The day I have been dreading.
Nothing to do with the last ever episode of The Killing or the final of this series of Homeland – though God knows that’s hard enough to bear.
Zero.
Brass monkeys.
The Beast from the East.
Big fat circles on the weather chart.
Call it what you will - it’s freezing.
Back in September running on Hampstead Heath and finishing with a leisurely swim in the balmy waters of the Ladies’ Pond seemed like a very civilised way to get fit.
With my sixtieth birthday looming I decided I would celebrate it with a run and a swim just to prove that I was not giving in to decrepitude.
The leaves changed colour and began to fall, along with the temperature. When the water was down to 12C the rope was brought in to halve the swimming area and make it easier for the lifeguards to fish out bodies. (Only kidding, apparently there are more accidents in the summer when there are more inexperienced swimmers around.) Having made it to my birthday at the end of October there seemed little point in stopping then. I decided I would become one of the stalwart (mad?) old women who swim through the winter.
So every time I went to the pond I would ask the other swimmers what their secret was for continuing through the cold weather (some of them have been doing it for years and years). They all have their special tips – a bowl of hot water for your feet, a banana or a thermos of soup afterwards, wearing divers’ gloves and bootees, several even swim in woolly hats or berets, but the one piece of advice they all shared was – ‘you just keep doing it’. It reminded me of George Harrison’s wife, Olivia, who when asked the secret of staying married (to someone who was, apparently, not averse to a bit of extra-marital) replied simply, ‘You just don’t get divorced.’
So all autumn I’ve been just doing it – the running and the swimming that is, not staying married – way too late for that, I’m afraid. And all the time I’ve been terrified of the day when the water froze.
This week it happened.
The best part was that I hardly noticed my run over frozen puddles and frost-rimed leaves because I was so worried about what lay at the end of it. On the path to the pond an old dog fox with a grey muzzle and brush blocked my way looking indignant at being disturbed, (despite the fact that, as a male, he was the one with no right at all to be there). When he grudgingly let me pass I noticed four cormorants sitting on the ice-bound lifebuoys, like the vultures in The Jungle Book, as if they had come to watch the fun.
In the changing room one swimmer was just leaving and another was getting dressed after her dip. I was so nervous about getting into the water that I didn’t even notice that I hadn’t put my gloves on until I had climbed down the ladder and the freezing water hit my hands; but by then it was too late to go back. I leaned back and attempted an elegant backstroke, knowing that, just as in running, it’s beginning that is hardest.
A lifeguard came out to warn me to take care. The pond doesn’t freeze right over any more because there are giant agitators that keep it moving, so there was an area of a few yards to swim in. I’d meant to get out almost immediately but there is something so seductive about being in the water, especially when the sun is shining, that I just wanted to swim close enough to touch the ice on the surface. As I stretched out my arm I felt a great sheet of sharp-edged ice submerged just beneath the surface. That brought me to my senses and I swam back to ladder as fast as my frozen paws could paddle me.
A few minutes late, warm and dry again, I felt absolutely euphoric. I can finally call myself a winter swimmer, as well as a runner.
Now where’s that banana?
I keep doing it! 
Absolutely loving running on ice and snow with my snow spikes
9 weeks and 9 months!
Quietly getting on with it and ice running
"What's the secret?" he asked
