My wife has not done any swimming in open water so far this year.  With her first race coming up next weekend, we decided to take a trip up to Moraine State Park this morning, to swim in the lake.  Even though the weather was chilly, we hoped that the water would be a reasonable temperature.  We were wrong.  We had a very cold swim.

When we arrived at the lake, you could tell that the weather was cold.  It is Memorial Day weekend and there was nobody at the swim area and nobody out getting ready for a picnic.  We only saw one fisherman.  If the weather had been nice, I am sure the place would have been very busy.

The good news was that we had the swim area to ourselves, so we quickly changed and headed to the water.  The water was definitely warmer than the ambient temperature, but it wasn’t exactly warm.  I plucked up the courage to swim and started with a quick warm up.  The water felt cold on my face, but the rest of me felt OK.

I ended up swimming for about twenty five minutes.  By that time, I could no longer feel my fingers.  Rather than pushing through, I made the decision to get out of the water.  My wife, who did great with her first open water swim of the year, was already out and getting changed at the car.

I got really cold as I changed out of my swim gear, but soon we were in the car with the heater going full blast.  We had thought ahead, and brought coffee with us.  It was still warm and tasted great.  Even with the coffee and heater, my fingers took forever to warm up.  You can see how white they were, in the photo inset above.

It might have been a very cold swim, but it was still fun.  My wife and laughed as we drove home.  We are obviously a pair of those crazy triathletes.