Pleased our lads are in the H2O Magazine!!! Thanks Simon Griffiths :)
First northern hemisphere Ice Milers for winter
2013/14
Simon Griffiths | H2Open Editor | Wednesday 11
December 2013
The International Ice Swimming Association (IISA)
has ratified four more Ice Milers: three in the UK and one in the US.
Starting on
19 November, James Brown completed an Ice Mile at Ellerton Lake in Yorkshire.
Eleven days later Brown was back in the water at Treeton Dyke, along with
Alistair Beattie and Leon Fryer. The official temperature for Brown’s first
attempt was 3.9 degrees Celsius. For the second it was 4.18 degrees. According
the IISA rules the temperature must be measured by three different devices.
The three
were coached by Pauline Squire, who says: “The first lap appeared to be done
with ease, but then came the turning point where the cheers of the supporters
appeared to go unheard as each swimmer headed towards the start line and
turned, the distance ahead of them unfathomable as with cold leaden arms they
started out again.”
On the
second lap the swimmers' breathing became laboured and their stroke rates
slowed.
“Now was the
dangerous part of the swim: the body tiring, the brain barely registering the
route required, the mouth so frozen that words could not be formulated,” says
Squire. “Their limbs now felt like dead weights. It was a painful process to
cover the last 500 metres. All three stopped several times.”
The three
swimmers made it to the end and managed to exit the water unaided. Their
supporters then bundled them quickly into warm clothes and blankets and plied
them with hot drinks.
A week
later, on 7 December, Gordon Gridley completed an Ice Mile in tough conditions
in Utah’s Great Salt Lake. The water temperature was a mere 1.19 degrees while
the air dropped to minus 6.1 degrees. Despite this, Gridley blasted through his
swim in 26 minutes, which looks like a top ten time, and only a couple of
minutes behind the fastest ever.
Editor's
note: An Ice Mile is a serious and potentially dangerous swimming challenge
that should only be undertaken by experienced swimmers in controlled and
supervised situations.
- See more at:
http://www.h2openmagazine.com/news/first-northern-hemisphere-ice-milers-winter-201314/#sthash.etMSjZMo.T6APGM3T.dpuf
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