Would anyone accept my invitation to take a weekly lunchtime swim outdoors in an unheated pond? A hardcore but enthusiastic gang took the plunge …
Last week I was preparing to give a speech. One of my colleagues and swimming buddies, Julia, was perplexed when I told her about being nervous of speaking in public. “But you are fearless,” she frowned, bemusedly. I told her that the opposite was the case; I was scared of lots of things, but I did them even though they were frightening – sometimes because they were.
In early September last year, I sent an email inviting anyone who was interested to join me in a winter swimming club. I planned to swim once a week during my lunch hour at the nearby Kings Cross Pond Club – an unheated, natural–but-manmade pond in central London. I knew that in order to acclimatise to really cold water we needed to start swimming before the water temperature dropped. There were some tentative enquiries – “Are wetsuits allowed?” – and a few people who expressed interest but never made it to the pond at all. By the end of September, our winter swimming club was whittled down to a hardcore but enthusiastic gang of regular swimmers and co-workers who assembled every week.
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