Swim the length of open water, not laps
“The cold takes your breath in the first minute and your mind tells you to get out. Hold for four minutes and the panic passes, and your body remembers it can do this.”
The Recipe
- Find the nearest supervised open-water venue (a swim lake, a lido, a lifeguarded bay with a marked course) and go on a day it is staffed.
- Buy or borrow a bright tow float and a woolly hat, and tell the desk you are here for distance, not a dip.
- Get in at the shallow end and stand chest-deep for four minutes before you swim a stroke. Let the cold stop shouting.
- Swim to the first marker buoy and stop. Check you are warm enough to go on: honestly, not hopefully.
- Set out for the far side of the course, breathing every third stroke, sighting the buoy and not the bottom.
- Turn at the far marker and swim back the way you came, the whole length, unbroken if you can.
- Get out before you think you need to, and get dressed before the shivering starts.
- Sit with a hot drink and feel the after-cold come up through you an hour later.
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