After what has been a pretty cold summer (at least water-wise!), with one week in the middle of the summer at 45F/7C (that we still swam in), and the LOST Race at 50F/10C (that we still had a good, but shortened race), we now are reaping the rewards… it warm. It was 73F/23C!!! The water was even warmer than the air. The air was only 62F/17C.
Funny thing was, I woke up like I do every Saturday morning in the summer at about 6:45 and rolled out of bed to get ready for LOST Swimming. But today I looked out the window and it look crappy out. I briefly considered going back to bed, because it was rainy and cold out. No one was going to show up for LOST Swimming. But I knew a couple of people still would, so I would too. Motivation in numbers. I got down to LOST Beach and no one was there yet. Then a couple people showed up to swim in the rain. Then, low and behold the rain stopped… and more people showed up. We ended up with 25 swimmers!
The water was actually quite wavy and didn’t look inviting at all with the overcast cloud cover too. But at that first moment when you dip your toe in, there was a sudden relief… it was really warm. And that changes everything. The menacing, rolling waves suddenly turn into nice rollicking waves to play around in! We didn’t bother setting up the buoys (partially because I didn’t think there would be many swimmers!), so we went old school and just did a 1 km out and back, for 2 km total. The water was so comfortable that about a dozen of us ended up bumping into each other about 1km down the shore and “sat” there and chatted for a while, I joked we should have had a floating coffee raft (like they have at the Tremblant Ironman!)… but I think it would have tipped in the waves!
Anyway, we had a great swim and the sky even cleared up by the time we went for coffee. Another nice swim.
Looks like this Saturday might be the best swim this summer… we are supposed to get some unseasonably warm weather and I’m sure the water will still be warm too!
PS. it was nice to meet Jenny (and Roger!) who joined us for a swim… who were in town visiting from Portsmouth, England! Always cool to have some international visitors come swim with us!!!
Cheers,
Rob