Somewhere around 6am, as the mercury hovered just below 0, I found myself in unwilling possession of an abundance of whatever the opposite of motivation is.
Greeted at the coast by chest-high walls of icy cold saltwater marching relentlessly towards the shore, the usual excitement I’d expect to bask in had failed to arrive.
I’m not sure if this uninvited state of anhedonia was the ill effect of a really busy week, or the natural and sane response to confronting my body with the prospect of abandoning the pseudo comfort of my artificially warm car for the rawness of the North Sea on a March morning in Yorkshire.
Either way. It didn’t matter. I was here now.
After taking twice as long as normal to set my housing up and don the old wetsuit - a delay which saw me watch the stunning sunrise from my now tepid car, rather than in the ocean as I’d usually aim for - I headed down to the shoreline.
After a couple of hours bobbing about in the sea, with only my brother and his girlfriend for company (for most of that time), I can safely say I spent no more than 10% of the session not cold - and zero of it warm.
Don’t ask me why I do it, because sometimes I don’t know. But I do love it. Maybe it’s poetic; perhaps somewhere in the suffering there’s beauty; perhaps somewhere in the agony there’s excitement. Or, maybe I’m a long-time addict, just desperate to get my next fix…