Cold water

After attempting and failing to get in the water a couple weeks ago, Matt and I were determined to go for a swim this Saturday in Crystal Lake. We met there at 6am which would give us plenty of time for a nice leisurely swim and probably even some breakfast before I headed to track practice.

I'm not sure what the water temperature was, but it's safe to say that it would have qualified as an ice bath! Very cold, I'm guessing high 40's, maybe 50 or 51 degrees. It took a while to get my head in the water and start really swimming. Speeding up helped a bit since working managed to keep me a bit warmer, but I never felt anything other than really cold. We lasted about 45 minutes or so and did about a mile of swimming, down to the boat launch and back from my grandfather's house. The sleeveless wetsuit and swim cap didn't really help a whole lot, but it was certainly warmer for my legs than my bare feet. I noticed about 15 minutes after getting out and on the way home that my feet started tingling and stinging a bit as they finally thawed out!

I had some time to warm up before heading to track with my daughters for the distance challenge. The distance challenge is a test to see how far the kids can run in 1 hour. We start them on the track and keep track of how many laps they can do before time expires. My older daughter, age 10 did 5 1/2 miles, and my younger daughter age 7 did 4 1/2 miles. I was quite proud of them, they both put in a pretty good effort!