Dealing with cold
I’ve written so much about the mechanics, physiology and psychology of cold water swimming, but I haven’t addressed the underlying assumption thatare taken for granted. So why would you swim in cold water? (And let’s set aside any possible health impacts for this discussion). In the middle of Irish summer when (or some years, if)…
The Claw isn’t a fist. With The Claw, all fine motor control is lost and the fingers spread apart, and the swimmer in unable to close them. Remember I’ve said previously that there were no muscles in the fingers? The tendons contract due to impaired peripheral blood flow and the fingers bend slightly, like a…
Here’s a 20 minutes long video of almost nothing happening. You don’t have to watch it all. The YouTube poster says: “In this demonstration I show how using advanced meditative skills one can remain warm and comfortable in temperatures well below freezing.” So the guy claims this is difficult, and that sitting without clothes in…
I’d hazard a reasonable guess that what puts people off real cold water swimming is not what I write so much about, that is, hypothermia and cold exposure over long periods. Instead I’d postulate that it is the thoughts and fear of the initial cold shock and of the difficulty and pain involved with immersing…
First day that was there was heavy morning frost on the vegetation. First day that I thought about bringing a flask with hot chocolate (and then forgot). First day that the water was down to 10º Celsius. First day that I was certain it was too risky to swim toward Newtown Head. First day that my…
In a world of short attention spans, why write one post when I can write two three? 🙂 I had intended the previous post on Moderate and Severe Hypothermia to include diagnosing hypo in swimmers, and what to do when it happens. In fact that was how I started writing this series originally. And I’m…
Previous article: Understanding hypothermia in swimmers: Mild hypothermia. Moderate hypothermia is obviously more serious than Mild hypothermia which I covered previously in the first part of this series. I’m always a bit bemused by the medical terminology of hypothermia. Many serious open water swimmers will have experienced moderate hypothermia and can tell you there’s nothing moderate about it.…
When all fails and I am at a loss for something to write about, I can write about cold, my favourite subject. Especially in the context of Cork Distance Week coming in two weeks, when we had a few people pulled from the water with hypothermia last year. For anyone involved in open water swimming…
Cold, my favourite subject. With so many ways to talk about it. Every year I note changes in my adaptation and responses. The fun in this, is that I can treat myself like a long-term experiment and see what happens, it makes the cold swimming even more interesting, adds more personal value to it. My…
This is a one subject site, open water swimming. Everything on the site relates to open water swimming. But since open water swimming is part of my life, sometimes other parts of my life or some of my interests get pulled in. They may look tangential but it’s because I’m trying to contextualize my swimming…
2:25 p.m. I’m just in home within the last few minutes. It’s one hour and 13 minutes since I got out of the water at the Guillamene. 8 a.m. I weigh 75.5 kg. I have dropped 2.5 kg since I resumed pool training seven weeks ago. I forgot to check my pulse after I woke, (yet…
via Wikipedia The temperature at the Guillamene took its first real drop of early winter last week, down to 11.3° Celsius (52.3° F.). After a sub-seventy minute swim, it was like meeting an old acquaintance. Little finger dexterity gone, reduced co-ordination when getting dressed, and wearing a wooly hat afterwards. No big deal, it’s not…
This article is, once again, a variation of the most popular question here: “What temperature of water is too cold to swim in”?, which I’ve written about before. The temperature at the Guillamene last Sunday week (October 16th, 2011) was about 13° Celsius (55° F). That’s far warmer than what most people will imagine, not…
I mentioned T.I. in an email to a well-known record-setting swimmer and we thought I might write a post on it. When someone who has set a new record thinks it’s a good subject, you write! Many of you will be aware that Total Immersion, (T.I.) is a method of teaching swimming developed by Terry Laughlin, which…
Sometimes something is such a habit that you almost cease to realise its presence or utility. Such is the case with the wristwatch. I was at the Guillamene, there by myself as more usual these days, when I realised that I wasn’t wearing my watch. The last time I’d swum open water without a watch…
I’ve often talked about vaso-constriction. As a reminder, upon immersion in cold water, in order to retain core warmth, blood flow to the extremities and skin slows. Upon exiting cold water a swimmer’s skin will feel really cold, even if the swimmer is experienced and may actually feel completely comfortable. I watched the BBC’s Wild…
It was one hour and ten minutes after I got out of the water that I started writing this, and I was still not fully warmed up. The temperature had dropped to 9.3 °C from Wednesday’s 11.0 °C, due to the northerlies for the past 36 hours, I guess. The day before I swam about 4600 metres,…
You could think of this post as something missing from the five-part series Extreme Cold Adaptation in Humans that I wrote. Yes, even with all that I wrote I still missed a major component. When you enter cold water you feel a few different sensations. I talked about habituation and gasp reflex, peripheral vaso-constriction and…
The post entitled “what temperature of water is too cold to swim in?“, was for over a year the site’s most popular. This is a slightly updated version (main changes in italics), specifically the list of factors affecting ability. This post was courtesy of searches on the site as a few variations of this question…
So it all went…differently than expected. Air temperature outside the house was -4°C. I’ve noticed occasionally over the years that my house seems to exist within a thermocline, as it’s on the Suir river bank, and the town is flanked on the north and south by hills. Often driving up the southerly steep hill will…
It’s Sunday morning, and it’s dogdamned cold. Unusually the air is very dry so at least this time the bitter cold isn’t accompanied by any snow or ice…this time. I don’t know what the air temp is yet but it’s got to be -4C at least. The sea is calling and I’d ignore the siren…
With Christmas coming, many of you who would never consider getting in cold water will be thinking of a Christmas or New Year’s Day dip. I’ll be down at the Guillamenes myself as usual, with the hundreds of people who never normally go near the sea. So I thought some advice wouldn’t be wasted. *…
This is a repost with some very slight edits because of a request. I first came across the mentions of Brown Fat in early 2010. The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published the first peer reviewed scientific papers on Brown Adipose Tissue in 2009. The research was undertaken due to the great concerns over…
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…
Edit: The original title of this post may have been the worst title I ever wrote. And that’s saying something. I’m really bad at titles. Dante wrote that the Ninth Circle of the Inferno was ice. He didn’t seem to consider freezing water, so I guess it might have been the lobby entrance to the…
LoneSwimmer 