Back home in Brazil, that is.
Where Gunderson and hundreds of other intrepid polar plungers leaped into a square of open water cut into the ice, the air temperature was 30 degrees with a 20-mph breeze, according to the National Weather Service.
That was downright balmy compared with a couple of days earlier, when the temperature topped out at zero. If you enjoyed the respite from the bitter cold, perhaps you can give thanks to the 19th annual Polar Plunge, sponsored every year by Law Enforcement Torch Run as a fundraiser for Special Olympics.
A man wearing a tuxedo raises his fist in the air as he takes the Duluth Plunge Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020, on Park Point. (Tyler Schank / tschank@duluthnews.com)
“We’ve been lucky the last eight or nine years,” said Mike Thamm, a Duluth Police Department patrol officer who has been involved in the Duluth version of the plunge from the beginning. “It’s been typically at the end of January, beginning of February, 20 below, 10 below, whatever. And this plunge weekend for at least the last six or eight years has been 25, 30 degrees.”
Those are still kind of cold conditions to jump in the lake, it was suggested.
“Well, the lake is still the same temperature in the summertime,” Thamm countered.
After describing the ride to and from the site in a heated bus, the heated changing tent and the immediate return to the heated tent after plunging, Thamm explained what the actual plunge is like:
“Real quick, all the air rushes out of your lungs,” he said. “And you’re surprised at how fast your legs can pump you out of the water and back into that warm tent again. So just a minute or two of discomfort, but it is a blast.”
A woman with a shirt that reads “Stay chill” hurries out of the freezing water after taking the Duluth Plunge Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020, on Park Point. People from UnitedHealth Group dressed in tie-dye to support the cause. (Tyler Schank / tschank@duluthnews.com)
Thamm was speaking around noon at Grandma’s Sports Garden in Canal Park, the traditional headquarters for the event. The venue was bustling, and it appeared that about 95% of the clientele were pre-plungers and their friends and families.
In the past, shuttle buses took plungers the short distance to a site on the other side of Endion Station. But plunge planners learned just two weeks earlier that the city of Duluth wouldn’t allow the event to take place in the area where the Lakewalk is being repaired, Thamm said. A scramble ensued, he said, as organizers looked for the alternative location and found more buses to accommodate the longer shuttle.
Final figures weren’t in, but it looked like there would be around 700 plungers, Thamm said, and somewhere around $175,000 raised — in line with recent years. It appeared likely the Duluth plunge would cross the $2 million mark in terms of total raised over the years, he said.
The event’s concept is simple. Register, raise some money, show up on a Saturday in February and jump into the appointed spot with rescue workers awaiting just in case something goes wrong. But some participants add a little pizzazz to their plunge.
Steve Klinga (left), Jeff Crosby (third from right) and Travis Hill (second from right) of UnitedHealth Group stay in the cold after taking the Duluth Plunge to greet people in their group after their jumps Saturday on Park Point. (Tyler Schank / tschank@duluthnews.com)
Sarah Tieszen of Minneapolis was eating a pre-plunge meal at the Sports Garden with her husband, Jason, and their daughters Sirena, 10, and Anika, who was celebrating her 9th birthday. Sarah, about to make her first plunge, was attired as Anna from “Frozen,” and was going to meet some friends who would complete the tableau.
“We’re supporting,” Jason said of the rest of the family.
Sarah confessed to being a little nervous, but added, “It’s for a good cause, and it’s kind of bragging rights.”
On the upper level of the Sports Garden, Mikey Maxson was posing for photos with the other 21 members of team Minnesota Special Olympics Roadrunners, based on the Iron Range. The others were dressed as loofahs — those fuzzy, scrubby things you might find in the shower. Maxson was dressed as soap.
“I saw the soap-and-loofah couples costume and I thought, ‘Oh, we need soap,’” Maxson explained. “So I guess I’ll be soap.”
Although this year’s location was new, it would have been hard to miss. It was marked by many cars parked along Minnesota Avenue, a ginormous inflatable polar bear and the sounds of screams and cheers.
Plungers, many jumping together in small groups, ranged in attire from as much as possible to a more minimalist approach. The former included a man wearing a garish blue-and-lemon leisure suit who barely seemed to blink as he hit the water.
Gunderson went the minimalist route. She jumped in clutching a Brazilian flag and clad only in a bikini.
Minutes later, standing outside the warming tent, Gunderson said it had been her first polar plunge.
Her husband talked her into taking the plunge, said Gunderson, who works for a local company that needed a proficient Portuguese speaker.
“He dared me,” Gunderson explained. “He said I would not do it. I said I will.”
And she will do it again next year, she added.
Asked about wearing a bikini for the plunge, Gunderson responded with a merry laugh and irrefutable logic: “Well it’s summer somewhere. Why not?”
