The pop culture reference in this post title will seem dated before long, but it’s completely apropos of my first dip in chilly water.

Following the balmy waters of Cancun, I found myself on a work trip later that month in San Francisco. I was giving a keynote address at a client’s annual conference, and with the theme of the event being sports, I decided to inject the fact that I was training to swim the Channel into my opening grabber.

I have to say, I was reticent to do it, not because I was scared to telling people publicly that I was doing it (and thus making it very, very real), but because it’s a pet peeve of mine when speakers turn the spotlight on them and all their great accomplishments. My out? I hadn’t done it yet, so it was less a humble brag and more, “here’s what I’ve learned from training”.

The reaction I got from the audience flat out startled me. There were audible gasps followed by applause, which I did not expect, and certainly wasn’t fishing for. I joked that if they were down by the Aquatic Park later that week and the screams of a 12-year-old girl coming from the mouth of a 40-something guy charging out of the water, they would know it was me. Little did I know how prescient that really was.

The afternoon of the next day, I headed over to Ghirardelli Square where the protected cove is located, and I took in the situation on the thin strip of beach. To my right were two people on the sand, donning wetsuits for a swim. Not good. Was this what the locals did to tolerate the cold water? I had been there the previous summer and saw swimmers bobbing around, but my impression was that the temperature, let alone the weather, doesn’t change much throughout the year…what was really going on?

I decided I had to get in, at least for a little bit. If I was going to learn to brave the cold, I had to start here, even if it meant running in and running back out again. I stripped down to my traditional gear– board shorts and goggles (no cap) and waded into the water. To my surprise, the water was cold, but not ankle-biting cold (a litmus test often applied by us New England beach goers).

I stood there, about thigh deep contemplating my fate. Could I do it? Should I just try another day? Maybe I could scoot out at lunch tomorrow when it would be warmer rather than deal with the waning warmth of the evening sun. And then I saw them. Two swimmers out where the water was much deeper, but still within the piers, doing laps back and forth. And they didn’t have wetsuits on.

This was the final encouragement I needed. It wasn’t impossible. I had proof. I summoned all the courage I had, and after a few rounds of “just after this wave”, I dove in and started swimming.

Actually, it was more like sprinting. I had figured that I would swim out to where the other swimmers were, or maybe just swim straight out and swim back again, but after a few breathless strokes I thought better of it. I needed to stay where I could stand up in case the cold got to me, so I pivoted and started swimming parallel to the beach.

And man oh man, was that water cold. I would later find out it was in the mid-50’s, and after a while I actually got used to it, but the shocker of it was that for the first 5-10′, I could not believe how cold my face was. While my fingers and arms were plenty chilly, my face was frigid and by far the coldest part of my body. After a while that too went away though, and while I was never really warm, the cold was in fact tolerable. I could see how you could acclimatize to it over time.

I swam to the left, passing the stadium seating along the water, and when I reached the end of the straightaway, before the cove begins its curl, I turned around and swam back, continuing until just about reaching the pier on the far right side. All in all it was about a 15′ swim, and I was done.

I was quite happy to have broken the seal on my cold water swimming foray, quite happy that I didn’t turn tail at the first brush with cold water, and quite happy too to dry off, change and get some delicious ribs across the street at The Pub BBQ.