Meet Mary Farias and Ride a Wave of Inspiration

Story and Photos
By Kathy Lord Nicolosi

Mary Farias is an icon at Riis Park with her own following and fan club. Everyone from the Park Rangers to the bikers, runners and sun bathers, know Mary. For almost 43 years, Mary has been swimming a mile a day at Riis Park starting the beginning of May, when the water temperature is in the low 50s, through the beginning of January, when the water temperature is usually around 45 degrees. She says the very cold water makes her feel great, and studies have consistently shown that immersing yourself in very cold water for extended periods of time, has many health benefits. She told me she very rarely gets sick, not even a cold.

Farias, who is now retired, taught herself to swim at Madison High School when she was 14 years old. Shortly after that, she joined her first swim team. By time she was 22 years old, she joined a group of swimmers that introduced her to ocean swimming and that was it — Farias had found her true happy place in the water. She said, “Swimming in the ocean makes me feel free. I love the challenge of not knowing how the water will be that day — choppy, calm, perhaps a strong wind or a strong current — it doesn’t matter. I love not knowing what to expect. No matter what, nothing stops me from going in.”

Each day Farias and her husband, Miguel, show up at Riis Park for her daily swim. If you walk out of the first small parking lot to the water, that’s where she begins her journey. She swims parallel to the shore using landmarks like the Riis Park Bathhouse, the Wise Clock, the flagpole and the rock jetty, to help her know where she is and how far she’s gone. She told me that landmarks like the ones at Riis make it a wonderful place to swim. A lot of beaches have rows of houses along the shoreline, which do not serve as good landmarks when you are swimming long distances, as they all kind of look the same.

Her husband Miguel told me that when she first started doing these long swims, he was a bit nervous waiting for her to return, but now he says, “I’m used to it, this is what she loves to do.” While Miguel waits for Mary to finish her swim, he stays busy either running, riding his bike, or practicing martial arts off on the pavement somewhere.

The longest distance Farias has swum is four miles, which she has done a bunch of times. Now, she says, she would rather pace herself and swim every day rather than swim really long distances and have to skip a day or two to recover.

One of the questions I asked Mary was if she is afraid of sharks, she immediately said, “No, I’m not afraid at all.” She told me that one day a shark swam right by her in the opposite direction and shortly after that, they waved everyone out of the water because guess what? There were sharks! She has also seen stingrays. “There were two big stingrays that swam right under me,” Farias said. “It looked like someone had opened an umbrella right in front of me and then I realized what it was.”

One of her most memorable moments was when there were hundreds of dolphins swimming all around her. She could hear them squeaking, a few swam around and beneath her. She mentioned that ten years ago you would never have seen all this sea life as the water wasn’t clean enough, but now it is, which is great news. Aside from sea life, while swimming in the ocean a hundred yards offshore, Farias actually made two friends, Alba and Michael Dwass. The three swimmers crossed paths while swimming, and when they began talking, they found out that all of their children (Mary and Miguel have two boys and Alba and Michael have a boy and a girl) are lifeguards at Riis Park. A friendship developed and now Alba and Michael combine riding their bikes part of the way and hopping on trains part of the way, from NYC to Riis Park, so that they can often join Farias for a daily swim.

Mary Farias is a happy, friendly woman, who loves swimming, loves people, and inspires all those who meet her. She embraces everyone who stops to say good morning and talk a bit. I asked if she would like to give me a quote about her ocean swims and she said, “Well, I always have my own lane.”