First open water swim

What a weekend! temps in the high 80'sF, it feels like Mid July!

Well I thought since it's feeling like summer why not go down to the lake for a swim.
At first I was going to go for a ride and do 30k easy ride, but when I grabbed my bike the rear tire was flat! and i don't have any spare tubes to change it out. This being a long weekend and a holiday Monday no stores are open, .....so much for my ride?

Well instead I took down my steel raleigh road bike hanging in the garage, filled the tires up and decided to go down to Centennial beach and see if I can swim yet?

 As a rule Kempenfelt bay waters, which is part of Lake Simcoe the second biggest lake in Ontario takes until late June to warm up enough to swim, but being a mild winter and warm spring and now with the Hot weather this week I though I would give it a try.

I rode down to the beach and parked my bike along one of the trees at the beach and stripped down to my bathing suit I was wearing and put on my swim goggles from my back pack. I slowly walked into the water which felt cool but nice in this heat, and with no wetsuit on and just my speedo on I waded down to my mid section and dunked down to my shoulders and finally dunked my head!

The water temp was about 50F but on this hot day it felt refreshing! I sat there under the water to my neck to get used to the cold and after about 5 min I started out for my swim along the beach front at about 4 feet of depth so if I got to cold I could stand for safety.  I tried to swim head down but the water being so cold gave me brain freeze, the same feeling you get when you eat ice cream to fast! EEK!

I swam for about 200m front crawl lifeguard style with head up and felt good. My body was adjusting but my skin was tingling with pins and needles from the cold water. By the time I turned to swim back I started getting used to the water and was swimming head down back to where I started and had enough and got out because I didn't want to get hypodermic. I then sunned myself on the beach a while to dry of and rode back home.

Who would have thought I would be swimming on the May 2-4 weekend and specially in Kempenfelt bay! I remember once when I was little, 8-9 years old, being up at my cousins cottage on the May 2-4 weekend and swimming there in this kind of hot weather, but it was a smaller lake and not as cold being a smaller shallower lake.

Man if felt good to swim in the lake! I hope the weather keep up and stay warm so I can continue and eventually swim longer in the lake.


:)