CLAY TOWNSHIP, Mich — The Shark is in the water. And he will be for a while.
Long-distance swimmer Jim Dreyer, who calls himself “The Shark,” jumped into Lake St. Clair near the Michigan-Canada border Monday to begin what he hopes will be a 22-mile success story — all while hauling a ton of bricks.
The soon-to-be-50-year-old plans to come ashore 30 hours later on Tuesday afternoon at Detroit’s Belle Isle to greet fans, well-wishers and representatives of Habitat for Humanity, the charity that inspired Dreyer to undertake his latest swim.
A 22-mile swim across Lake St. Clair is like a dip in the water for a guy who has direct crossings of all five Great Lakes under his swim belt.
So to make it interesting, Dreyer is carrying two dinghies filled with 334 bricks. And he’s swimming solo without a support boat.
At a weight of 6 pounds per brick, the motivational speaker from Byron Center, Mich., is towing more than 2,000 pounds behind him. Dreyer calls it his “train of pain.”
