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