Memphremagog Winter Swimming Festival 2025 race report.
Back to the ice for a second year in a row!
I'm not going to do a lot of background on this event this year. I covered that last year, so if you want to know how we found this event and why we first did it (TRISTA), go read that.
For those who don't want to, but want to know what the heck this event even is, quoting myself from last year:
So, what IS this event? In Newport, Vermont, in mid February, they cut a 25m long, 2 lane wide, hole in the ice of the frozen Lake Memphremagog, and then they hold a swim meet there. Ice swimming. A perfectly sane thing to do.
We had no idea what we'd gotten ourselves into last year, and we ended up having such an amazing time, and we knew we wanted to go back. And we wanted to do MORE. 2024 had been our proof of concept. Just making sure we could get in that water and still function at all. We swam one 25-meter event each day for 3 days last year, and that went great, and we wanted to know if we could do more.
Again quoting from 2024 me:
The only thing I didn't love is that we didn't do it ALL. 3x25m was definitely not enough. Was it smart for the first year? Absolutely. But we don't aim for smart. We aim for maximal stupidity.
Which is why we're going back next year to do the 50m.
And the 100m
And the 200m.
And then 4x50 relay. Will we do it fly? Odds seem high, don't they?
I'm also hoping for more snow next year. And maybe actively snowing during the swims.. ?
Big words there, Amy! Did we have to eat them?
Spoiler: We did not. We did all of those things! AND it snowed actively during two of our swims! It was an AMAZING year at an amazing event!
We had a lot of people express interest when we competed last year, but didn't get much follow-through. We'll keep trying! We DID get our whole crew from last year (me, Trista, Matt, Meredith, and Katie), and then we also suckered in John, who is Katie's husband, and Marcus! Aaaand then at the last minute, life happened to Meredith, and she wasn't able to make it after all. So ultimately we only added one additional person to our little team from last year. Next year we hope to get even more of our folks out on the ice!
Day 0: Thursday
The swim meet actually started on Friday, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that we finally checked off an item from our bucket list: sled dogs! Last year we got to visit and pet them, but this year we actually got to do a little ride, and it was just as amazing as we'd hoped.
Day 1: Friday
Of course we started with the hat competition!
We tossed around various ideas last year, then we tabled the whole thing until about a month ago, at which point it was too late to do anything truly creative, and so again we leaned on an idea that was cute and big on the group dynamic, but was never going to actually win the hat competition.
We leaned into the husky/sled dog theme for the weekend, and we were a pack of huskies! We'd have a musher at the front of our group, then two by two groups of dogs, with furry ears and face paint. Maybe we'd even be tethered together like the sled dog harnesses.
Best laid plans, right? The ears and face paint were pretty cute and we were happy with those, even though most people thought we were cats. But it turned out that we couldn't realize our full sled-dog tableau vision, because they wouldn't let more than two people in the pool at once. They'd said the same thing last year, when we wanted all the gnomies to be in together, but then they relented and said it was fine. It was not fine this year. So at the last minute, we were just a bunch of unaffiliated dogs (or cats). It was fine.
We had a lovely time, people cheered for us, we howled, Marcus stuck out his tongue the whole time.
When we saw some of the amazing hats that other people had made, it reignited my desire to someday actually come up with a creative (but still achievable/transportable) hat/hat group that might actually be in contention for a prize. But not on fire, because evidently the rules state your hat can't be literally on fire, which took the amazing dumpster fire hat out of contention.
So the hat contest was fun, but it was also COLD. I know, I realize it's supposed to be cold. It's a frozen lake. (We had a lot of people ask us how cold the water was. If left to its own devices, it would freeze back into 20 inches of ice, so our answer was mostly "frozen", aka 31-33 degrees.)
I had forgotten how cold "frozen" was, so as Marcus and I were almost done dog-paddling (what else would huskies do?) our 25 meters, I yelled out, "How the FUCK am I going to swim 200 meters in this?!"
Because, y'all, it was cold. And if 25 meters hurt, how was 200 meters going to feel?
Which brings us to the 200 meter freestyle event.
There were a lot of nerves around the 200 meter swim for us. We joked about not doing it, and I'm not sure everyone was always joking. We strategized where the best place to DNF would be, to minimize travel time back to our robes and shoes. And in my case, I mostly just pretended it didn't exist. I wanted to have done the 200 meter. Which meant I had to DO the 200 meter. And fretting about it wouldn't make it any easier, so I mostly just ignored its existence.
