Athletic Trainer Helps Ultra-Endurance Swimmer Conquer an Unprecedented Project

Stanford’s Katie Susskind Risso, ATC, is the medical lead for Catherine Breed’s historic California coastal swim

This summer and fall, Catherine (Cat) Breed is swimming the entire length of California, about 900 miles, to raise awareness about the importance of ocean conservation. This history-making project would be impossible without a team of supporters behind her, including medical lead Katie Susskind Risso, ATC.

Susskind’s day job is helping young athletes recover as an athletic trainer at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. Her work with Breed helps her show up for the young athletes she helps every day, some of whom aspire to be like Breed.

Susskind and Breed have been friends for a long time, bonding over adventures like skiing and hiking Half Dome.

“She’s much faster than me at all athletic events, but we still have a good time,” Susskind said.

They discussed the idea of the California coast swim for years, as Breed did other impressive open-water swims, including San Francisco to Half Moon Bay and her record-setting swim from Southeast Farallon Island to the Golden Gate Bridge in 2025. During these swims, Breed didn’t always have a medical professional supporting her, but Susskind knew it was critical for a 900-mile attempt.

“When it became more concrete, I offered to be her medical director,” Susskind said. “You need someone in that role if something happens. I have experience doing traditional athletic training—emergency management on the field when somebody goes down—and I have an interest in working with female athletes and knowledge of their unique health needs. Not only was I her friend, I also had the training to do this role really well.”

Susskind built the rest of the medical team, including Emily Kraus, MD, a pediatric sports medicine specialist at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health and a world-renowned expert on female athletes, and Jonathan Carter, MD, a surgeon at UCSF who serves as the lead physician. The team also includes a consulting sports nutritionist, a massage therapist, and a research assistant/data analyst. Since Susskind can’t be on the boat most days, the medical team communicates daily with Jonathan Cahill, OEC, WFR, the lead water safety expert on the boat, who responds to any emergencies and monitors Breed’s general health and vital signs.

The team relies on a 20-page medical protocol that covers everything from monitoring daily vitals to medical concerns like hypothermia, all the way to any encounters with marine life.

“We always say, prepare for the worst and hope for the best,” Susskind said. “This is an unprecedented athletic feat, so there will be unprecedented medical things that come up.”

One example: Susskind and the medical team believe that Breed had gout during part of her swim. Gout, a form of arthritis that is more common in an older population who eat a lot of fructose (sugar) and red meat, was “not on our bingo card,” said Susskind.

While they couldn’t definitively diagnose Breed during her swim, her symptoms improved when she switched some of the fructose-heavy feeds during her swims to Coca-Cola and other products that had a different ratio of sweeteners. Breed, who needs to fuel up every 30 minutes while swimming for hours a day and days at a time, was certainly consuming more sports drinks than the average weekend warrior.

As Breed passes the halfway mark, Susskind thinks she is hitting her stride.

“The first few weeks were really cold and windy and challenging, but her body has adjusted, which is incredible,” Susskind said. “The farther south she goes, the water is warmer and the coast is more forgiving, the waters are calmer. The biggest thing we’re watching now is the level of sewage runoff in the water in parts of Southern California—we have a plan for how we’ll manage that.”

If all goes (mostly) according to plan, Breed should finish her swim in October.

“It’s very cool as an athletic trainer to be involved in something that’s an incredible athletic feat but also bigger than that,” Susskind said. “Cat is using her athletic ability to make the world better.”