Winter Swimming World Champs - Part II

After an enjoyable couple of days making our way to Lapland, partaking of local food and culture Rovaniemi style, and generally getting our bearings, it was now time to face up to this slightly alarming business of winter swimming - in ice, competitively, at an international level. Oh gawd.

I awoke with a sense of doom in the pit of my stomach, like I'd swallowed an anvil or was about to sit my maths GCSE. Fortunately Sara came to the rescue with a job lot of steaming porridge, and we made a hearty, warming breakfast at the apartments.

Friday was reserved for head-up breaststroke (the official stroke of cold water swimming), in which Candy, Clare, Sara, Biba, Liz and I were competing in various age categories, all a 25 m dash.

(At this juncture I'd like to say thanks to Icicles all for excellent pics, which I've used here and in the other posts for this trip)

The snow was falling steadily as we emerged:

Ditching bus in favour of taxi (it's the Brockwell way), we were at race GHQ in no time, ready to take on whatever the day might throw at us:

So how does it work? 

With so many competitors there's a tight schedule of one race every 3 minutes. You race in a heat of 9 people in your age category, and each age category tended to have about 30-40 people. Everyone has a race badge like this, which has stickers on the back telling you your race times and where you need to be when:

30 mins before your race is due to start, you make your way to the changing area, where you are assigned to one of about 12 changing rooms (basically a heated portacabin) by a harassed-looking woman with clipboard. In the cabin you will find about 10 other women (presumably men if you are a man, which none of us is) from all over the world and in various stages of undress and pre-race nervousness/hysteria. You change into swimsuit, don Icicle hat, and put a warm layer on over the top.

10 mins before race 'o' clock, you head down the hill towards to swimming area, and assemble in a heated red tent:

Assembly line

In here you are met with 6 rows of 9 seats, arranged as though in a cinema. You find the seat corresponding to your lane number (1-9) and take up your place in the back row, alongside the other swimmers in your race. Then as each race goes out the front of the tent, you move forward a row... Until they are unzipping the tent right in front of you and you're heading out to poolside, glimpsing a few reassuring Icicle faces as you pass.

Now for the best bit... Upon arrival at the water, one of the comperes on microphone suddenly booms "TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES" in a voice utterly devoid of emotion. You obediently put all warm layers in a little basket at the head of your lane, and stand there in your swim togs feeling nervous and slightly ridiculous.

Then the voice again "GET TO THE WATER", and down the ladder you go...

The water is -1 degree C, and between races they scoop out ice using what look like wire intrays tied to sticks. To start the race your shoulders have to be under the water - if they're not, the marshall on your lane pushes them down with a small red flag on a stick. It all feels a bit Monty Python On Ice.

All that remains is "ON YOUR MARKS" (or sometimes "ON MY MARKS") and then BRRMP!! as the electronic start gun honks.

So now you know the drill. First up from our gang were Candy and Clare, who as luck would have it were in the same heat, how nice and companionable. Just time for some pre-race snowballroom dancing:

...then off they go to face the firing squad.

Well done Sara for getting a sneaky pic inside the girls' changing rooms...

Without further ado, here are Candy and Clare in racing glory - you can recognise them by their white Icicle hats, Candy nearest in lane 4, Clare on the other side in lane 6.

Madness I know. After the race you grab your warm layers which have been handily transported round to the finish, receive a glass of hot blackcurrant drink, and make your way first to the sauna, which is apparently presided over by Santa in civilian clothes, who holds back the curtain and says "Sauna?" (to rhyme with "frowner") invitingly:

Sauna Claus

After that it's all about the hot tubs - of which there are 4 - filled with hot soupy waters and an international selection of ecstatically happy post-race winter swimmers:

Clare and Candy emerge unscathed

We later discovered that in their category of 55 women, Candy came 25th and Clare 12th!! Not too shabby as world rankings go from team Brockwell Icicle.

On next was Sara, drowning in a dry robe before she'd even gone near the water:

Like magic, she appears 30 mins later race-ready, taking up position in lane 3 (again recognisable by white Icicles hat):

Another sterling Icicle performance, coming in 52nd out of 67. Sadly in the build up to my race I missed Liz and Biba in full flight, but by all accounts they both put in a most respectable performance and emerged glowing and with world rankings of 17th and 34th in their respective categories. Go the mighty Icicles!

