Tomorrow a large group of Sandycove swimmers will be bound for London in time for Saturday’s Cold Water Swimming Championships at Tooting Bec Lido. The event is essentially an outdoor gala…in an unheated pool in snowy London! ‘Races’ include 30m freestyle, 30m head-up breaststroke, relays and (for the braver people!) a 450m endurance swim. And, for the creative among us, there is a “best-hat” competition during the head-up breaststroke races, so I’m sure that we will see some weird and wonderful headpieces there!

All week we have been receiving updates on the water temperatures (currently around 1 degree C) and the amount of ice covering the pool (last update is that it has melted but you can see a photo (borrowed from @AlexMcfadyen73‘s blog) below that shows the lido earlier this week). He has lots more photos of the lido on the blog, including some great underwater shots, so it’s worth taking a look.

Ice covering Tooting Bec Lido
(photo courtesy of http://quickdip.blogspot.co.uk)

The one incentive to all of this is that after the swims there is a choice of a hot tub or a sauna to warm up in…hopefully that will make all the cold worthwhile!

Best of luck to everyone travelling over for the event 🙂