Of course, the first LOST Swim of 2012 was the Polar Bear Dip on Jan 1… when the water was crazy cold… I believe it was 40F / 4C!!! The second LOST Swim of 2012 was on April 28… and much warmer… a toasty 46F / 7C!!!
You see what happens when you bump into other crazy people! I got a Facebook message from Darren Miller, who I had met on FB, but got to meet in person at the Tampa Bay Marathon Swim last weekend (FB has its downsides, but it is great for meeting other people with the same interests… crazy swimmers, for example!).
Even though we had just met and hit it off well, Darren was bold enough to give me a call and say, “hey I’m going to be in Toronto on an 8 hour lay-over… wanna go for a swim?”. Naturally I said “sure… in the Lake? haha”… he said “sure!”. Naturally I assumed he was either joking or stupid, “ill-informed”… I get lots of emails from people who want to know if they can do a lake crossing on their birthday or something… and their birthday is something like November 17… they aren’t as inclined when I tell them that the water is only just above freezing then. But with Darren I wasn’t sure. He said he really wanted to swim in “the famous Lake Ontario!”
See he DOES swim in water that cold. For about an hour. He’s attempting to become the first person to do the “Ocean’s Seven”… the 7 toughest Channels in the 7 oceans… roughly equivalent to the Seven Summits (climbing the 7 tallest mountains on each of the 7 continents). In fact, he was on his way over to Spain later in the day… as he and 5 others are going to swim the Strait of Gibraltar sometime this week! How cool is that!
To make a long story short… we compromised. We decided we would just do a light swim at the “Y”… AND go for a swim in the Lake! Yikes. It wasn’t hard to get my daughter Maisey to come along and take some pics… she’s always up for an adventure… and a good laugh!
We went down to the LOST beach… stripped down to the speedo’s… while strangers in their winter jackets walked by, air temp was the same as the water!… and we went for a plunge! We probably only swam about 100m out and 100m back… maybe 2 or 3 minutes. A lot longer than the polar bear plunge, but not as long as some of the hardcores around the world can do… but pretty cool anyway.
Let me tell you, when we got in at the Y it felt like bath water! We even saw Lynn there, who is one of the LOSTies training for the FKCC Swim Around Key West… she said she was acutely aware of how close the SAKW was… 49 days to be exact… and seeing the Tampa Bay Marathon Swim report had scared motivated her to get out there and pack on even more training miles! (ps. she’s going to do great!)
Bring on Key West!!! (June 16… it’s not too late to enter!)
Cheers,
Rob
