New Year’s Day 2012 Idiot Swim

Running marathons, when you really break it down, is a really dumb thing to do. To put yourself through the grueling, and typically very painful experience of running a race that commemorates some dude who over 2000 years ago DIED from doing the very same thing, is just a bit nuts.
Training for such an event, at least in the beginning stages before you hurt yourself, is actually quite noble! It gets one in shape, becomes a constructive hobby for many and is a great way to stay active and healthy for a very long time. Human beings after all were meant to distance run in order to outlast our prey which would eventually keel over with a heart attack or be so winded that they’d just stop moving before we inevitably finished the job ourselves.
But marathon running seems like such a natural activity in comparison to what a great number of people willingly and happily choose to do every New Year’s Day right around the strike of noon.
These idiots (I now count myself as one) go swimming in the frigid cold of Lake Michigan off the beach at North Avenue.
Unlike marathons– there’s really no training or preperation for such a moronic act.
Unless of course, you are crazy (crazy people are different from idiots) and you happen to do this thing more than once a year…
It’s a pretty simple process– show up, get nearly nude (and if you have some cut-​off jorts like Tobias Funke, wear them!), run into the water, let your bones chill for the 22 seconds or so that you are in contact with the lake (get most of your head and body under, or else it doesn’t count!!!), run out of the lake, scream the most obvious thing you can think of like «OH MY GOD, IT’S COLD!» or «I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS!», then towel off, get dressed, and leave.
In the midst of all of that it would be a good idea to have a friend around to take some pictures, and if you really want to do any sort of preperation at all– have another friend handy to make you some delicious and warming menudo for after.
You are going to need it!
Lastly, the question was asked if dunking ones self in the icey waters would cure a hang over… My answer is that unlike a quick remedy that masks the pain and makes you feel better, this is just pain on top of pain.
Are you now interested?
Somehow, I have a feeling I’ll be back in 2013.