Atlantic Masters Numbskulls take a road trip to Wild Water Armagh to support and participate in the Irish Ice Swimming Sprint Championships.

Dee Newell a member of Atlantic Master is also on the committee for the Irish Ice Swimming Association  and was needing to put a crew together that would provide recovery and event support at this year’s Championships. She didnt need to look too far as Atlantic Masters team mates David Condaire, Helen Colfer and Annette Cullen were happy to step up to the challenge .

Ice Swimming is classed as swimming in water temperatures of less than 5 Degrees and on Sat 26th of Feb there were going to be over 20 swimmers taking on the challenge of swimming 1k in the icy waters at Wild Water Armagh.

Swimming in the icy waters takes a toll on the body and it’s important that swimmers are fully supported in the recovery process. It’s important not to heat the body too quickly and also important not to let the core body temperature go so low it creates an “after drop”.  So the recovery support is really important. With military precision Dee had the teams ready with warm water, warm wet towels, warm drinks and constant monitoring to make sure each swimmers was ok post their swim.

The Championships started at 9am with the first swimmers entering the beautiful man made natural pool with the water temperature logged at 4.9 degrees. It was truly an international event with swimmers from Australia, France and the UK participating.  Ciara Doran from Galway was one of the last swimmers in and set a new Irish Ice 1Km rocord of 14.02.

This Championship was Team Ireland’s event pre-world championships, which is taking place at Murmansk, Russia Thursday 14-March to Monday 18-March 2019. Good luck to all Team Ireland’s competitors.

Once the serious stuff was out off the way the Atlantic Masters Numbskulls got to swim in the 200m freestyle, 50m Butterfly events and finished the day off with a win in the inaugural 4x50m relay competing against a heavy hitting all nations team.

A great day was had by all, lots learned about the skills required for ice swimming, how to aid recovery and new friends were made.

Atlantic Masters already have a few ice swimmers in their midst Laurence Watson completed his first ice KM in 2017 and Fergal Madden also completed his first ice KM in 2017 but has gone on to do 5 more and also has few Ice miles under his belt also.

For more information about ice swimming login to www.iisaireland.ie