Trista was more concerned, but mostly about the after. She has Raynaud's Syndrome, which means her hands and feet get very cold and painful and white, and that's just under normal circumstances. She was a little worried about how painful it would be after 200 meters and then the journey back to the warming tent. I was more worried about the swim, figuring anything that happened after that.. at least I'd lived through the swim.
I actually find it an interesting 'fear', at least for me. I've done a lot of dumb stuff. I can endure a lot of discomfort and pain. For a long time. I've mostly demystified many elements of that. I'm confident in my ability to suffer. But this type and level of The Unknown was a little intimidating. I know I can keep moving when my arms and legs hurt. But swimming in literally freezing water triggers a more primal fear in me. A bit like thinking about free-diving does for me. A couple extra steps outside "I am mostly in control of my safety and environment" than I usually take. Which is, of course, part of the appeal.
We did our hat swim at 10:40am, and we were scheduled to do our 200 around 2:30pm, so we knew we had some serious warming up to do between the two, and we managed to do that very successfully. After we left the warming tent, fully kitted up in warm clothes, we went back to our table next to the heater in the restaurant and proceeded to eat a lunch consisting of many more calories than we'd just burned in a 25 meter dogpaddle, or would burn in 200 meters of swimming later.
The rest of the time I mostly spent requesting advice from people who had done the 200 in the past. Everyone is super friendly and encouraging, and everyone told us we'd be fine. The most common advice was just to realize that we could stop if we needed to. We didn't have to feel like we had to complete the 200. Not everyone does, and that's okay. Be smart. Do what you need to do. They included that advice in the morning safety meeting, but emphasized that you REALLY should try to stop on the same side you started, if you were going to stop, so that they wouldn't have to hustle your gear down to the other end of the pool as fast as possible. Noted.
Other advice: It's fine if you don't put your face in, or if it takes you a while to put your face in. Don't overthink it. And my favorite, from Kellie-with-an-IE: It will hurt. It will pass.
And with that, we headed back down to the ice. This would be our first time getting into that lake twice in one day. And for Trista and I (and the next day, Matt, as well), the first time to actually turn. Katie was the only one of us non-virgins to do a distance longer than a 25 last year, when she also did the 50.
Oh, and that's more advice we got. Be careful on the turns. There is a piece of plywood that you stand on when you get in/out. And there is a piece of plywood that forms the end walls of the pool. When people said to be careful, I figured they meant be careful of the walls. But they clarified that the plywood you stand on is actually so shallow that as you bring your feet in to turn, it's easy to hit your feet on the plywood. And if you do, you're not going to feel it, because your feet are so numb. (I almost typed 'dumb'. ALSO TRUE.) I took in that advice, but didn't really understand it until I did my first turn.
Okay. Trista and I were swimming together for the 200, and we headed down with our entourage/photographers/videographers/cheer squad, plus we each had a volunteer assigned to us that would walk us across the ice, take our robe and shoes, and then help us back into those things and back across the ice if we lived through the experience.
It was cold outside. Day 1 had a blustery 20mph wind, bringing the 5-10 degree air temps down to a wind chill of "holy crap". Not a big deal when you're swimming, the water temp is the same, but definitely a big deal when you get out and you're already cold and you're wet and you have to hike back across the ice to get to the warming tent.
They assign you north or south when you get to the pool, and fortunately then your volunteer takes you north or south, because ????. I can't north or south at the BEST of times, definitely not when about to get into an icy lake and do dumb things.
I felt an appropriate amount of foreboding and dread when I stepped onto the platform to disrobe, but I wasn't particularly distraught. My heart rate wasn't out of control. Trista and I watched each other so that we would be ready and get in at the same time. And then we climbed the icy 2x4 ladder into the pool.
Side note: I love that each time we'd get in, a volunteer would yell, "Be careful, it's slippery." It made me laugh. Of course it's slippery, it is LITERALLY COATED IN ICE. WE ARE DOING A VERY STUPID THING.
Trista and I got in together, we gave each other a hug, which in hindsight was dumb, because that just put us in the water even longer, but.. hugs! And then they told us to go.
