Pete Donahue is 82 years old and still wet behind the ears.

He brings it on himself. He's a swimmer.

Donahue has been stroking out a little more than a mile a session three times a week at the old Fitzsimons facility.

He was honored Monday in the City of Aurora's Swim the Peaks promotion. The program is designed for people to swim an accumulated 147 miles, the calculated distance of climbing all of Colorado's high peaks.

He received a framed towel.

Donahue was credited for swimming the equivalent of climbing Colorado's Fourteeners 34 times, even though he swims horizontally instead of straight up.

Donahue started swimming in the early '80s in the city's Swim for Fit or Fit for Swim program - he can't recall the name.

Since, he has logged 5,123 miles in laps.

He was rewarded with certificates - one for every 50 miles. He has enough to wallpaper a bedroom. "Once I started, I just kept it up," he said.

He started with five laps and kept moving up. He measured it, doing 27 laps - 5,400 feet.

"At one time, I was up to two miles," he said. "I got bored with it. It took about an hour and 20 minutes. I'm back to a mile. Now, it takes me almost an hour. But I'm comfortable with the pace I've got going."

Donahue grew up in New York. He dropped out of high school to join the military in 1944. He wanted to be a fighter pilot. But there were a lot of guys in the cockpits by then. So the Air Force sent him to gunnery school.

He arrived in Okinawa, prepared to join thousands of others in the planned invasion of Japan. But two atomic bombs brought the war to an end.

He was shipped back stateside, serving as an instructor.

Donahue stayed in the service, eventually becoming a pilot. He served as an instructor in the states, Korea and Japan.

After he retired, he moved to Aurora, taking a job as a flight instructor for United Airlines at the old Stapleton International Airport.

Nowadays, he volunteers, answering travelers' questions at Denver International Airport.

"I can't stay away from it," he said.

Donahue has settled in as a Coloradan. He has six children who live in metropolitan Denver. His wife, the former Nancy Flowers, died in 2007 after 54 years of marriage.

"I met her at an officer's club in Enid, Okla.," he said. "She was visiting her sister, who was married to one of the guys that I flew with."

He swims Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the Anschutz Medical Campus.

Once he finishes his laps, he eases into the hot tub.

"I get a massage, relax. They have real nice jets in the hot tub," he said. "I flew 'em and now I'm getting hit by 'em."