Low Tide Boyz, a Swimrun Podcast

Welcome to episode 350 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! You just wrapped your A-race for the season. Maybe it was ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship, maybe it was your local A-race, and now you are standing there wondering what to do with yourself. We get this question a lot, and after our own trip to the World Champs, we figured it was time to lay out exactly what we do once the race is over. This is another edition of our ad hoc Swimrun 201 series, where we get into the more advanced corners of the sport. Consider it an elective. It is not going to make or break your training, but it will help you close the loop on your season the right way. We cover our top five tips for the post-race window. First, the 48-hour rule: give yourself a set window, anywhere from 24 to 72 hours, to celebrate a great race or process a rough one before you move on. Second, show real gratitude to the people who made your race possible, your coach, your partner, your family, your circle. Third, give yourself an honest assessment of how the race actually went across swimming, running, transitions, nutrition, and gear, without judgment and without self-deprecation. Fourth, turn that assessment into a short list of things to work on rather than trying to fix everything at once, and know which fixes are quick wins and which are long-term projects. Fifth, sign up for your next race, once your 48 hours are up. We also talk about our race at the World Champs, why building swim confidence changes how big water days feel, and what is on deck for us next with Swimrun Cape Cod, ÖTILLÖ Colorado, and ÖTILLÖ Austin. Enjoy! That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the **Löw Tide Böyz**, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on **Apple Podcasts**, **Spotify**, and on **YouTube**. Check out our **website** for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page **@thelowtideboyz** on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at ** lowtideboyz@gmail.com **. Finally, you can support our efforts on **Patreon**...if you feel so inclined.Thanks for listening and see you out there!Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 349 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! The 20th edition of ÖTILLÖ, the Swimrun World Championship, is in the books, and this one lives up to every bit of hype. A headwind held on for the entire day, conditions that longtime competitors and former world champions called the hardest they had ever seen, similar in difficulty to the famous 2017 edition but with the wind working against instead of with the field. We walk through the proper pig swim, a hip flexor lockup that left Chipper stuck in the water, our fueling missteps, a low point on the run through Ornö and the conversation that got us through it, and cramping that hit Chipper on the approach to Ornö. Before the race, we visited our sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration at their UK headquarters, toured their performance lab, and got new data on our own sweat rates before making our way to Stockholm for our annual fika and Sweden's first ever social swimrun, held to celebrate the race's 20th anniversary. We also share the wetsuit troubles that hit us right before the start. We cross the finish line in 11 hours and 5 minutes, our third time completing this race, and share some of the biggest stories from the day, including a medical emergency on course and standout finishes from Hugo Tormento and Adriel Young and Team Wild Vermamas, the first all-American women's team to podium at the World Championship. Enjoy! That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the **Löw Tide Böyz**, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on **Apple Podcasts**, **Spotify**, and on

Welcome to episode 348 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! The final countdown. Zero months and only days away from the 20th edition of the ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship. This is the last stop in our countdown series before we head to Sweden. We check in with hows the body, hows the mind and the hay already in the barn, and we share how we have been leaning on old race reports and course breakdowns to settle the nerves. Then we welcome back our friend Dominik Leu, ÖTILLÖ race director, for our annual race prediction show. Dominik gives us the full picture of the 20th anniversary weekend, starting with Saturday's Social Swimrun and fika in Stockholm, an open, no pressure loop built around the wildcard program that brought back so many past racers for this milestone year. He also breaks down what it took to bring a full live production to TV4 for the first time, with drone and runner coverage on the lead teams across all three categories and a free stream available worldwide. From there we get into the good stuff, a full category by category breakdown of who is lining up for the women's, mixed, and men's races. Dominik walks through the new pairings, the returning champions, and the storylines worth watching once the gun goes off on Monday. This episode is brought to you by Precision Fuel and Hydration, who we will be spending time with on site in Sweden. Head to their website for free education and athlete profiles to dial in your race day nutrition. We are as ready as we are going to be. Time to go race a world championship. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and on YouTube . Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com . Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon ...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 347 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! We're throwing it back all the way to 2022 for our ninth installment of the Löw Tide Böyz Throwback Mixtape. This one comes from our second annual Partners Month, and re-listening to it gave us all the warm and fuzzies all over again. Chrissy and Bill Lankford, known to the community as Team Mr and Mrs B, join us to talk about swimrun as both life partners and race partners. They found the sport through the Toadman World Series, a set of local races near their home in Cambridge, then worked their way through the Isle of Scilly and Rockman before deciding to take on the ÖTILLÖ World Championship, a huge jump in distance and duration from what they had raced before. We get into how they trained with almost no access to real swimrun terrain, how they communicate and lean on each other when a race gets hard, the mantras that carry them through the tough stretches, and the hip flexor injury Bill raced through after a rough transition. We also talk gear, wetsuits, transitions, and their ongoing effort to bring more people into the sport. Bill and Chrissy have since gone on to race multiple ÖTILLÖ World Championships, Rockman, and ÖTILLÖ Öland together. Real gems of humans, and a conversation worth revisiting. