Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

The Toronto Winter Swimming Club met up again today for another swim at Cherry Beach. We had (birthday) a little more gear this time (water shoes, water gloves, and swim caps) which helped a lot. We're slowly swimming for longer to get a good idea of how we feel. Today we were in the water (real swimming, not just wading in cold water with the occasional dunk) for about five minutes, and I don't think that was long at all in terms of what's comfortable. My feeling is that fifteen minutes is about how long I'm comfortable swimming right now in winter water.

Those are stills from a six minute video that we shot that unfortunately wasn't quite wide angle enough to capture us while we were swimming because it was thirty or forty feet from the shore (so all I have is some shots of us going in and out because today we didn't bother with support people). Anyway, we're doing this once or twice a week so drop us a line if you'd like to come along, and there's a big swim planned for Winter Solstice (December 21st for those of you who've been Christianized), again at Cherry Beach, that we'd like to attract at least a couple dozen people to.

Other than that, the trailer/commercial shoot for Test The Nation (Canadian version) was a lot of fun. They're pitting a team of thirty-six tattoo artists (I'm on that team) versus the same sized teams of millionaires, mayors, fitness instructors, surgeons, and I think one other team that I can't remember right now. They wanted to do a team of “all people who look like Peter Mansbridge” but the CBC brass vetoed that (I'm not even kidding — I hope there are at least a few Canadians chuckling about that idea).

Anyway, watch for me and I think at least one other IAM member (please drop me a line, I can't remember your IAM name) was in the commercial that will probably start airing in February, and the show is being shot LIVE (ack!) in March.