Day 140 – 3rd December 2010

After yesterdays car trouble (or could just call it wimping out of course) I got up at 6am lively as a leopard in chase of it’s lunch and hurtled out the door, into the sunlight and straight to the beach for a 5 hour swim!

Or not!!!!

Actually I stumbled out of bed at about 6.45am, looked at the clock and thought flipping heck, slowly got dressed without enthusiasm and climbed into my car with trepidation and slowly pulled out of the drive onto a very snowy icy road. After picking up Bob on the way (the mad fool was walking from Ovingdean to Brighton for his swim – he’s way nuttier than I) we got to the Arches about 7.20am and along with Little Bob, Lindy, David, Mike, Fiona, Soweiche and Bella we headed down the beach. Even though Monday was snowing when we went in, today was actually my first experience of walking down the beach in my speedoes with snow up past my ankles. The sea itself was very calm and it was a high tide, which meant no painful walking out. Also it was literally as clear as glass; you could see straight through to the bottom. So in we all went, no hesitation because we are hard, and swimming took place. I guess I was in for about 8-9 minutes, others a lot les and a couple a few more. Fiona, of course, swam all the way to the silver ball and back, but then she is wonder woman. In terms of “pain”, the sensations on my legs, arms and body was like thousands of little pin pricks, but that’s ok for a short swim. My face was surprisingly OK, my feet were fine (I sensibly wore swimming socks today), however my hands once again felt it the most. I might wear swimming gloves next week as wearing both gloves and socks will allow me to stay in longer. Walking back up the beach with my socks on and having only stayed in for under 10 minutes I actually felt OK, unlike Mondays experience.

The air temperature was around -5 and the sea I would guess was probably sub 6 degrees. So the sea is clearly warmer than the air, however, being in the sea with just trunks on definitely feels colder than standing on the beach. I wonder when getting out if one simply considers the mixture of being in a cold sea and standing in the cold air is actually the calculation of both rather than just the chill of the lowest? Either way for me coming out of the sea all wet made the walk to the Arches a dam sight colder than the dry walk down! All in all it was a good swim; no reason at all for me to have felt nervous about it this morning.

Hopefully I’ll be able to pop some pictures of today on this page next week as Lindy kindly took some snaps and hopefully will email them to me next week.