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and on YouTube . Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com . Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon ...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 346 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! This week we welcome Jen Schnell, a Bay Area swimrunner and designer who came into the sport from eight years of competitive triathlon. Jen first heard about swimrun on the Rich Roll Podcast, carved out space to try it, and got hooked right away with a solo race at Folsom. From there she raced Whistler solo, found her first partner in Kayla Kobelin at Austin, and this year has raced her way into the Ötillö Elite Program through the wild card process, competing at Orcas Island, Engadin, and Casco Bay with a different partner at every start. We talk through how her coach restructured her training to add paddle strength and swim volume while pulling work out of her bike sessions, the mechanics of tethering and the swim slingshot move, and what she has learned about compatibility and shared goals from racing with a new partner each time out. Jen also shares what surprised her about the vibe at Engadin compared to racing in the States, including the staggered women's start and just how established the sport feels in Europe. Jen is sitting out Ötillö this year to focus on the Elite Series final in Cannes, with her sights already set on Worlds in 2027. We also catch up on our own final prep before Sweden, our fika meetup plans, and the limited edition stickers we will have on hand. Enjoy! That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and on YouTube . Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com . Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon ...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 345 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! We just got home from Portland, Maine after racing the 10th edition of ÖTILLÖ Casco Bay, our sixth time toeing the line at this race. This week we break down the whole day, leg by leg, the same way we always do after a big race, sitting down fresh with our honest take. This was a hard Casco year. A high tide pushed our total swimming up to around 9,000 yards, close to the 10,000 yards we will cover at the ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship, and the heat and humidity made the runs feel like a grind from the first mile. We walk through our gear and kit choices, the tactical call to split up swim leading duties between us, a course change on the final island that added distance to the last crossing, and how we handled fueling and hydration at every single aid station. The back half of the race turned into one of the most competitive stretches we have had in a while. We spotted a men's team coming off Cushings and spent the final two islands closing the gap, staying on them through the redesigned final island swim before making the pass on the last swim and holding them off with a sprint up the stairs to the finish. We break down exactly how that played out and why closing that gap mattered more than we expected it would. With four weeks left until the ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship in Stockholm, we talk about what this race confirmed for us heading into the 20th anniversary of the event, plus a look ahead to our UK stopover and our Stockholm Fika meetup. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and on YouTube . Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com . Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon ...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 344 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! We are one month out from Ötillö, the 20th anniversary of the Swimrun World Championship, and it is starting to feel real. We open with our own check-in on where our bodies and heads are at heading into Casco Bay, which serves as our final dress rehearsal before Worlds, plus everything we have planned for our Löw Tide Böyz weekend in Portland, Maine including a morning fika, the Envol shakeout clinic, and our post race party. Then we sit down with Marcus Barton, one of the most experienced swimrunners in America with over 60 races to his name and a coach for Envol Coaching. Marcus is racing Ötillö himself this year while coaching a full group of athletes toward the same start line, and he gives us a coach's honest read on what the last 34 days should actually look like. We get into the elite program and how the point series works, why the fitness cake is mostly baked at this point in the season, and why panic training this close to race day almost always backfires. Marcus walks us through building a nutrition plan with your partner, figuring out who leads the swims and who leads the technical running, and why your partner is your biggest variable heading into race day. We also dig into practicing transitions until they become muscle memory, training for small interruptions like cold hands or a dropped paddle, and his simple framework for what you should and should not be spending mental energy on this close to the race. This episode is brought to you by Precision Fuel & Hydration. We have leaned on their products throughout our own training and racing, and we are heading to their UK headquarters before Worlds this year. Check out their website for free resources on dialing in your fueling and hydration. Marcus closes with the best piece of advice he gives any athlete heading into Worlds: nobody gets through Ötillö completely according to plan, and the teams that do well are not the ones who avoid every problem, they are the ones who recognize problems early and solve them together. