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few years ago I created this chart for a blog. It was part in fun but also meant to raise a serious point about a dangerous issue in an easy-to-visualise way. I’ve seen it resurface several times on various social media posts since then, which I hope means swimmers find it useful.
As we’re heading into winter in the northern hemisphere, I want to share it again. Here’s how to read it.
The vertical axis, marked “+ve” and “-ve”, has three measures: risk, benefit and how it feels. There is no scale. This is intentional as there is huge variation between individuals. How you feel about cold water swimming is subjective and our tolerances vary widely. The aim is to show how these things change with time in the water, which is measured on the horizontal axis. The time axis is also not scaled as the range depends on both temperature and individual factors.
Know how risk changes over time