Wherever two or more Sandycove swimmers are gathered then you will hear talk of The Claw.

I don’t know if the term is used outside our group but we use it to describe cold effects relative to our various sizes.

“I had the Claw at 50 minutes” (me…yesterday).

“I didn’t get The Claw until x time”.

“8 hours and I never got The Claw”.

It describes (as I mentioned before) the spreading of fingers due to cold, spreading which no amount of willpower will counteract.

You can further subdivide. Mini-Claw or…Full Claw, the worst…all fingers spread, and therefore the rest of the body very significantly cold.

It’s a useful way to describe cold.