I’m here today to support GLOW Open Water Swimming and swim with some excellent people in Lake Ontario.

My favourite body of water is the North Channel, its a body of water between Northern Ireland and Scotland.

So a couple of years ago when I was training to swim the English Channel. I ran into a bunch of guys from Ireland in Italy and I just fell in love with them, they were the most awesome guys I’ve ever met and I realized I had time after the English Channel that maybe I’d be able to go over to Ireland and visit them. So I emailed them, why don’t I come over, we can do a swim, they said great. I went over swam the English Channel, it was 2016, went over to Ireland to visit my friends and we swam the North Channel.

The English Channel was delightful but I had been training for it for two years, it had been hyped up as this was going to be the most epic brutal swim you’ve ever done and it was such a nice day, it was a little anticlimactic, and then for me the North Channel was everything the English Channel wasn’t. It was unpredictable, it was rough, I had all these great friends there so I just keep going back.

Open water swimming is huge in Ireland, everyone gets in there, I think people here, it’s not as much a part of our culture here. I’m from the states but I think same [here]. It’s an island, Ireland and you have to take advantage of it, it’s just beautiful water, it’s really clean, there are dolphins, it’s just incredible.