Meanwhile, with longest to wait, pre-race nerves were getting the better of me again - as documented in this interview by sleuthing sports reporter Noelene (watching it now, I wonder that I'm not in some sort of care home, but anyway here it is):

Arriving in my designated changing cabin, morale received a considerable boost upon meeting two of my fellow competitors - the lovely Jola from Poland and the amazing Luisa from Brazil:

Before you know it we've scooched our way to the front of the red assembly tent and they're unzipping the front like curtain-up on first night:

With a sense of unreality I hear the command to TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES... Then here I am wearing next to nothing with a Pole, a Brazilian, 2 Fins, a Latvian, a Russian and a fellow Brit, standing in front of a hole cut into ice, surrounded by snow and onlookers. Maybe my friends were right after all and I am mad??

The water is cold of course, but I had been expecting considerably worse, and I'm relieved to find I don't get the cold-shock response of hyperventilation. I suppose with all that adrenaline sluicing around a bit of ice isn't going to register.

When the start gun sounded I was a bit distracted with admiring all the little icicles hanging from the ladder steps, so just let go instead of pushing off. I barely even saw the Russian girl in the lane next to me, who shot out the traps like a greyhound, but otherwise I kept up reasonably well with the main pack. About 10 m from the end I could feel my muscles fatiguing with the cold, but also started to smile uncontrollably. Overall I'm not sure I'm destined to be a world-class athlete, but fortunately that's not the point.

I slap the white board at the end of my lane to stop my timer, and I'm up and out the water beaming euphorically with an overwhelming sense of achievement, relief and endorphins. I finished in 25.39 seconds, coming 23rd out of 36. Pleasing!

And finally here's a post-race interview conducted by Noelene again - quite a contrast in mood to the pre-race installment above:

That evening Talya, Liz and I sampled the local bar culture with affable chaps Matt and Mike from Tooting Bec Lido (who can be seen in hot tub in above video), plus a local Rovaniemian, Tomas, and his friends (who were oddly horrified by our swimming exploits). I won't bore you with the gory details, but a turning point for the night was our introduction to the local tipple, yallu, which comes in shots, is indeed slightly yallu in colour, and is officially composed of "brandy mixed with booze". Unfort it's also quite tasty. Come 3am I bid a hasty farewell to our friend Tomas, made a dash for the taxi and fell flat on the ice like the clown that I am.

On balance, a most successful day.

Winter Swimming World Champs - Part I

We Brockwell Icicles recently upped our game considerably when we fielded an 8-strong team (all girls, the boys being too disorganised and scared) to the Winter Swimming World Championships! This event occurs every 2 years and is the place to be for cold-water nuts across the globe. It took place this time in the city of Rovaniemi, right on the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland!

Gosh, where to even begin? Well how about Herne Hill station, 6.30am on Wednesday 19th March, for taxi to Gatwick? You can already see the excitement in the eyes of Clare, our wonderful leader, organiser and general carer for the trip:

Clare in the community

Also starring Talya (camera-shy, fast swimmer), Liz (of recent Margate trip triumph) and regular mischief-makers Sara and Candy:

The adventure begins

...all due to meet at Gatwick with Icicle Noelene and friend Biba, who for better of worse had cast in her lot with us to become honorary 8th Icicle.

Oh and not forgetting David's much coveted Rab jacket, which Sara had shamelessly appropriated for the trip:

Raberdashery

Transported to Helsinki by aeroplane...

...we could have gone on to our destination by the same means. But where's the fun in that? Thanks to brainwave by Clare, we were booked upon a sleeper train <gasp of awe and excitement>

The train was a glorious, thrilling two-storey affair, with a bunk bed and dinky little fold-away sink area in each compartment, plus plenty of long windows in the corridors for admiring the views. Hopefully this little clip gives the general idea:

Naturally we made straight for the bar, a cosy and characterful carriage where you half expect to see Poirot taking a tisane in some unobtrusive nook.

