Well since Rob was lazy and skipped swimming this morning (running a 34km trail race or something) it looks like I’m the guest columnist for this week’s LOST update.
For those of you who showed up this morning this goes without saying but for those who took the sleep in… you made the lazy (read: smart) choice. This morning was cold. 48F/8.8C cold. To put that into perspective, today’s water temperature off the coast of Alaska was almost 4C degrees warmer. Combine that with the cooler than usual air temperature and this morning felt more like the beginning of November than the middle of August.
Still, even after the race last weekend and even with Arctic temperatures we still got a group of about 20 hardcores/crazy people out this morning. Even before most people had shown up Madhu, Loren, Mark and Rebekah went out for a half hour swim without wetsuits. I feel obligated to again say that the water temperature was 48F. That’s stupid cold. So great job to those 4 for a crazy cold swim.
When everyone else showed up and finally got motivated we actually ended up having a pretty good swim. Thanks to a fully neoprene-clad Darren for the pump-up speech. “My advice to you is DON’T go in the water,” is the only quote I can remember from the speech but everyone including Darren decided not to listen to that advice. We had a few people make the wise/wimpy choice to stay on land (looking at you Bud) but most people I think went in for longer than they thought they could. There was a lot of screaming and a lot of head-up freestyle, but all-in-all it was actually a pretty decent swim despite the mind-numbing cold. Everyone that came out this morning definitely deserves a pat on the back for that.
But this morning I think everyone would agree that the best part of the LOST Swimming was LOST Coffee at Brett’s. Probably the first time too that there might have been more people out for coffee than there were swimmers.
So it was a cold cold swim followed by a much warmer coffee. Just goes to show how strange of a lake we have. On the bright side it looks like the timing for the LOST race last weekend couldn’t have been more perfect. On the downside those doing the Toronto Island Lake Swim tomorrow, myself included, are in for a cold one.
Hope everyone that came out this morning is warmed up by now!
Cheers,
Dylan