Then you find out he's 67 years old.

"Age to me is just a number," he pauses, "except for seven-oh." A hearty laugh escapes. After 55 years of competitive swimming, he claims his last swim competition will be the world championships at Stanford in 2006. He'll be 69. New challenges await when he enters his 70s ("Time to get on with things!" he says). He races paddleboards successfully, and wants to try outrigger canoe paddling.

In the mean time, however, Leskovitz will again make his mark in the North Shore Swim series, beginning June 26 with a 1-mile race from Sunset Beach to 'Ehukai Beach Park.

Forget the age group contest: He still places in the top 15 overall in open-water events, and manages to finish in the top 100 out of 1,000 international competitors in the Waikiki Roughwater Swim each year. His best time over the 2.4-mile course is a blazing 53 minutes.

"He's a staple in most of those races," says Chris Gardner, promotional director for Aqua Sphere and co-director of the North Shore Swim Series. "I'm sure there are some guys in his age group who would regret if he ever got on a bike (to compete in triathlons)."

When told of Leskovitz's age, Gardner, who has known the swimmer for years, becomes incredulous. "Sixty-seven going on 29!"

Indeed, his regimen would impress any 29-year-old. Five days a week, he swims intervals with the UH masters team at 5:30 a.m. Afterward, he drives to Outrigger Canoe Club for another 2,000 meters in the ocean with training partners two to four decades younger.

On weekends Leskovitz joins other athletes who swim from Kaimana Beach to the Hilton Hawaiian Village. Sometimes he swims back, completing four to five miles. Weekly weight workouts supplement water time.

"He's a world class masters swimmer continuing to search for the path of least resistance in the water, and he's excited about it," said Joe Lileikis, a Kalani High School teacher and O'ahu Club masters swim coach. Lileikis has coached Leskovitz for years. "He doesn't struggle through; it's a joy. It's like he's cut 30 or 40 years off his life and is back on a college team."

Said Leskovitz: "It's not work. It's all pleasure."

Though friends describe him as a "dapper" dresser, he's often spotted in surf shorts, old tennis shoes without laces and a T-shirt from a 1998 swim race with the sleeves cut off. Thick salt-and-pepper hair offsets a tan face and toned body that most people would attribute to an athlete in his forties.

Now retired, Leskovitz spent his life as an entrepreneur and investor after leaving the Marine Corps. Born on an airplane departing China for Hawai'i — his father was in the Marine Corps also — he remembers hiding in the sugar cane fields in Pearl Harbor as a 5-year-old on Dec. 7, 1941. The family soon was evacuated to California, where he spent much of his youth. Though he swam for USC, it wasn't until he trained with the Marine Corps' Special Services — in the late 1950s when several Olympians emerged from military programs — that he became really competitive. "From donkey patrol, I reached that other level," he laughs.

After stints in London, Canada and South Beach, Fla., a painful end to an 18-year marriage returned him to his first love: the Islands. "Spiritually, this is my home," he said. "It's safe."

Opening a yogurt and peeling a banana after his morning workout, Leskovitz said he takes after his Italian mother (his father was of Yugoslavian descent), and loves a good meal. In addition to monitoring his diet and weight, his goal as he ages is to maintain his current speed. "I think if I can hold the same times ... over the last 20 years, then I'm gaining," he says, referring to the inevitable decline associated with age.

But most importantly, said Leskovitz, "you don't want to take it too serious." The arrival is short-lived.

"It's the journey, the training, the anxieties, what you do, how you evolve."