Laura celebrates 500 SUB10 swims!

For Laura, it was never about speed or medals. It was about showing up, embracing the cold, and letting the lake do its quiet, extraordinary work. NOWCA shares her story.

There are swimmers, and then there is Laura.

When she first slipped into Taplow Lakeside in August 2020, drawn in by a friend’s post during lockdown, she had no idea she was stepping into something life changing. Four years later, she has logged over 1,000 NOWCA swims – almost every single one at the same stretch of water – and has just become the first swimmer in Sub10 Club history to reach 500 cumulative sub10 dips.

It didn’t happen through grand ambitions. It happened through quiet, relentless consistency – four or five times a week, every week, every season.

She shed her wetsuit in 2021. Ditched the gloves and boots the year after. Each winter, she simply pushed her limits a little further. And somewhere between the shock of that first cold plunge and the magical sound of breaking ice on a frozen lake, open water stopped being something she did and became something she was.

“Your swim is your swim,” she’ll tell anyone who asks. “Totally individual.”

For Laura, it was never about speed or medals. It was about showing up, embracing the cold, and letting the lake do its quiet, extraordinary work. Some milestones speak for themselves. Five hundred sub10 swims is one of them.

Read more about Laura’s story at nowca.org