I started swimming in the rivers in 1999, but I'd actually always wanted to. I'm a native New Yorker, and with a love of swimming, you're just dying to get into any body of water that you can! But the rivers were always off-limits, and I was kind of scared of them.

Then, one day I happened upon a post card for an organization that ran a couple of races in the river. I trained like crazy, and I qualified, and the first race was just a half mile, which is not a very long distance, but I was terrified!

So, in that first race, I get into the water, and all of a sudden it hit me, "I'm swimming in the river!". And I'm looking around, and there's the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty, and it's fantastic. The race is timed with the tides, so it's really, really fast—much faster than you could ever do in the pool. So you're speeding along, and watching the city go by, and before you know it, you're at the finish line!

When I first started swimming in the river, they recommended that you get a tetanus shot, but that was it, and now they no longer necessitate the tetanus shot. Over the years, I've seen the river growing cleaner, and I've never really worried about the stuff in the river anyway, because it's either going to be natural things, like a seaweed clump or a fish head, or it's gonna be a potato chip bag. And you know, neither one of them is that frightening to me!

The first time I did the Manhattan Marathon as a relay, my stretch was up by Yankee Stadium. And there I was, swimming along, and there's the bridges and the traffic, and then I look up, and there's Yankee Stadium! And you're never going to see that from that perspective! As a city kid, you know, I thought I'd seen it all, but this just gives me another point of view of the city that I love!