Here, at the dreaded sports complex that is offering our weekly cold water torture session. Strangely, however, I find that sometimes in the middle of the week, I start craving for it already. Weird how cold water swimming hooks you with the emotions it gives you. You health, your skin, your mental wellbeing - all will thank you. Yet on Sunday mornings I still sometimes find myself thinking that I'd rather not go, in the parking lot I often ponder whether I should have stayed at home. Luckily, these negative emotions get smaller and less every time.
Speaking of parking lots, this one is quite empty today. The weather is quite nasty (for the average bloke that is), cold breeze is about and the air feels a bit misty. Not a weather to hang outside, but not too bad either. Perfect to force you into water quickly.
After a few dips in the pool, you won't even feel it. Today the water was less than 2 degrees Celsius and air was 4. But brrrr! The water felt cold on the first swim, on the second one I managed to swim 50+ meters and spend approximately 1 minute in the water.
We had blocks of ice floating in the pool today, in the shallow end - it was funny swimming and at the same time pushing sharp ice blocks out of the way.
Later we started fooling around in the pool, doing group photos and throwing ice around. Didn't feel cold at all any more.
The second pool, the smaller one was totally covered with ice - some of the other lads did long slides on their butts and stomachs on there. I tried too, but being close to a 100 kilos, the ice cracked supsiciously below me, so I steered clear.