On Saturday 20th January Rona Lucas and I completed our first (and possibly last) Ice Mile swim. This is a 1600m open water swim, wearing just a swimming costume, hat and goggles, in a lake where the water temperature is beneath 5 degrees.
Throughout the winter months, we have been dutifully dipping in ever-decreasing water temperatures at the SHAC lake in Buckland, to acclimatise our bodies to this extreme challenge. We had also undertaken a full body health check, including an ECG, for the necessary medical sign-off.
A few days ahead of the weekend we received the news that the official lake for the event had reached the necessary sub-5 degrees so we packed ALL the warm clothes, along with hot water bottles, hand warmers and 21 hot cross buns! (don’t ask, team communication fail LOL).
We travelled to Doncaster on the Friday night and stayed in the Travel Lodge on the M18 (you know, one of those ropey-looking hotels at the service station that you wonder why people ever stay there!).
Hatfield Lake in Doncaster is the only place in the UK with accreditation under the International Ice Swimming Association (IISA) rules and people travel from all over the country to take part. The open-water swimming community there were lovely and made us feel very welcome.
Our safety briefing took place at 8.30 am and was followed by four waves of just three swimmers in the lake at a time. Each swimmer had a dedicated safety boat tracking them around the course, with a pilot and a safety spotter on board. At the beach, there were several safety personnel and a team whose job it was to march swimmers out of the water and into the rewarming room.
Before the swim we were instructed to lay out our clothes in the order that we wished to put them on and then, like a military operation, we were unceremoniously stripped of our swimming costumes, towelled down and dressed (vest, long johns, thermals, core warmer, tracksuit bottoms, fleece, body warmer, coat and dry robe. PLUS two pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves, woolly hat and snood!).
With cold water swimming it’s very important to get dry and dressed quickly before the total body shivers begin. This is the body’s way of rewarming and can be a dangerous time. Many swimmers have medical emergencies ten minutes AFTER leaving the water as their blood pressure struggles to regulate. The key is to have lots of loose, warm layers, have something warm to drink and to eat something quickly.
We are pretty normalised with the post-swim shivers but after this event, both Rona and I experienced more than an hour of violent shaking, it then took around 6 hours for our body temperature to get back to normal (shedding multiple layers of clothing as we trekked back down the M1 motorway!). Fortunately, we had Daphne Brown and Sarah Brownwood on hand to offer dressing / undressing services and to force-feed us jelly babies and hot chocolate, so it’s not all suffering.
We both completed our swims in around 38 minutes and so have entered the IISA Hall of Fame, Esther is number 548, and Rona is awaiting her official number.
Thanks to everyone who supported us along the way.
Esther x
Ice Mile Swimmer
#I’mNotShiveringI’mOnVibrateMode
