It's eight in the shivering morning, and as others are sat rush-hour gridlocked in warm cars or forcing school kids to find their gloves and coats, a bunch of seemingly crazed solicitors from Mary Monson's in Swinton are swimming one hundred metres in freezing open water at Salford Quays.
They are in training for today's 8th UK Cold Water Swimming Championships which take place at Tooting Bec Lido in London and no-one's moaning. They are even complaining that it's too warm...
"We were expecting snow, so we're a little disappointed but the temperature was around three degrees, colder than a gin and tonic but only just" says chilled team captain Joseph Kotrie-Monson, a criminal defence lawyer and director of the firm, who represented the UK two years ago in the Siberian Open Cup as the 'Average Ice Swimmer' with zero competitive experience and only three weeks training.
"We're lawyers, not professional athletes, so getting in enough training to eliminate the risk is virtually impossible" he adds "But Salfordians are made of strong stuff, and with a great and very important cause to support, we know we will do our very best, and hopefully raise a lot of money for the homeless in Salford..."
The team, titled Salford Sewer Rats, is entering the mad event to raise money for the Salford Unemployed and Community Resource Centre (SUCRC) breakfast club for the homeless in Eccles and youth homelessness charity Centrepoint...
"The rationale must be that we're going to be cold for a very short period of time but it's offensive that there are so many people at the moment who are cold on the streets" Joseph explains.
The team includes Chantal Ward, a paralegal who has never swum in cold water before beginning training a couple of weeks ago. At the Championships, which will bring around eight hundred swimmers from 14 nations, they are expecting temperatures close to freezing, and the organisers have put in place contingency plans to break any ice so that swimming can continue...
It doesn't bare thinking about!
The swimmers work at Mary Monson Solicitors in Salford which is paying for all their expenses so any donations go directly to those in need in this cold winter...
To donate see the Salford Sewer Rats Facebook page – click here
To find out more information on the 2019 UK Cold Water Swimming Championships - click here
Update: 27th January:
Salford Sewer Rats Win Bronze!
The Salford Sewer Rats did the city proud yesterday as Joseph Kotrie-Monson picked up a bronze medal for 'Ice Fly' and Martin Kiiskula picked up a bronze in the breaststroke
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