Diana Nyad

In her fifth attempt, endurance swimmer Diana Nyad has completed a 110-mile swim from Cuba to Key West, Florida, making the 64-year-old the first person to make the swim without a shark cage.

Her three-day swim began Saturday, August 31, and ended around 2 p.m. on Monday, September 2, clocking in at just over 50 hours.

Nyad, a keynote speaker at the TEAMS ’12 Conference & Expo in Detroit, most recently attempted the feat in August 2012, but was forced to cut her swim short after extreme lightening storms and multiple potentially deadly box jellyfish stings. On her website, Nyad’s team reported more box jellyfish sightings in the area of her swim on the morning of September 2.

Nyad’s other long-distance swimming accomplishments include swimming around Manhattan in 1975 and completing a 102.5-mile swim from the Bahamas to Florida in 1979.