Long Beach native and former Wilson High graduate Natalie Merrow during her 13 hour, 50 minute swim across the Catalina Channel earlier this week. The 30-year old Merrow is already planning and training for her next marathon swim.

1:10pm | Just three days after joining the rare club of people who have successfully completed a swim across the Catalina Channel, open-water swimmer Natalie Merrow is back in the water to begin training for the next challenge.

After nearly ten months of intense training, Merrow completed the 20-mile swim in 13 hours and 50 minutes, a bit longer than she had planned but understandable because she battled several miles of strong current that forced her to swim diagonally. She also suffered through five separate cramps in water that dipped to 60 degrees at one point – not that it bothered Merrow, 30 years old, who added 75 pounds to her frame to handle the cold. “It actually felt like a bath at one point,” she laughs.

The wind kicked up, however, and rough water relentlessly crashed into Merrow’s goal, but extensive training did not betray her and finally her feet touched the slippery, black rocks of the Palos Verdes coast.

“I felt my feet on the rocky bottom and said, ‘Oh my God, it’s here,'” she says. “I climbed up on the rocks on all fours, I was so tired but you have to clear the water without any help or it doesn’t count. I remember this black rock that I stepped on, and just burst into tears. I looked back towards the island and said to myself, ‘I just swam from Catalina to here.’ Its very euphoric.”

But rather than feeling a content sense of accomplishment, completing the Catalina Channel swim only made Merrow thirsty for more. The Long Beach native and Wilson High grad already has the next goal in her sights: swimming the Manhattan Island Marathon Swim (MIMS), possibly as early as next summer.

“It’s a sickness – I’m kind of addicted to marathon swimming now,” she says, relaxing at Aroma di Roma in Belmont Shore, after completing a morning swim to the Seal Beach pier and back. Merrow hasn’t missed a day in the water since her Catalina swim earlier this week. Despite constant congratulations and celebratory meals with friends, she hasn’t lost focus at all.

“I want more. I want the victory.”

At the top of her list is the MIMS event, which along with Catalina and the English Channel form the open-water marathon swimming Triple Crown. It’s definitely Morrow’s future goal, she says, and training starts now.