I’m right in the middle of a painful learning experience, and that is the cumulative effects of daily swimming “into” cold or very cold.

I’m tired this week as a consequence partly of last Friday’s nine and a half hour swim. But last Sunday I also started to sea swim daily.

I’ve swum through the past two winters, without a wetsuit, usually once a week, occasionally missing a week. I’ve gotten better at cold and all the related swimming aspects. I’ve been mildly hyptothermic. But back when I was training for the Double English Channel relay, daily sea-swimming didn’t occur until the end of May.

For six days I’ve been in the sea for anywhere from 45 minutes (today, short, cold wind, rough water & I’m very tired) to one hour and twenty minutes two day ago, averaging about an hour.

And I’ve noticed that the effects of spending two to three hours rewarming every day are far more significant than I was expecting. I am very tired, physically and mentally and don’t think I can ascribe it all to the nine hour swim, even though my mileage has dropped right off this week. I am also extraordinarily hungry for the past few days, in the evening after the recovering from the swim. On Wednesday I finished my dinner, put down the plate and went immediately to make sandwiches as the dinner hadn’t touched the hunger. I continued eating like that for the night.

Right now, I need more data. Some of the other Magnificent Seven that I’ve talked to are reporting the same symptoms but we are all a week after a long swim.