Blond bombshells Noelene, Sara and Biba

Icicles on the loose

Talya enjoys on-board entertainment

Then back to sleeping compartments where we all piled onto Noelene's bed for a Finnish picnic:

Local brew

Trailing crumbs we find our beds, laugh ourselves gently to sleep and awake refreshed 7 hours later to find ourselves in... LAPLAND and THE ARCTIC CIRCLE!!

Hello Rovaniemi!

A sunny start with air temperatures a bracing -15 degrees (in the pic above my fingers are already starting to hurt after just a couple of minutes' exposure). Taxi to our home for the next 4 days - another stroke of genius by Clare: two lovely apartments just outside city centre, each with its own little sauna!

Home sweet home

Sauna!

Bags deposited, we made for the town centre on local bus:

Bus timetables - Sara wisely opts to steer clear

Time for coffee in downtown Rovaniemi - at the excellent Coffee House on Lordi Square (yes, so named in honour of the monster rock band who won Eurovision for Finland in 1996), where cappuccinos come in steaming soup tureen-like mugs and the Finnish delicacy of cardamom buns (which have an extra pat of butter on top, just to make sure) abound.

Down the road to check out the river - actually the confluence of two rivers, the Kemijoki (the longest in Finland) and the Ounasjoki. For all this joki it looked pretty serious to me, huge and almost completely frozen, except in the middle where large ice sheets were breaking off. Hard to imagine we'd be swimming in there tomorrow - after recent sunshine and 10 degree waters at the lido, this all suddenly seemed a bit hardcore <gulp>

Sara on thin ice

With butterflies in our Icicle tummies we went to register and then headed over the bridge to check out the race area, Candy needing more than a little encouragement as nerves started to kick in...

"Come on Candy, you know you want to do it really"

"But I don't, I really don't...Help!"

Poster girls

Arriving at the race area, my tiny mind slightly boggled. For it was literally a 25m-long oblong cut out of the river ice, divided with lane ropes, and a ladder down into the water at the ends of each lane. Sure, there was a cafe-restaurant, stalls selling pancakes and coffee, changing cabins etc. But all were merely satellites to that big ol' hole cut into the black river. Slightly thrilling but mostly terrifying!

Races were held over 4 days, and apparently over 1,200 people from forty-something countries were here to compete. The first day was reserved for the Endurance Swim - 450 m (18 lengths) which, at -1 degrees in the water, is a serious undertaking. You certainly won't catch me doing it. We were dismayed to see one man, in his 70s, get pulled out seemingly unconscious in the very first race and stretchered off to the ambulance. We later found out he'd suffered a heart attack, but thankfully had been revived. Not the most auspicious start to proceedings, adding to our mounting sense of impending doom.

We cheered ourselves up by getting to know the locals:

The afternoon's entertainment was most excellent - not only a trip to the city's very cool science and Finnish history museum, the Arktikum:

But also Noelene discovering that she'd had her trousers on back to front the whole day:

As for the evening - well, what an adventure! For we were all booked onto a snow mobile safari to try and track down those elusive Northern Lights. First, time to get kitted up in the latest snow safari/bank robbery clobber:

The plan was to head north for about an hour to get away from the light pollution of the city. So after a quick safety briefing by our very patient safari leader we set off in a line, two to a snow mobile. I found myself at the helm of this rather powerful and unpredictable machine, with Talya as my passenger behind.

The throttle and steering seemed to have a little joke going on to make me sporadically veer towards the trees, which only got scarier as we entered the twisty turny woods. I clung on desperately, tensing every muscle in my body and repeating "don't kill Talya, just don't kill Talya" under my breath. I think everyone else enjoyed it though!

After what seemed days we arrived at a large teepee, where our guide lit a fire in the middle to make tea and cook sausages.

As we gathered round he told us all about the Aurora Borealis, from the science (charged particles from the Sun hitting the Earth's upper atmosphere blah blah) to the traditional belief that a mythical 'firefox' running away causes the light display by hitting the snow with his tail. (Presumably the Southern Lights occur whenever Internet Explorer crashes). Apparently we had about 50% chance of seeing them on this night but, alas, not a sausage (apart from the actual sausages).

A much more enjoyable journey as passenger on the way back (except for one bit where we almost veered into the icy river - thanks Talya), then home for important night's sleep before.... RACE DAY #1...