From the time she was 3, Elizabeth Smith loved to swim. Her parents started her early, determined that each of their children should master a sport as well as a musical instrument.

Now 40, Smith sees that her parents' philosophy was a lifetime gift -- she swam competitively in high school and college and still swims for pleasure. In September, she will use her swimming skills to give something back to her parents by raising money for multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood.

Her father, James Smith, was diagnosed with the disease about a year ago.

Elizabeth Smith will swim more than a mile, from the island of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay to San Francisco, to encourage donations for research.

Her goal is to raise $1,000 for the disease and to finish in the top 100 swimmers. Her Sept. 10 swim will be part of the Swim of the Centurians, an organized event in which about 350 participants jump from a ferry at Alcatraz Island and swim back to an area of San Francisco called Aquatic Park. Depending on how the currents carry her, Smith's swim could be anywhere from 1.25 miles to 1.75 miles.

"I'm confident I can do the distance," Smith said. "But I am a little leery about being in the bay."

No sharks are in the open water, but the water can be choppy and the current swift, up to 8 mph. That equates to twice as fast as the quickest human can swim, Smith said.

The currents can be unpredictable, too.

"If you get caught in one of the currents they call dead water, it's like a pool of water circling. It tries to pull you back out," Smith said.

Those currents can be exhausting, she said, requiring extra effort to stay on track.

Smith is doing her best to prepare for the unexpected. She hired a professional triathlete as a personal trainer, and receives coaching and advice by e-mail. The trainer, Rachael Sears, of Richmond, Calif., has completed the Alcatraz swim many times and can issue knowledgeable warnings. Sears will meet with Smith in California several days before the race and coach her through the basics of open-water swimming.

Her current training program mixes swimming with weight training and yoga. The schedule was a pleasant surprise for Smith, who feared endless hours of swimming would be required.

"It's not as bad as I initially thought," she said. "Six or seven hours a week of training, in the overall scheme, isn't too bad."

Three mornings a week, Smith heads from her home in New Castle, Lawrence County, to the Butler YMCA and swims for an hour before proceeding to her nearby law office. The strength training is twice a week, an hour each time.

Once a week, Smith stretches all her muscles out with yoga.

"It helps with body alignment," she said. "Especially in an open-water swim, you want to have proper body alignment to be an efficient swimmer."

Smith is not intimidated by long swims; when she competed in college, she swam 1,650 yards, or about a mile.

But if she ever grows weary of her schedule, Smith only has to think of her mission.

Smith, too, has reaped unexpected benefits from those long, quiet mornings in the water.

"It's been really therapeutic for me, with my father being sick, to kind of work through what's going on with him," she said.