One Chicago summer day, while home after her first year of college, Boston College Law School professor Sharon Beckman saw an ad in the newspaper for a 10-mile swimming competition in Lake Michigan. As captain of Harvard’s swim team at the time, she was used to competing as a backstroker and middle-distance freestyler, but had never tried swimming long distances. On a whim, she decided to jump into the lake to see if she could swim the 10 miles for fun.

Little did Beckman know that this particular swim was part of a world marathon swimming circuit. The City of Chicago had been given permission to hold one of their swims in the lake, on the condition that they opened it to the public. Beckman estimates that she was probably one of two or three locals who showed up to swim, and she fell in love with it.

“That’s how I discovered that, for whatever reason, mentally and physically, I’m made for [open-water swimming],” she said.