Managed a Move Eve swim of 2km at 9 degrees. Then had a mad Friday moving two houses into one. Kate, Ethan and I finally wrapped up in the same space - rather than spread along the Peckham/Lee axis.
And as a relief from the mountains of boxes a quick mile on Saturday morning in ten degrees. And the interesting thing is that ten degrees feels a lot warmer than 9 degrees. Someone described temperature sensitivity as being an exponential experience rather than an arithmetic experience. I'm not sure about this (I'll say more in a minute), but I think the idea of varying responses to temperatures is one worth exploring more - especially as the science of it is being developed by Gordon Lewis-Pugh and his team.
So I'm in the sauna with Gus after a long cool dip and we start talking about how Tooting Bec lido regulars have swimming targets. Gus says it used to be a length for each degree of temperature. I say that I think it's easier to swim 20 lengths at 10 degrees (doubling) than it is to swim 4 lengths at 4 degrees. Gus - who's been in and out of the lido all winter - says that he thinks 1 length at 1 degree is easier than 2 at two degrees. This leads us to the hypothesis that there's a waveform of possibility.
In my mind it might go something like -
1 to 3 degrees - 1 or 2 lengths
4 to 6 degrees - 3 to 5 lengths
7 degrees - 7 to 10 lengths
8 degrees - 10 to 18 lengths
9 degrees - 12 to 22 lengths
10 degrees - up to 40+
Log - 8th to 16th April - 5.65km. 9 to 10 degrees C
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