Six local women plan to swim the Channel this summer.

The “A2A3 Relay Team” is the brainchild of local attorney Amanda Mercer, a board member of Ann Arbor Active Against ALS. Local residents Kristin McGuire and Dave Lowenschuss founded the charity after their friend Bob Schoeni, a U-M economics and public policy prof, was diagnosed in 2008 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease). The relay team aims to raise $120,000 to support research on the disease, for which there is currently no cure.

Mercer’s energy and ideas have been driving the team’s rigorous training schedule for more than a year. “The goal is four days a week in the water, three weight workouts a week, and one additional cardio–usually the elliptical at the Y,” she explains. The women have been training at various Ann Arbor swimming holes, including the U-M’s Canham Natatorium, the city’s Mack Pool, the Y, and, last summer, the Huron Valley Swim Club and the Fuller Pool.

These are serious swimmers. Three team members–Mercer, Bethany Williston, and Jenny Sutton Jalet–are full-time moms. All three also were varsity swimmers in college (at MSU, Yale, and the U-M, respectively). So were athletic trainer Susan Butcher (EMU) and resident surgeon Emily Kreger (also Yale). Teacher-in-training Melissa Karjala competed for the U-M in water polo before getting her master’s from EMU.

Not only do they plan to swim the Channel from England to France–and back–during the Olympics this July, they want to beat the previous relay record of eighteen hours and fifty-nine minutes. In addition to seeking pledges in support of their own swims, they’re recruiting local high school teams to take part in joint fund-raisers–last fall, four teams raised almost $4,900 for the cause–and inviting non-swimmers to make a “virtual” Channel crossing to benefit A2A3.

“I essentially stole [the idea] from an Australian who was swimming the Channel for charity,” Mercer admits. “Supporters can swim, run, or walk the channel ‘virtually’ on their own schedule. For a $20 donation, people can track their progress online, on our website, and then will receive a commemorative ‘Channel for ALS’ pin for their effort.

“We actually have a woman from Boston, named Susan Rice, who stumbled upon our website and decided to do the virtual crossing,” Mercer adds. “She, however, took it a step further and asked for her own fund-raising page. We gave her one, and she has now raised over $1,000. And the best part is that she hates swimming!”

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Update: In July, the team succeeded in setting a new cross-channel record: http://www.freep.com/article/20120729/SPORTS18/307290315/Six-Michigan-women-set-world-record-for-swimming-English-Channel