In the cold water season, I sometimes question whether I am swimming at all. Often, it’s more like a slow-moving modern dance sequence: gliding, turning, and floating, or simply becoming one with the icy water. But today, I actually swam. 

Kim and I headed down to the Albany Bulb this morning to meet up with the 8 o’clock swimmers. Kim, like most of the Bulb swimmers these days, is wearing a wetsuit. In an effort to keep swimming reasonable distances, nearly all the swimmers are in some layers of neoprene, mostly full wetsuits, booties, and gloves. Without Angie to float around in skins with me, I decided I would attempt to keep up with the gang today, which meant properly swimming.

One barrier to keeping up is that it takes me so much longer to get into the water than it seems to take almost anyone else. Even longer until I’m ready to put my face in. So by the time I’m good to front crawl, the other swimmers are long gone. Thinking I’d outsmart this situation, I headed down to the water (53 degrees) before everyone else to acclimate. I overshot a bit and wound up well-acclimated and waiting for a bit, but as an overall strategy, it worked. By the time the rest of the swimmers got in, I was ready to front crawl. It felt good to swim a bit harder, to go a bit further.