When year-round sea swimming became a mass movement during Covid-19, among the many writers to explore the phenomenon was US sports journalist Chris Ballard.
And Ballard took it further. Treatment for his athletic injuries led him to research the appeal of alternating ice cold with heat.
Writing in his new book, The Plunge, he explains that he hoped the benefits would help him to avoid what he calls “the ultimate surrender” – pickleball or golf.
Cold Water Quest — Chris Ballard’s The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, An Unlikely Quest and The Transformative Power of Cold Water explores the growing world of cold water swimming.
The quest to find out more about “Nature’s cocaine” led him from freezing fjords to alpine lakes to the Extreme Environments Laboratory at the University of Portsmouth.
He interviewed ice milers, including Ireland’s Ger Kennedy, and talked to people with serious illnesses who say cold water changed their lives.
Ballard tested his own limits in the extreme sport, eventually becoming a US national champion in the Ice Mile — a mile-long swim in freezing water which is both a test of body and mind.
Described by the publishers as “a rollicking, eye-opening adventure about the cure that's freely available to all and as old as the planet itself”, The Plunge: Maverick Swimmers, An Unlikely Quest and the Transformative Power of Cold Water by Chris Ballard is published by Penguin at 19.99 euro.
