Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Close Your Eyes and Think of England: Bankers, Fund Managers Strip for Sub-Zero Swims in London





Bloomberg reports: It’s a snowy Saturday morning. A group of seven men sporting woolly caps and backpacks gather at the top of Parliament Hill on London’s Hampstead Heath.  They’ve been meeting every weekend morning like this for the past two years -- never less than two, sometimes as many as 15, and their numbers are growing.

Ranging in age from 44 to 57, they head off shortly after 9 a.m., jogging down the southern side of the hill.
Video:Swimmers Shrug Off Snowy London to Dive in Icy Pond  This is no ordinary running group. In their professional lives they work for banks, hedge funds and private-equity firms. The 25-minute run is just a preamble. Soon they strip to swimming shorts, gloves and swimming caps, not wetsuits -- and dive into a pond, which on this day is at barely 2 degrees Celsius, or 36 degrees Fahrenheit. It can dip well below that.

“That’s Cold in Anybody’s Language,” the chalkboard temperature warning sign outside the lifeguard hut affirms.  While there is a long history in Europe of freezing-water bathing -- the Finns are known for avantouinti, or plunging into ice holes after a sauna -- cold-water swimming has taken off in the U.K.’s capital….

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