And this swim was So Incredibly Hard for me. I did the first 25 with no problem, I felt okay. I realized as I approached the first wall what people meant about the turns. The water is shallow, and your instinct is to want to flip turn, but you are NOT allowed to do that, nor even fully submerge your head underwater, and I'm not even sure if you could if you wanted to, so you're trying to pull from your memory how open turns work, and make sure your feet don't drop too low (easier for me and my very short legs, obviously), and then touch the wall, and then decide how to start the next length, because even though I INTENDED to push off the wall, I think I pushed off the bottom each time, mostly off the edge of the platform further from the wall. It's just what my body ended up doing each time. It was interesting to watch my body doing stuff, and really have no feeling like I was controlling said body.
On the way back to finish my first 50, I realized.. oh, shit, this is going to be a very long swim. I know how long 200 is, but it has never felt so long before. Trista had already pulled ahead of me, and I just focused on following her. She was still going, I could keep going. If she stopped, I couldn't promise I would keep going, so I hoped she kept going. While.. also hoping she stopped.
I got through the first 100, but it was a struggle. Just so many things. It feels like a pool swim, in its shape, but you can't see the bottom, so you have to sight. And you can't really just swim half the length without sighting and then check in, because you can't really swim in a straight line, even if you're trying to watch the side/lane line as you breathe. You can't trust your equilibrium or your instincts. And you do NOT want to hit the lane line or the side of the pool with your hand, because it will probably break the skin, and you won't feel it, and you will bleed dramatically.
And then as you get close to the wall, it feels like it takes FOREVER to actually get to the platform/wall, and you absolutely don't want to hit the end of the pool with your hands, so I massively oversighted every time I'd get to a wall.
I was falling further and further behind Trista. I didn't have any time goals, and I knew she'd be faster than I was, but I wanted to be able to keep her in my sights, so I could use her as motivation. I felt like I had no idea how my limbs worked anymore. I felt like my hands were stumps, and I couldn't tell if I was making fists, or if my fingers were spread wide apart uselessly, but whatever they were doing, it didn't feel Correct.
The last 100 took forever. The world just kinda felt like a blur. I can only see out of one eye, so I don't get a lot of data when I breathe, or when I sight, and it was giving me a bit of tunnelvision. I just concentrated on gutting it out. I'm not even sure, looking back, that I can say "I felt really, really cold". I'm sure I did. But now I just feel like it was hard in a way that I couldn't really define. It just felt hard to keep going. And the further I went, the more I slowed down. I felt SO SLUGGISH. Which I knew just meant I was going to be out there longer. But I absolutely couldn't make myself go any faster. My arms kept moving, but I'm not sure they knew they were swimming.
I saw Trista getting out of the pool basically when I turned around to finish my last 25, and I knew I just had to get to that wall and I could get out and be done, and we could celebrate having done this. The last 25 was hard, but it was easier than the middle meters, knowing that it was almost over.
And then I awkwardly, oversightingly, flailed my way to the last wall, and I was done!
I went into the 200 feeling really relaxed and chill, and it ended up SO much harder than I expected it to be.
AND THEN.
I was super clumsy climbing out of the pool. I definitely felt like I wasn't the one controlling my body. Matt and my volunteer wrapped my DryRobe around me, but didn't put my arms through the sleeves, trying to keep my limbs with my body to maximize warmth. That meant I couldn't actually use my arms to hold onto the platform, and I felt like I was going to fall over because I couldn't balance myself. They kept me upright, and then we tried to put my Crocs on. Tried and failed. We had them in 'sport mode' (everything I know about Crocs, I learned from Trista), which means I couldn't just slide my foot in, we also had to get the back strap over my heel. And we really, really struggled with that, because I couldn't look down to see my feet, and I couldn't feel them to help guide my foot in. It was just a mess. A slow mess. I feel bad now for the people who were lined up to go next, having to wait in the cold for me to finally get off that platform.
Finally they switched the Crocs to .. whatever the opposite of sport mode is, making them just slides, and I was able to slide my feet in. But that meant I couldn't really pick up my feet much, or my shoes would slide off. My volunteer said to just shuffle my feet forward, not really lift them, so my shoes would stay on, but I just could NOT control my feet, because I couldn't feel them. A few steps later, one of my Crocs came fully off my foot, and it was a scary feeling looking down at my bare foot on the icy ground. And not even being able to feel it.