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and on YouTube . Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com . Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon ...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 343 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! This week we are back with our third race report of 2026, fresh off Folsom Swimrun long course, a race some version of the Löw Tide Böyz has done every single year for five years running. Spoiler alert, the dynasty continues with another overall team win, but with ÖTILLÖ Casco Bay two weeks away, we treated this one as a B race and a tune up. The Novato swim community showed out in force. Sarah and Robin, who share a Masters pool with us, took the female team title, and our fellow Masters swimmer Seth posted the fastest overall time in the long course solo division. We talk about why consistent swim fitness, built in a Masters program, translates so directly to a stronger and more enjoyable swimrun. We break down our gear calls for a race with triple digit air temps and cold, dam fed water, our Vigg wetsuit choices, our shoe picks, and the nutrition and hydration protocol we have been refining, including a new caffeine timing strategy that made a real difference. From a strong opening swim in the lead to tidy transitions and a final overall team finish in around an hour and forty minutes, a few minutes faster than last year, we walk through all nine miles leg by leg, plus the community moments that make Folsom worth doing every year. Next up is ÖTILLÖ Casco Bay, marking ten years since the race first hooked us back in 2018 and our fifth year toeing the line. We preview what is shaping up to be a packed weekend in Portland, Maine. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and on YouTube . Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com . Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon ...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 342 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! With ÖTILLÖ Casco Bay celebrating its 10th anniversary in just a few weeks, we are digging back into the vault for this one. This is our race report from the 2021 edition, originally Episode 84 from August 2021, and re-listening to it took us right back to race morning on Peaks Island. This was our second time racing Casco Bay after debuting there in 2018, and it came after a full training block with a coach for the first time. We talk about the shark sighting email that hit every athlete's inbox before the start, the flooded bog crossing on Peaks Island, and the moment we realized we could hang with the lead pack in the water for the first time in our swimrun careers. We get into the tide strategy that turned a short swim into a sandbar crossing, the technical scramble across Vail Island with the Swimrun Monks and Beacon Blake, and the five mile push to Big Chebeague where we caught the Monks off guard. We finished in five hours and ten minutes, good for 10th place men's teams and 11th overall, a huge jump from our six hour and eighteen minute finish in 2018. We also cover the very first Löw Tide Böyz post-race party at Lone Pine Brewery, where close to 30 people showed up to swap war stories, and the goggle karma moment that closed out our day on the best possible note. Enjoy! That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the **Löw Tide Böyz**, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on **Apple Podcasts**, **Spotify**, and on **YouTube**. Check out our **website** for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page **@thelowtideboyz** on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at **lowtideboyz@gmail.com**. Finally, you can support our efforts on **Patreon**...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 341 of the **Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!** Race season is picking up, with Folsom Swimrun just a couple weeks out, Casco Bay marking its 10th edition, and ÖTILLÖ, the Swimrun World Championship, coming up later this year. With so many new folks joining the sport, we wanted to put together the newest edition of our Swimrun 101 series, five tips to be race day ready, straight from over 25 swimruns worth of trial and error. Being race ready starts well before you get to the start line. Our first tip is studying the course and terrain ahead of time, pulling up the maps, understanding the legs, and knowing what kind of day you are signing up for so you are not cramming the night before. From there we walk through the day before the race, covering travel logistics, staying off your feet, dialing in a nutrition strategy, and using that time to connect with your race partner about goals and expectations. We also get into checking your kit early instead of at ten o'clock the night before, thinking through your fueling plan piece by piece, and building a morning of routine that takes the guesswork out of race day, from what you eat to when you get your coffee in. From there we cover the final minutes before the gun goes off, including warmup timing, when to take your last gel, and how to get your headspace right so you can run your own race instead of getting caught up in everyone else's. We close with a bonus tip, embrace the swimrun community. Show up to the shakeouts, the clinics, the post race parties, and talk to people. It is one of the smallest, friendliest communities in endurance sports, and connecting with it is one of the easiest ways to show up prepared. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the **Löw Tide Böyz**, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on **Apple Podcasts**, **Spotify**, and on **YouTube**. Check out our **website** for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page **@thelowtideboyz** on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at **lowtideboyz@gmail.com**. Finally, you can support our efforts on **Patreon**...