Getting Warmer...

The plan for this week's swim was to "hyper warm" before the swim and see if that helped with my time in the water.  The short answer is, it did!

Here's what I did... Prior to swimming I tried to keep my body warm. This started when I got out of bed, immediately putting on sweatpants and a sweatshirt, even though the house was comfortable. Then I kept the heat up in the car on the way to the swim, and wore a puffy jacket and hat until the moment I put on my swim gear.

That's me under the arrow. You can see in the pre-swim group photo I'm still wearing my hat and coat.  I was nice and comfortable.

For the swim I wore two caps (one silicone, one latex, that's just what I had on hand) and my booties and gloves.  I swam for 25 min or so, to the second stair case. And I felt comfortable the whole time (OK, the cold side of comfortable, but still ok).

My one mistake came near the end of the swim. I started chatting with another swimmer and just gently paddling. This got me COLD.  My fingers started chilling first. I tried to make fists inside my gloves and ended up removing the gloves, which just made my fingers colder.

For the first time, I did have a small amount of the teeth chattering after the swim.  This only lasted about 30 seconds and I was able to control it.  But that is the threshold I don't want to cross. I think I would have been ok, and not had the chatters, if I'd not done the slow paddle chat and instead finished swimming. I'll know for next time!

Air Temp- 40. Water Temp- 48.