Aaaanyway, it sounds dramatic because it felt dramatic, but eventually we shuffled our way up the snow hill to the warming tent, where Trista had presumably been for 11 years. I got my shoes off and sat down in an empty chair and put my feet in a bucket. They say to let them know if the water is too hot or too cold, but honestly how can you even tell when your feet are that cold? It felt a little overwhelming, though, so maybe it was too hot? Anyway, that didn't matter, because I was too busy dealing with my hands. My hands HURT. This was the part Trista had feared, and I hadn't really been concerned about it, and now I was very concerned about it. I knew it would get better, but I wasn't prepared for how much it hurt and for how long. Just an aggressive, deep ache through my hands, and I convinced myself that holding the warm, microwaved sock was the right way to get them to feel better, but I'm fairly sure it was just making them feel worse. Eventually I ditched the sock because it was just too much, and my hands felt a little better just warming up on their own.
Throughout this, I tried to reassure Matt/volunteers that I was fine, just very uncomfortable, even as Matt tried to put my hood up to get my head warmer, and I was like "I CAN'T WITH THIS HOOD, I CAN'T SEE ANYTHING, MAKE IT GO AWAY."
Meanwhile Trista had like zero problems after the swim. Kids, lesson learned. Worrying about it beforehand is a good way to make it a non-issue. Or something? Anyway, I was happy and jealous that she was relatively unscathed, and had a good swim and recovery!
Oh, at some point while I was sitting there with aching hands and my feet in a bucket of unknowably-warm water, I thought "Ugh, I should stop my watch!" I managed to extract my wrist from my DryRobe and.. it was stopped! Matt is an excellent partner with proper priorities, and had at some point stopped my watch for me. Love that guy.
Someone asked if I wanted hot water to drink, and I thought that sounded promising. But once I got the cup, I was shaking so hard, all I could do is slosh hot water onto my hands, which wouldn't have felt good even if my hands hadn't hurt. So I gave up that endeavor. It's funny, I can swim in cold water, and I'm generally okay while I'm swimming, but the afterdrop hits me REALLY hard, and I end up with full-body trembling as soon as it hits. It's very annoying, and I need to figure out the proper steps for my particular brand of post-cold-swim afterdrop. (Hot tub usually works well, but those were not on offer, and they didn't want people to take a hot shower, because there's a strong chance of passing out if you do that, and they didn't have the volunteers to keep an eye on everyone.)
Okay. Trista, Katie, and I all survived the 200. It was hard. But it passed. Thank you, Kellie. It felt good to have completed it. Once I was warm again.
Now I just had to convince my body to get back in that water again the next day.
Day 2
Okay, I know day 1 was a lot of words, but I promise day 2 was a lot less dramatic.
After the 200, I questioned how I was going to convince my brain to get my body back in that water. I definitely had some emotional trauma. BUT. I'm not sure if this is just coincidence or not, but the 'distance' option on day 2 is 50 meters. Which when compared to 200 meters is SO short and doable. If they had the 100 meter swim on day 2, I might have struggled more. But I knew I could get in for 50. And we each only had one swim on day 2, 25 meters for Marcus and John, 50 meters for me, Matt, Trista, and Katie. Absolutely doable.
It helped that day 2 was a beautiful day with a sunny blue sky and no wind. Just perfect.
Mind you, we would have been annoyed if we had a sunny, "warm" day for the 200. If you're going to suffer, you want to have it be with the worst available weather. Makes a better story. You don't want a 'good weather' asterisk next to your swim.
Unless it's for a 50, in which case BRING IT ON.
Marcus and John started with the 25 and had their first experience actually putting their heads in. Well, Marcus did. John mostly swam the most amazingly aggressive Tarzan swim I've ever seen. So much fun to watch them conquer that 25.
Then Matt and I swam together for the 50, which I loved, and Katie and Trista teamed up. I was in pure survival mode for the 200, but for the 50, I felt like I was able to actually push a little bit, and I felt like I knew where most of my limbs and digits were for the whole swim!
Delightful.
And then.. done swimming for the day! Just in time to hustle over to Brown Cow, the delicious little brunch place we discovered last year, before they closed for the day. To over-replenish our 25 or 50 meters of swimming.
The afternoon brought us back to EastSide for the pajama party and awards ceremony, which is always fun. Last year we wore gnome onesies, so obviously this year we suited up in wolf onesies.
Or cat, bunny, squirrel, or hamster onesies, depending on who misinterpreted our pack.
Day 3
When I woke up, IT WAS SNOWING. Like, really snowing. People from not-the-south laugh at my delight over what they don't even consider real snow, but this was legitimate snow! Falling from the sky! I crossed my fingers it would last through at least our first swim, but I was happy just to get to go out and stand in it with a stupid grin on my face.
