Howdy,
I need to get a new pool/spa thermometer to know what I’m up against.
Yesterday I swam in our outdoor pool for the first time in October. We’ve been busy, and I’ve just not gotten out there. The last day of September (Jasper’s birthday) we were on the lake, and the water wasn’t too bad.
I’d say that Lake McClure was warmer—less cold—than our swimming pool. Smaller body of water fluctuates more quickly, it would reason. Actually, the lake was still nice—amazing how warm even the full lake got this summer.
I wish I’d swam outside every day of the month so far, and I’d like to do that going forward, taking freestyle strokes right into winter, cutting through the water hardly noticing the incremental changes in dropping temps. But I don’t think it quite works that way. In my experience (because I’ve always tried to keep swimming season going as long into the end of the year as possible) you get a couple consecutive cold nights and the outdoor pool temperature reflects it: retains it.
But it felt good yesterday late afternoon, to be back in the pool, in the cool water not yet freezing cold. When it gets even colder I imagine it an ice bath, good for my back. And shivering exercise is good for burning extra calories, which holds the enticing promise of shedding an extra sliver of extra extras of weight.
Shivering shedding slivers.
I’m good until it’s too cold to have my head in the water for much time; that’s a pounding pressure, sucking your breath away and making your head feel like you’re asking to get sick. Not what I’m going for.
I have a wetsuit of course, and I’ve been asked if I’ve used that in the pool. I never have. That sounds kind of neat to me, the craziness of it, but it also sounds like a pain. In and out of that wetsuit everyday for a swimming routine in our community pool strikes me as cumbersome and kooky. And I don’t like the idea of cumbersome.
A nice thing about our setup is that there’s a hot tub next to the pool, so an offbeat swimmer (ice bath taker) without a wetsuit can bounce back to the spa. I’ve talked before about the contrast bath approach: a minute or two (or eight) in 54-60 degrees and then four or five (or ten) in the hot tub.
We’ll see how it goes. This spring I felt like I was getting soft, when my boys were splashing in with smiles and I was more so feeling the spa and staying in there. Got to build my endurance back up, I guess, especially if I’m going to hang with these krazy kids.
Now’s my chance. The pool’s not down to 50-60 degrees yet, but I do need to get that floating thermometer for this season because I’d be curious to know where it is now and I’m ready to swim as long as I can. Like limbo, as low as I can go.
October swimming, and beyond … below.
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
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