Cold plunging is taking off. I first heard about cold plunging outdoors from NPR. My first time cold plunging was about two years ago when I did the Golden Gardens cold plunge mentioned in the article with a friend and liked it. It was nice waking up early on a Sunday and doing something to start the day.

My first cold plunge

The Challenge

I challenged myself to do a cold plunge for the first 25 days of December as a sort of early New Year’s resolution. The rules were that is had to do a cold plunge at some point in the day, on any day, with no minimum time in the water.

The 25 days

I completed the challenge. My takeaway is that every day cold plunging is too much. It was a nice start to the day: running down to the dock in the dark at 5AM and slipping into the water for a few seconds got me fully awake, no caffeine needed.

A sunny, but cold day

Some days were super cold and stormy. Nice calm days made staying in a few minutes possible. On the coldest days I jumped in, got out, and immediately ran to take a warm shower. I’ll keep cold plunging, but I won’t be trying to do it every single day!