Day 173 - 21st January 2011

Yesterday I was out of town as I had to stay overnight in London due to an early meeting; as such no sea swim. I did manage to drop into Falmer on the way back and did a 90 minute pool swim, however it was not much fun as the pool was full of very slow people just wanting to win the “how slow can I go” competition that must have been advertised somewhere!

This morning I was back to the Arch for my usual 7.am and was joined soon after by Little & Big Bob, Mike, Paul Smith and the lovely Bella. The air temperature was still low at around 2 degrees and the sea itself was still startling low at just 4.8 degrees. However, there were hardly any waves in sight and the tide was mid way between out and in, so it was a “medium” walk to get to swimming distance. Big Bob and I swam the same route as Wednesday, although we extended the swim further along the next beach which resulted in us being out for just over 16 minutes. Considering the temperature a 16 minute swim is quite remarkable and I think both of us did really well to do that. I am not sure that we couldn’t have kept going and hit the 20 minute mark; maybe Monday?

Tomorrow I have a 6.30am pickup at the Arch for a trip to Tooting Beck Lido in London. There are about 14 of us going from Brighton to complete in the cold water challenge – ouch! Apparently the water is only 1 degree; the coldest ever for me and almost freezing – they had to break the ice to use it! I’m in just one relay race, whilst Big Bob, Fiona and some others are also doing some personal endurance races; one relay is plenty enough for me! I’ll report back Monday as to whether I lost any limbs in the cold.