What A Surprise

I was all excited getting to the Lido this morning because : it was February 1st, the birds were singing, the sun was trying to push through a thin layer of clouds, the air felt less cold than the day before - mainly due to the absence of that horridly icy wind - I was excited to have made it through the month of January ... ready to check the thermometer in the deep end hoping that it would show more than yesterday's 2 Celsius! I only swam one lengths yesterday and really felt the bite that kind of temperature attacks you with! The water simply gets hold of you the second you lower yourself into it.

Anyhow, after checking the thermometer in the deep end and registering 2 Celsius, I was looking forward to swimming a length today too!

To my surprise Chris and Sue were walking up to the deep end in their swimming gear ... did that mean that even they had "resigned "to swimming one lengths instead of yesterday's two?

Nooo not a t all! To my further surprise the reason why they came up to the deep end was because there was ice in the shallow end .. ice! I never thought that possible .. yes, the wind was bitter yesterday and the day before and the water very cold .. but ice?! well yes, the night had been cold - freezing in fact! Now it all made sense!

Sue and Chris set out to swim 4 widths in the deep end

Mr. Bubbles (Alex) had done his 4 widths earlier- coming out of the sauna he was still warm enough to take photos of Chris and Sue in his swimming trunks.

we both put our cameras under water and captured Chris and Sue coming back towards us- shame they didn't swim closer together.

they ended up swimming 6 widths - which is the equivalent of 2 lengths! Sue on her way to the steps at the end of her swim - feeling the cold!

The same applied to (pink) Chris ... who was struggling to get his ear plugs out because his hands felt like blocks of ice.

John on his way to the deep end for his share of a cold bite

Inspired by Sue and Chris I swam 4 widths which was not as bad as I thought it would be - the water felt great on my body .. if it wasn't for the hands ... I may have been able to swim another two ... the walk back to the sauna is what "hurt" the most ... however, one thing I have noticed this season is that the recovery time between feeling the "pain" in my hands and my hands getting back to feeling warm and restored to their normal agility, has improved immensely.

Amazing how our body adjust and acclimatise!

Listen to todays singing birds and winging swimmers