First cold water swimming experience
27, 28, 29… oh wait, this is happening too fast!
30… I slide in…
A rush of adrenaline invades my body.
31, 32, I push off the wall, and… blank for a few seconds. I am in so much pain that my mind switches off, I have no recollection of my first few seconds in 5 degrees water.
I’m trashing the water, that’s for sure. After what must be 20 meters, I see that I am swimming faster than the swimmer on my left, who disappeared somewhere behind, and I am pulling away from the swimmer on the right. But while I suddenly wake up to the external environment and get all jazzed up with the idea of ‘winning’, so does pain. My hands, my head, everything hurts, I want this to stop… I also want to beat the other swimmers, and the faster I swim, the more heat I generate, I think (not sure it is true). Finally I touch the wall and immediately get out of the water in a monstrous shout. A completely overwhelming wave of joy takes control of me. I look at the other swimmers, they all do a second lap, to cool down I guess (!). I hate them, and I am overjoyed at the same time: I have a reason to get in again. So I do it, I get back into the bath of pain. Without the excuse of the race, my mind is shouting at me louder than ever, stop this! The inner voice is in fact so overwhelming that I stop and stand up mid-length. Oh boy, I’m as far from one side of the pool as I am far from the other side. So I get in again. No recollection of these few seconds. I get out of the water as soon as I can. Another mad uncontrollable shout…
I did it! I swam two 30m lengths in (almost) ice cold water. I stand up and stagger. I still need to walk back to the other side of the pool, where my dry clothes are, and it’s not warm outside either! Something that I cannot explain happens next: I go into the water and swim one more length. Mad me… Total memory blackout once again, no idea what happened during these few seconds. Once again I get out, completely high again.
My analytical and methodical mind soon kicks in: dry yourself, go for your warm clothes, drink the hot coffee that you brought in a thermos bottle, put your woolen hat. I’m trying to compare this experience with others… and I don’t find anything that comes close.
***
Ice swimming and cold water swimming have always attracted me, and scared me. But now that I have five decades on this planet, I recognize the pattern in me, and it is always the same: 1) I hear about something or see something that I find incredible and terribly scary 2) the first thought is: oh how I wish I could this one day, but I can’t, it’s too scary/dangerous/painful/hard 3) I forget about it 4) I get exposed to the ‘thing’ again, and this time, I know I will do it. I start to plan, analyze what is requested 5) Very aware of what I want, every hint that I find in my life carries me closer to my goal 6) I do it, and it is every bit as scary and hard than I thought 7) it sometimes stays as a ticked box (bungee jumping) but, more often, it becomes part of my life, either daily or by periods (triathlon of course, Swimrun, long distance swimming, high altitude trekking/mountaineering, meditation, veganism, hypnotherapy). There are still a few activities that remain in limbo -free diving and kitesurf come to my mind- but they will become reality in the coming years, it’s just a question of being open and helping a bit the stars so that they become aligned :-)
***
Back to ice swimming… my first exposure was through Wim Hof, aka ‘the Iceman’. Wim Hof has become a celebrity by sharing his method that is a mix of specific breathing inspired by the Tibetan Tummo breathing, yoga posture and ice bathing. It starts with cold showers. I followed his method a few years ago but not for very long, as it is impossible to get really cold water in your shower in Hong Kong, where I was living at the time. It was a bit ‘meh…’..
I then went to a workshop that was inspired by Wim Hof and other breathing methods, ending with an apotheosis: an ice bath. That was brutal, it really was. Each little block of ice on my skin felt like a burn. I had to muster all my mental courage and maintain a great control of my breathing to manage to tame the panicking voice in my head. This experience showed me that I could do it, but also derailed me a bit, as I found that the mastery necessary was almost out of touch.
Covid came and all the Hong Kong pools got closed in winter. Like all my friends, I had to switch my swim workouts to outdoor. Some open water swimmers seem immune to cold and I was very much inspired by some of my friends who were swimming in 15 degrees water for over an hour, and swimming hard, with intervals and all. I was swimming in wetsuit and I started to swim without it when it was 19 degrees, then 18, then 17, for longer and longer periods. Doing all my workouts ‘skin’ was too taxing so I came to the concept of Cold Mondays, when I would swim skin no matter how cold it was on Mondays, and swim with wetsuit longer workouts 2 or 3 other times a week. The water rarely gets under 15 degrees in Hong Kong, but I remember swimming over 20min in 13-14 degrees water before the ocean started to warm-up. That winter I also knew that me and the family would move to London, and while I didn’t voice it much, I knew the move would open up chances to do cold water swimming.
