Winter swimming is the activity of swimming during the winter season, typically in outdoor locations (open water swimming) or in unheated pools or lidos. Many winter swimmers swim with standard swimming costumes rather than with wetsuits or other thermal protection. The activity may or may not involve freezing water, depending on the geographical location and the local temperature. Famous winter swimmers are Lynne Cox and Lewis Gordon Pugh.
Ice swimming is swimming in a body of water with a frozen crust of ice, and may be synonymous with winter swimming in colder countries. This requires either breaking the ice or entering where a spring keeps the water from freezing over. This may also be simulated by a pool of water at 0 °C, the temperature at which water freezes.
Read more about Winter Swimming: Maintaining The Hole in The Ice, Health Benefits, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words winter and/or swimming:
“What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun—it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The swimming hole is still in use. It has the same mudbank. It is still impossible to dress without carrying mud home in one’s inner garments. As an engineer I could devise improvements for that swimming hole. But I doubt if the decrease in mother’s grief at the homecoming of muddy boys would compensate the inherent joys of getting muddy.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)