After a long day in the water Saturday, Kalispell swimmer Emily von Jentzen became the third person - and first woman - to swim the length of Flathead Lake.

Von Jentzen reached the shore of Boettcher Park in Polson at 10:49 p.m. Saturday after swimming for 18 hours, 26 minutes. Officially she covered 28 miles - although von Jentzen said the actual mileage is probably closer to 33.

A crowd of about 50 people, including an ill Missoula girl to whom the swim was dedicated, greeted von Jentzen in Polson.

On Sunday, after icing her sore shoulders and recuperating from the previous day's hard work with cinnamon rolls and a "Grey's Anatomy" marathon, von Jentzen didn't minimize the struggles she'd faced the day before.

"It really was just kind of like life," she said. "There were dark spots that were really bad when I really didn't know how much farther I could go."

Those dark spots came around mile nine, again between miles 17 and 20, and finally in about the final four miles of the swim - until the lights at Polson began to make the end seem like reality.

At one point finishing seemed impossible. Simone Musbo, a member of her team, jumped in the water next to von Jentzen and asked what was wrong.

"My shoulders hurt so bad!" she told him. Then she started to cry.

When she finished, Musbo encouraged her to keep going.

"OK, now you're done. Take a deep breath. You're stronger than that. Let's keep going," he told her.

It was support from people like Musbo that helped von Jentzen finish.

"There were hundreds of people rooting for me. If they weren't there at the lake, they were glued to their computers because my sister was updating my Facebook page," she said.

The route von Jentzen took kept her relatively close to the shoreline. Between the wind and getting off course despite help from GPS, she thinks she swam about 33 miles - well above the 27.3-mile length she had anticipated.

She worried that by the time she finally made it to shore, no one would be left to witness her feat. She also worried that 3-year-old Karmyn Flanagan, for whom von Jentzen did the swim as a fundraiser, would be long gone.

"She's so little. She's got a bedtime," von Jentzen worried.

Having a purpose greater than herself helped as well, von Jentzen said. She had first heard about Karmyn, who has acute lymphoblatic leukemia, when she saw a flier about the little girl at the Missoula Staples store. That's when it occurred to von Jentzen that her swimming expedition could be used as a fundraiser for Karmyn.

"When I started to get discouraged, I kept coming back to Karmyn," she said. "Had I been doing that just to see if I could do it, I wouldn't have finished maybe."

Readers can learn more about von Jentzen's Flathead Lake swim on her blog: http://50kforkarmyn.blogspot.com.

Donations for Flanagan may be sent to von Jentzen's Missoula post office box: P.O. 3601, Missoula, MT 59803.