Last summer I took a short dip into an alpine lake, at 7 degrees, which was another step towards my goal. Facebook and Instagram helped me remember of my goal as I connected to triathletes and Swimrunners who are also cold water swimmers. But they were too far ahead of me, their feats out of reach. The documentary on Netflix, ‘The Ponds’, that shows the life in Hampstead Heath ponds and the joyful band of misfits who swim there (no disrespect, just admiration) was the last straw. The swimmers explained so marvellously how cold swimming has changed their life that I started to look for possibilities in my area.
The discovery that the pool Tooting Bec Lido, just a few train stations away from where I live, is open in winter and has an active club, the South London Swimming Club, tipped things over. Within a few hours I had signed up to the club, had exchanged emails, and had announced to them that I would show up to their Sunday race: a 30m pool race in cold water. The race was a handicapped race, hence the weird countdown, and I was assigned ‘32’, meaning I would start 32 seconds after the slowest swimmer.
***
I didn’t sleep well at all on Saturday. My mind played twisted tricks, because my dreams didn’t directly mention the swim, but I knew, while I was dreaming, what it was about. On the morning the weather was bloody miserable -this is London, right?- and I started to make excuses with myself, including a long list of ridiculous ones. Then I thought: you ruined your night, don’t ruin it for nothing. Do this stupid thing, get over it, and next time, if there is a next time, you’ll sleep better. So then I went. I arrived super early and contrary to my habit, I talked to most people I saw. Everybody was super welcoming, very friendly, and very knowledgeable. Nobody was overselling it, the word pain came up a lot in the conversation, but also things like ‘feeling high’, ‘amazing’, ‘addiction’, ‘a lifetime thing’… and I was just 30m away from all this. Several swimmers seemed surprised to hear that my first experience in cold swimming would be through this race, but to me, it made perfect sense: a safe environment (plenty of expert swimmers and a few life guards), a finite goal (a mad dash of 30m), a warm atmosphere (so to speak). I knew this was what I wanted and I was sure of my choice.
The club members who came for racing kept arriving, and in the end 38 madmen and madwomen took part of it, with a few more swimming before and after. I was told I came second in the race, no idea who won but I’ll come after him one day! There was a group picture in the end and a few of the officials gave me some great advice, the president of the club especially. I don’t think he realised how much his choice of words impacted me.
This is just the beginning. It reminds me of the first steps of my baby daughter. It was at a family meeting, we were in the garden, and suddenly she walked her first steps unassisted, releasing herself from mum’s supportive arms, to walk into daddy’s arms, then into her uncle’s arms. You could see her face lighting up. She knew she was at the beginning of something new. Just like I know this is the beginning of something big.
***
I didn’t elaborate on my ‘why’ though, and I want to finish on it, because, actually, that is the only thing that truly matters. It is not about achieving a super human feat, grinding my teeth in pain and pushing my limits. I see no value in this. I have done this. I have been through the full cycle of it, and I know the limit of the exercise. Nowadays, my fuel is elsewhere. If the word ‘spiritual’ sounds too emphatic, let’s use something like ‘exploring the limits of the mind’, but the fact is: it IS a spiritual experience. During a few seconds, I was (finally!) one. I wasn’t in the past, I wasn’t in the future, I wasn’t judging, I wasn’t thinking, I was just one with the experience. It’s like a super enhanced version of ‘the zone’, as we endurance athletes call it. The few seconds without memory are to me a testimonial of what happened: a blackout of my monkey mind who normally jumps all over the place. The monkey mind reappeared here and there, like a sea snake, but the amount of pain was so unbearable that it had to shut up again. Every tentative of taking over by my jittery mind was vain, the cold water was forcing me to be completely immersed (pun intended) in the here and now. With practice, what I will obtain is a progressive silencing of the mind. Once I manage to increase the duration of cold exposure, at some point, the reappearance of the resisting mind will become shorter and shorter, and the moments of bliss will become longer and longer.
I also know that looking for ‘it’ will actually slow down the process, so I will need to learn to just ‘be’ with what is happening, open, curious and without judgement. It is so ‘not me’ to be like that, though, that I know the journey will be long, frustrating at times, and painful. But honestly, as it is the price for growth, does it really matter?
