Late-Season Swims "Cold Comfort" for Pod Members!

The wave of swimmers hitting the water at the beginning of the open-water season has now slowed to a trickle, if not an occasional drip, as water temperatures in Cold Spring Harbor have dipped into the low 40s. Air temperatures have danced crazily between the low 30s and the high 60s, sometimes in a single day, while we "holdout" swimmers anxiously watch the thermometer for the window of opportunity to open for "just one more" open-water swim. Weekday early morning swims are now out of the question, even with the end of daylight savings time, as the beach is too dark and too cold for pleasurable swimming, so we are relegated to the afternoons, weekends, days off, or borrowed or stolen times when a fellow conspirator calls or texts and says, "Let’s go!" – a call that none of us has ever regretted answering...Today, Election Day, was one of those days. The air temperature had wafted up to 65 degrees under a brilliant sun in a clear blue sky, and even the water temperature had risen to nearly the 50-degree mark, so "frequent flyers" Annmarie Kearney-Wood and I (Gae Polisner having been summoned for "refrigerator-repairman duty") suited up for yet another glorious open-water swim in this still-ongoing 2011 open-water season.  It seems like the cold weather came earlier this year than last, but the threshold of tolerance for the cold seems to have changed for we Pod members who have not yet left the now-very-chilly water. Where last year an open-water swim was unthinkable if the air temperature was not at least 45 and the water temperature at least 50, those numbers have now become meaningless.  For me, the determinant remains whether I am still able to enjoy the experience of being in the open water notwithstanding the cold, but I am finding that that is the case even when the temperature of both the air and the water is a scant 42...

As my tolerance for cold has increased, my tolerance for heat appears to have diminished, so when I ventured into the YMCA pool one weekday morning last week, I was horrified -- and nearly asphyxiated -- by the 85 degree water temperature. With my body made heavy by the heat, the unaccustomed lack of saline- and wetsuit-assisted buoyancy also hindered me, and I labored to pull myself through the chlorine-scented water that seemed thin as it slid between my fingers. Eighteen strokes later, I was at the wall, and as I turned to face the wall I had just left behind, I felt my heart sinking, until it felt as heavy as my body in the hot, still water. Back and forth I swam until I could no longer bear the heat or the heartache, and when I left, I sat for a long moment in my parked car, once again tasting the Salt as it ran down my cheek....
I haven’t been back to the Y since, and despite the sometimes heart-stopping coldness of the open water, it still feels more pleasant to me than a return to that box of hot water that we call a pool. It seems that the thing that has changed the most in me – and in more than a few of my fellow Pod members – is that I am no longer merely a "swimmer." I am now, first, foremost, and forever, an "open-water swimmer," and I am compelled to keep swimming, and to extend the boundaries of my open-water season as far as possible before I am forced to go back to the pool – if, indeed, I even can. That remains to be seen, but in the meantime, I’ll see you in the Salt!