Serpentine Mile 37F (2.8C) - Did It!

I finally achieved my personal goal of swimming a mile in a water temperature under 40F. It's been a mild winter in London so it was a long wait but on 16 Dec 2007, the air was 33F (the shot at the beginning was over an hour after the swim and the air had gone up to 34) and the water 37F at the Serpentine. It took me over 34mins. In the summer, my fastest mile was 28:21 (Radford Mile 16 Jun) so the cold slowed me down some but I also stopped any other swimming due to my local training pool closing for repairs so I also lost some speed due to lack of training. My log is below.

Apart from my hands and feet feeling like blocks of ice, which doesn't really bother me during the swim, the only discomfort was in my chest where my heart felt like it was in overdrive working at max revs especially during the last 1/4 mile, but I was able to push through it without too much problem. What works for me is just to focus my mind on the battle with the physical elements when my body is saying "get out now" I just fight it. I also put a song in my head and repeat it and the time passes more quickly.

The worst part was immediately following the swim and I did need assistance getting dried off and dressed. It was about an hour of feeling some real distress before I felt like I was recovering ok. I drank a flask of hot chocolate and I think that was critical to keeping me from collapse. Later, after a hot breakfast, I slept for an hour and was fully recovered by the afternoon. I would compare the effort during the swim to how I felt after I ran my first marathon but the recovery period was worse. Great respect to any cold water and endurance swimmers who have gone farther in colder. Here are the times and temps from my log since I started this endeavor in Oct:

07 Oct 07 - 56F Mile 31.19
21 Oct 07 - 51F Mile 31.53
03 Nov 07- 50F Mile 31.44
04 Nov 07- 50F Mile 30.28 (Air 46F)
10 Nov 07- 47F Mile 30.56
11 Nov 07- 47F Mile 31.11
12 Nov 07- 45F Mile 31.23 (Air 36F)
17 Nov 07- 41F Mile 31.25 (plus went on Pond Crawl and swam at 3 ponds)
18 Nov 07- 40F Mile 31.21
24 Nov 07- 40F Mile 34.01 (Air 30F)
01 Dec 07- 43F Mile 31.44
08 Dec 07- 44F 1.5 Miles (mile in 32.00, next 1/2 mile 18.00)
16 Dec 07- 37F Mile 34.31 (Air 33F)

Thanks to everyone at the Serpentine Swimming Club (many of whom have tremendous swimming achievements to their name) for their support and verbal abuse along the way. www.serpentineswimmingclub.com Special thanks to Kevin Murphy for encouraging me on this personal quest. The music is NW5, the new single from my all time favorite band Madness, which will be released on 14 Jan 2008 in the UK. For more info, see www.myspace.com/madnessofficial

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• serpentine
• swimming
• cold
• water
• endurance
• extreme
• winter
• swim
• freezing
• ice
• nw5
• madness

[kingsuggs]

Well done mate , n the best Madness track to keep to keep ya going!!! good on ya .

[SerpentineSwimming]

NW5 top tune indeed. Cheers.

[BaggyTrousers]

thanks to putting on a stone, a good foundation of cold swims every week, some quick action from Jane Murphy getting me inside and changed, application of 4 hand warmers on the arteries and a large flask of very hot chocolate, I didn't go down with the after drop but I'll probably not do it again Andrew - unless I can get a lot faster! as you may remember, I'm not the fastest swimmer on a good day!

[andrewallum1234]

I'm guessing you shivered for quite some time afterwards.

I remember a few years ago another Serp swimmer doing the winter mile and really (and I mean really) looking the worse for it afterwards.

[GaryWrednal]

Many congratulations. A terrific achievment.

[thegallery]

Crikey! That was unbelievable. Not too many people can do something like that!

I myself had the misfortune of swimming 50yds in 37 degrees a few years back and I'm still recovering! My heart about exploded the moment I hit the water.

So what's the next challenge? Let's do something where you're not risking death!