Channel Swim 7 – Baby, it’s cold outside…

I know that cold water swimming is one of the things most likely to derail an attempt.

I’m not a long term all year round open water swimmer like some of the people I’ve met, and as a result I’m struggling to close a gap and acclimatise over this winter. I was actually enjoying swimming with the local group wetsuit free and the temperature had just dipped below nine degrees.

I was in control, and feeling pretty good. Bearing in mind that it’s only a couple of months since I thought 20 degrees without a wetsuit was where madness lay, that’s huge progress.

This was before a combination of high flow and foreign business travel caused a break of a couple of weeks. During those two weeks the Thames temperature plunged to just over five degrees. If I’m honest, almost halving the temperature in that short period had me a little scared, and I didn’t want to go in and make an idiot of myself.

Always, at the back of my mind nagging away, is the thought that the channel is going to be cold, and I’m going to be in it for a while. The lightship that monitors the temperature is showing around 12 degrees as I write in the middle of November. I need to get back in, I can’t skip it until everything starts to warm up again.

Worryingly, Hannah the swim coach has changed her tune. She’s gone from ‘You should stop open water swimming when the temp hits 10 degrees’ to ‘We need to get you in as much as possible’. I wonder what I’ve done to annoy her?

She did however, offer up a solution.

One of Hannah’s many jobs is running the local lake’s open water swimming. Despite it visibly not breaking even, the team at the lake run monthly cold water swim sessions for the winter to allow everyone to keep their eye in. The November swim was coming up and I saw this as an opportunity to get back in without having to hurl myself into a five degree river.

I signed up, struck by the memory of a year ago, shivering in full wetsuit, gloves, boots and neoprene hat as I watched a couple of maniacs wading in in a swimsuit. I was now one of those maniacs.

The Sunday of the swim rolled around. I threw on my swim trunks, dry robe and flip flops and drove to the lake; it was cold enough that there was a mist hanging over the water. I was disappointed to see as I walked into the swim center that 7.2 degrees was written on the board. I’d been hoping it would be a little warmer. I checked in and soon we were all marching down to the entry slipway, although Hannah had introduced me to another channel swimmer in training, Sarah.

We were the only two not wearing wetsuits. Sarah was lovely, very open and helpful but as someone who’s actually been working up for the channel for years she came dangerously close to triggering my propensity to suffer imposter syndrome. I’ve met so many brilliant people on this journey so far, and every single one of them has been an amazing athlete and a much faster swimmer than me. Every time it takes a concerted effort to set this to one side and keep on going.

Inspired by my river friends I decided to not muck about but waded straight in. After all the swimming in the river, it wasn’t too bad. As I marched past one lady who was complaining about the moment the water works in past the wetsuit zip, I did grumble ‘At least you have a zip’. Nipple deep, I immediately started breaststroking to the first buoy, ducking my head as I went to get used to the temperature. 40m later, as I rounded the buoy I broke into front crawl.

I was suffering brain freeze, something I was familiar with as a scuba diver, but nothing I couldn’t deal with. After alternating crawl and breast stroke for the first 200m lap I lengthened out into crawl for another loop. I’d taken the time to chat to a few people on the way round; people were very encouraging and impressed at my fortitude.

I was pleased that Sarah had taken longer to get in than me (maybe I was doing something right), but she came flying past shortly after I started the second lap.

I thought (very) briefly about chasing her.

On this go round, my legs felt really heavy and it felt as if I was at a 45 degree angle in the water; I think I was going much slower than usual (the garmin was having a fit so I don’t have accurate data) and as a result I wasn’t positioned the way you’d expect. Everything was still fine – I wasn’t shivering and my head had finally settled down. In what seemed like moments I’d started a third lap.

This time, things didn’t go so well. Nothing major, but as I swam I realised I was starting to lose the feeling in my hands and feet. I just don’t panic in the water, but thinking about what could happen made my breathing accelerate and then I took in a couple of half mouths of water. I was able to calm myself back down again, but it took a little concentration. I decided at this point to come in. As I glided into the shore I was secretly pleased to see Sarah had come in after three laps too – if she’d carried on bombing around like a speedboat I would have really struggled to rationalise my performance, but like me she was just trying to acclimatise and in this case, we both considered it ‘job done’.

I was surprised to discover that I couldn’t talk properly; Hannah laughed and described it as ‘Gin Mouth’ but if you’ve ever had local anaesthetic at the dentist, it’s  like that feeling – my mouth was numb and I couldn’t make my lips work well enough for clear speech. It only lasted a minute or two and by the time I had my dryrobe back on and a hot cup of tea in my mouth I was able to communicate again. I was actually really pleased – I’d done a solid 600m in colder water by far than I’ve ever swum in non-wetsuit and I felt great; I wasn’t even shivering that badly.

Then a minute or two later, the shivering really started.

I have never ever shivered anything like it. I had to set my tea down as my hand was jumping up and down by close to a foot and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Fortunately I was using a birthday present sealed thermos, or I would have liberally thrown it all over all and everyone in the center.

I’ve never tried to twerk, but I’m sure that’s what my buttocks were doing – big muscular and continual contractions. Thankfully, I think the dryrobe covered it all.

This is apparently something well known in swimming circles as the ‘After Drop’ where the core temp continues to fall even after you are out of the water when the body starts pushing blood to your cold extremities again; it’s strongly recommended you get into warm dry clothes as quickly as possible as this can be much harder once the shivering has begun.

The savage shivering lasted about twenty minutes. I felt fine, and was chatting away while I vibrated furiously but there was no way I could drive a car with the level of muscular control that I had. I felt cold for a couple of hours once it all settled down.

Apparently the intensity of the after drop will fall as I get more used to it, but it’s another reason why keeping the open water sessions is so important. Although the Thames is still unswimmable, with yet more recent rain, the temp has rebounded to about seven degrees. As soon as it slows down a bit, I’m going back in.

At least I now know I can handle that, and learned some new stuff on the way.

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