Courtesy of WOWSA, Huntington Beach, California.
Ubiquitous Bill Ireland has his usual travel-filled schedule of open water swims this summer.
The 56-year-old attorney has arguably participated in the greatest number of open water swims of any masters swimmer throughout his four-decade career.
On July 16th, he will participate in the U.S. Masters Swimming 10 km marathon swimming championship in a lake near Ashland, Oregon.
“I did a swim there several years ago. Applegate Lake is a beautiful lake and having a reason to go to Ashland is always good. It is a very nice small town with excellent quality theater and good food.”
Regarding his career, he discussed with Rob”I started swimming masters swimming when I was in law school in about 1982, with SCAQ — and nearly 30 years later, I am still swimming with the same group, some of the same coaches and swimmers over all those years, but mostly not. It’s hard to remember why I started — I think I was just in the habit of swimming for exercise when I was in law school and I followed some friends to SCAQ. Clay Evans and Bonnie Adair were great coaches and I stuck with them—and it. I’m sure both have wished I had wandered off sometime, but I haven’t.”
This year, he has already done the Hurricane Man Rough Water Swim in Florida and the 10 km Por La Libre in Cancun, Mexico. “Ahead are the 10 km in Oregon, the Bosphoros Cross-Continental Swim in Turkey, the Maui Channel Swim between Lanai and Maui in Hawaii, the Waikiki Roughwater Swim on Oahu, and the Lake George Marathon Swim relay in New York. It should be a good summer.”
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