Day 24 - A nice Day Out - Coldest to date

Today was the day I met up with a fellow Toughness Group (see links) member - lets call him Mr E!. We had been trying to get together for a while but today was the day. I had shuffled my diary so I could meet up mid-afternoon. I arrived at his place and we sat and exchanged conversation and experiences for a time before running a cold bath. He also showed me some of his favourite video clips from Youtube on this subject.

It turns out that his building has an exposed cold water tank on the roof so the water from his tap is about 3C colder than mine. We both had our thermometers with us so we compared notes and agreed that the water was (after adjustment) around 6C.

Mr E! went first and stayed in for 5 minutes only so as not to warm the water up too much for me. I was the second in the water by this time it was around 7C ( a good 2C colder than I have experienced before).

Observations:

• Getting into the water was actually quite easy (even though for a few days before this I had not had such cold water available)
• My breathing was quite controlled
• I ducked my head under at least twice during the session
• Having someone to talk to passed the time a lot quicker than just looking at the clock
• I moved around and had my hands in the water the whole time yet did not feel a lot of pain in them (am i getting used to this?)
  
• Having exercise equipment (static bike) to warm up on afterwards was great - better than press-ups or sit-ups for warming up. Anyone have one to loan or sell me?
  
• I find really cold water easier to handle than cold, cool or even tepid water because I think it shocks the skin more into closing the pores and sends the correct messages to the brain to bring blood back to the core of your body. Anyone else feel this?
• I was expecting to not be able to stay in for a full 10 minutes at this temperature but found it relatively easy to do a full 10 minutes
• I decided want to go colder still

All in all a good day for me. I need to concentrate on the exercise this weekend and get my weight down some. Maybe Mr E! (who I know reads this blog) would like to comment anonymously on today's session and give his thoughts and impressions of how I am doing in my cold water escapades.

Temperature: 7C
Duration: 10 Minutes 40 Seconds