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 340 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! We are two months out from the 20th edition of ÖTILLÖ, the Swimrun World Championship, and this month's Countdown to ÖTILLÖ check-in is all about communication. Before we get into it we run through how the body and mind are holding up, including our tune up races at Folsom Swimrun and the tenth anniversary of Ötillö Casco Bay, and we share some news about a stop we're making at Precision Fuel and Hydration headquarters in the UK on our way to Sweden. We welcome back Dr. Yael Schonbrun, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at Brown University and cohost of Psychologists Off the Clock. Yael was last on the show in 2023 and she's back to talk about her new book, Why Don't You Understand Me?, which digs into why we so often think we understand each other better than we actually do, and it turns out we make an appearance in it. We talk through the overconfidence glitch that makes us assume we understand people, the difference between perspective taking and perspective getting, and we come clean about the confirmation bias that got us disqualified at Bellingham Swimrun this year. Yael gives real advice for setting communication ground rules with a swimrun partner, working through mismatched goals, and why validating each other before trying to solve a problem changes the whole conversation. We also get into values goals versus outcome goals, positive regard, and how the same tools that keep us on course in a race can help with the harder conversations off it, including the ones we'd rather avoid at the Thanksgiving table. This episode is brought to you by Precision Fuel and Hydration, who we have been working with since 2020. If you have questions about fueling or hydration, check out their site for free education content or book a call with one of their coaches. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and on YouTube . Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com . Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon ...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 339 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! We just got back from Bellingham, Washington with the full race report from our third edition of Swimrun Bellingham at Lake Padden Park. This was race two of the 2026 season on the road to ÖTILLÖ, and true to a six-year tradition, we are sitting down to break it all down. Chris came into this one carrying some extra weight after losing his father just a few weeks before the race, and there is something to be said for what it means to show up for each other in moments like that. Race 26 together. These local races matter not for the result but for exactly this kind of thing, and getting out on course at Lake Padden is its own reward. Brent and Quest Races put on a beautiful event again, and the venue is as good as swimrun gets. On the race itself: Chris decided to lead most of the swims for the first time, which opened up some interesting territory heading toward ÖTILLÖ and alternating swim leads later in the season. We cover the gear setup (Ark Vigg wetsuits, Adidas Terrex shoes, arm sleeves, Frank Paddles LTBz Edition), the Precision Fuel & Hydration fueling breakdown from race day, and the small navigation adventure near the end that turned into a bonus loop and, honestly, a turning point for how we finished. The last run came in at sub-eight-minute miles two-plus hours in. We crossed in around 2:25 as the first place men's long course team (one of one, but somebody has to be there) and first overall team on the day. Also, shout-out to the guy in the black beanie who told us we looked badass on the trail. We needed that. Next up is Folsom Swimrun, one of the only swimruns in California and one we have been doing since it started. Come out and join us at Black Miners Bar. And if you are hearing about Swimrun Bellingham for the first time, go put it on next year's calendar. The Pacific Northwest is building something real. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and on YouTube . Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com . Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon ...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 338 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! This week we are climbing back into the swimrun hot tub for a throwback mixtape, and we are pulling out a fan favorite. We are rolling the original gear talk on the Ark Vigg and Vigg Air, the suit Chris has loved since his first swimrun in 2020 and has not stopped talking about since. This one comes straight from the vault, originally Episode 188 from August 10, 2023. The crew starts with gear updates, Ark prototype goggles, new flip-flops, and Stasher bags as a solution for organizing electrolyte tabs, before getting into the full Vigg breakdown. We get into what makes the Vigg and Vigg Air work, the Yamamoto limestone neoprene, the glide skin coating, and the seal on the sleeveless Vigg Air that designer Daniel Sand and his team in Sweden spent so much time dialing in. We talk through who this suit fits best, why it makes more sense as a second suit than a first, the back venting, the pocket setup, and where the fit and sizing can get tricky depending on body type. Chris also reads an original poem he wrote about the Vigg, because eight months without talking about this suit was apparently too long to go without writing one. Final ratings, a Casco Bay tangent, and plenty of love for a suit that has earned its place in the quiver. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the **Löw Tide Böyz**, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on **Apple Podcasts**, **Spotify**, and on **YouTube**. Check out our **website** for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page **@thelowtideboyz** on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at **lowtideboyz@gmail.com**. Finally, you can support our efforts on **Patreon**...