Shockingly Cold
You stand by the edge of the water and take a number of deep breaths to prepare your mind and body for the blistering cold about to touch your skin. This, a willing torture for the group of now fifteen participants. What started years and years ago by two brave souls, Mary and Richard (guess which two they are in this picture?), has now grown to fifteen. Most will run in and run out, and who can blame them, but you’re focused on taking twenty four strokes. One for each year of the century. You’ve been reading a new book about winter swimming, about people all around the world who swim a couple times a week, and about the benefits of such a practice.
One in the group will go in and out of the ocean a couple of times, which the book I’m reading encourages. His skin a bright pink like that of a newborn baby, back in he goes. Something about how your body clicks into a regenerative mode when hit with sub fifty degree temperatures—the second dip accelerates the a chemical and biological process.
You are not thinking about a couple of short dips, but rather one longer one. A swim if you will. While walking across the sand towards a rising tide, you take your deep breaths as instructed, you take one step at a time and slowly enter the ocean, accepting the undeniable truth of the moment — it will be extremely cold. Over and over again, the book says, remember to breathe despite the shock to the system. Don’t dive in. Don’t dunk you head right away. Occasionally lift your hands out of the water. Like facing the world we now live in, breathe.
Finally, after about thirty seconds, you’re ready to take some strokes. Everyone else is gone, in and out, towels wrapped around shivering bodies. You put your head in and down. You start swimming in shallow water along the shore, one, two, five, ten, twelve. So very cold, painfully so, but you’re going to keep going. Keep breathing. At twelve you turn back, and continue counting. Your new book says start with a short swim, which this will be. Fifteen, twenty, twenty four and you’re done. A couple minutes at most.
This first day of the year now a ritual for a group of which all started with just two. You a late addition. Mary and Richard leading the way over the last dozen years, and again today. They the first to disrobe. They the one’s with their arms in the air. They are tremendous! Facebook brings back memories from the last twelve years, reminds us of past plunges. What was once just two, is now fifteen of all ages. We stand for pictures, before and after. We take stock in the pain, followed by the rush. The joy. The adrenaline and glow which follows when your body reacts to what you’ve put it through.
Ring in the New Year!
Embrace the cold.
Relish the joy of friendship, adventure and love.
Then rinse and repeat!!!
