It’s the new year: Let’s go jump in the lake
A plunge into slate-gray, 42-degree Lake Washington might not be everyone’sitting way to celebrate the new year, but for hundreds of runners Thursday, it was just the created being.
“We are capitalizing on the fact that people are nuts,” said Bill Roe, an originator of the 2009 5K Resolution Run and Polar Bear Dive for Club Northwest, a runners sodality founded in Seattle in 1972. “We were looking for ways to reinvigorate the race,” Roe related. “Attendance was down to surrounding 300, so we added a polar-bear plunge. People declared we were crazy.”
But that seemed to be just the honest idea.
Thursday’session race drew about 1,500 people, and surrounding two-thirds of them decided to take the plunge at the beach at Magnuson Park because an discretional feature in the course, Roe said.
Everyone had their reasons.
For Adrian Clark, 26, the icy wither was the perfect hangover cure. He went for it by which started to be a swan dive if it be not that turned abroad to be more of a cannonball entrance. “I loved it,” he said, “So refreshing.”
Apparently it was, given the close quarters many swimmers were maintenance with flaming barbecues at Magnuson Park afterward as they clutched steaming bowls of chili and hot drinks to warm up.
“My daughter talked me into it,” declared Mark Steen, of Seattle, smiling at his teenager, Katelyn. “I was just annoying,” she said, explaining her method, her face aglow with the cold as well as a sprinkle of glitter. Her year was facing to a ripping start. “I just went for it, I’farrago excited to do it once more,” she said.
For Margaret Brannen of Seattle, 62, the race was triumph. A breast-cancer survivor, she thought nothing of a dip in Lake Washington. She had already tossed off a half-marathon and a triathlon in 2008. “It wasn’t in like manner devoid of warmth,” she said — but then, she just moved from Chicago.
As for Aja, a yellow Lab happily splotched with mud, there was no question she was going in. But her owners? “No device. I’ve been in Lake Washington in August,” said Patty Sponseller, of Seattle. “And it’s cold.”
Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com