Our menu for the day had Trista, Katie, and me swimming the 100 and the 4x50 relay, and Marcus swimming the 4x25 virgin relay. John was satisfied with his 2 25s, and Matt still felt not great from the flu that I gave him the week before. I was half a week ahead of him in recovery, and feeling.. okay. But he decided to err on the side of smart and be our support person for the third day.
Having swum the 50 the day before and having had it go really well, I felt better about surviving the 100. ESPECIALLY IF IT WAS SNOWING. Which.. it did. We got to spend all morning sitting next to our heater in EastSide watching the snow fall, and it kept falling when we went out to swim.
Trista and I swam the 100 together, and it felt not as good as the 50, but a million times better than the 200.
And while we had a few gusts of wind coming through, it wasn't anything like day 1, so recovery wasn't an issue, and soon we were back inside waiting for the relays.
The 4x25 virgin relays were pure chaos. When you sign up for a relay, you can tell them who you want to swim with, and have a pre-determined relay team. But you can also just say you want to swim the relay, and they'll put you on a team that needs people. Marcus was the only one of us swimming the 4x25 relay, so he had been put on a team randomly.
But when it came time for the relays, they basically said that one member from each relay team should come up and get on the roster, and then they would start the relays. Except Marcus didn't have a team, so we then started running through EastSide frantically trying to find 3 other people swimming the virgin relay, or WILLING to swim the virgin relay, so that Marcus could have a team!
Again.. chaos. But we ultimately formed him a great team, got to meet new people as a result, and Marcus' relay team got third place!
After running around chaotically forming up a relay team, we got ready to walk out with his team and do some video and photos. Then we realized.. there were so few virgin relay teams that almost immediately after they started the virgin relay, it would be time for the 4x50 relay, and not only did we not have time to go out with them, we really needed to be ready to swim, like.. immediately.
More chaos!
Oh, a note about our 4x50 relay. We had the same roster as last year: Trista, Katie, Meredith, Amy. Except, as previously mentioned, Meredith wasn't able to come. That meant we needed a 4th to round out our team. We started our search on Friday, in case it took some time, since our ultimate goal was a female who was willing to swim fly. That seemed ambitious, so if it got to be Sunday and our only volunteer was a male freestyler, that was fine, too.
Except we immediately found our unicorn in Shea, who we had met last year, because I was wearing an OTILLO-branded DryRobe, and she recognized it because she was also a swimrunner! We were excited to see her again this year, and even more excited when she wasn't already on a relay team and was willing to join ours. And when we told her we were swimming fly, she was even MORE excited! Couldn't have been more perfect.
Oh, wait, yes, it could, because we made her go first, and it turns out she's really GOOD at fly! The other team in the pool with us was swimming freestyle, because other people aren't the same brand of weird as we are, and Shea immediately got us a huge lead! Which I, as the second swimmer, lost utterly and completely, leaving Trista neck and neck with their third swimmer. Ultimately the other team was super strong, and we couldn't pull back ahead, but their final swimmer waited at the wall, in the frozen lake, for Katie to finish, so she could high-five her. Just good people all around out there.
And then we were done.
And now we're officially trained and ready for Lake Memphremagog Winter Swimming Festival 2026!
As we meet other swimmers at this event, they ask us where we're from. When we say Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina, they ask us how we train for this event. Mostly we say.. we don't.
Last year, just to make sure we could before our first frozen swim meet, we did do some swimming in a very cold Twin Lakes, Colorado, to see how it felt. This year we did the Whistler swimrun, which had two pretty chilly swims, but in full swimrun gear. And Trista cold plunges. But otherwise, our training for each year is the event the year before.
So if you're cold-water curious, just know that you don't HAVE to have access to a frozen lake in order to prepare for the event. You can dip your toe in with a couple 25 meter swims and see if it's for you. And even if it ultimately isn't, the weekend itself is worth the journey. Newport, Vermont is a tiny little charming town that's fun to visit. We have SO much fun (and this year SNOW much fun)!
Come play next year. I'm planning to do the 200 meter again. I'd like to feel like I'm in control next time, rather than just trying to survive. Or maybe learn that the 200 is just for surviving!
(Ignore the fact that I still have two fingers with reduced feeling, a week later. It's fine. It's getting better!)
Great and detailed report !! Didn't you experienced that on your feet the 1st day after the swim.
ReplyDeleteThis is a crazy experience. Adorkable are crazy 🤪