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 337 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! We're going across the pond this week, and not to Sweden for once. We met Bart Vandervaal on the ferry to Sandhamn at ÖTILLÖ last year and immediately started asking about his shoes. Nine months later, Bart and his co-race director Henk de Bock are on the show to tell us about the Dutch swimrun scene and the first ever Dutch Swimrun Championship. Bart and Henk have been organizing Het Rondje Eilanden, a 6.5-kilometer island circuit race in Vinkeveen just south of Amsterdam, for 15 years. The race predates the word swimrun in the Netherlands, and for years athletes did it in Speedos and surf shoes with no wetsuits, no pull buoys, and no idea there was a global sport building around the same idea. This year, to celebrate the race's 15th edition, they're running the championship as three consecutive loops of the course, 19 kilometers total, in pairs, with 750 participants across all distance categories. The race is on Saturday, July 18th. The classic single loop (6.5K) is filling up fast, but the Dutch Championships distance (3 loops, 19K) still has spots. You can find registration and race info at hetrondjeeilanden.nl. We dig into how the Dutch swimrun community organized itself from the ground up through WhatsApp groups and international race travel, what makes Vinkeveen's clear water and 12-island layout such a natural fit for the sport, and what the race weekend actually looks like: camping on the island, hot tubs, live music, and a party culture that fits right in with the swimrun ethos. If you're a Dutch swimrunner or just curious about connecting with the community over there, the WhatsApp community lives at swimrun.group with channels organized by region and a main hub called the SwimRun Huiskamer, which translates to SwimRun Living Room. Signal groups are also linked there for the WhatsApp-averse. Henk shares his own path to the ÖTILLÖ World Series this year, and Bart recounts what it was like to race ÖTILLÖ Stockholm for the first time last year on a foot injury, getting towed to the finish by his partner. Bart and his partner Sander Berk also chronicled the whole journey on their Substack, From Zero till Ötillö, at from0tillotillo.substack.com. The first 30 weekly training blogs have English translations, and the blog has since expanded with writers covering swimrun across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, including race coverage from ÖTILLÖ events. We also get into the broader Dutch swimrun landscape, including the Backyard Ultra Swimrun happening just north of Amsterdam on June 20th at Het Twiske. Athletes do a 5K loop every hour with short swims and runs mixed in, up to a 10-hour max. Find details and registration at swimrun.amsterdam. And if the Dutch race scene has you wanting to plan a European summer, check the show notes for all the links. On our end, we're two weeks out from Quest Swimrun Bellingham at Lake Padden and heading into the thick of our training block. After Bellingham comes Folsom Swimrun, then the 10th anniversary of ÖTILLÖ Casco Bay, and then ÖTILLÖ World Series in September. The list is long. The stoke is real.

Welcome to episode 336 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! Three months out from the ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship, and we are bringing you our most-requested episode type: the full day-by-day travel guide for race week in Sweden. We have done this race a handful of times and we get the same DMs every single year, so we decided to just answer everything in one shot. Where to stay, how to get from the airport, whether you actually need cash (you don't), what goes in your drop bag, and yes, how many fikas you can realistically fit into a single trip. We walk you through the whole week, starting from arrival at Arlanda and the Arlanda Express into Stockholm, through choosing between city center or Sigtuna, getting to Djurönaset and entering the race bubble, the ferry to Sandhamn on race morning, and finally what happens after you cross the finish line at Utö. We make the case for staying Monday night so you catch the post-race breakfast, which genuinely might be one of the best parts of the whole experience. We also check in on where our training is. Chip wrapped up a recovery week after ÖTILLÖ Orcas Island and jumped into a new block with a 4500-yard Monday swim thanks to Coach Liz, plus a new HYROX event on the calendar to keep the strength routine honest. Chris is officially starting his build, has been using the mental performance app from Dr. Erin Ayala's recent episode, and is treating strength as cumulative rather than all-or-nothing. Before the travel guide, we spend some time on gut training, which is something we are actively working on as part of our ÖTILLÖ prep. We break down how to establish your baseline carb intake, how to ramp it up incrementally, and the two practical tips we actually use in our own training: the 20-minute timer on the watch and grabbing an extra gel at every aid station. If you are planning on being out there for eight, ten, or thirteen hours, this stuff matters. Precision Fuel & Hydration has a free race planner tool with ÖTILLÖ loaded in, and their sports science team offers free one-on-one calls if you want to talk through your fueling plan specifically. Finally, keep an eye out for our Löw Tide Böyz Fika Meetup announcement. We will be hosting it again in Stockholm on Saturday, and last year we took over a pretty solid chunk of the cafe. You won't want to miss it. Enjoy! That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz** , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on YouTube. Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com. Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! -Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 335 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! We just got back from Ötillö Orcas Island and this is our first swimrun race report of 2026. Five years after our first time racing on the island, we returned to a redesigned course, a stacked field, and a weekend that delivered from the moment we stepped off the ferry. This is episode 335 and it is a big one. The weekend kicked off with a FIKA shakeout co-hosted with Wild Swimrun and the newly launched Wild Onez podcast. The turnout was great, the energy was high, and ARK Sports set up shop and had one of their best sales days on record. Our buddy Tommy joined us as crew and camera and kept the whole operation running smoothly. By the time race morning arrived, we were ready. On the course, we cover everything: the technical singletrack, the cold open water swims, how we managed gear and nutrition over six and a half hours, and the moments where the partnership that makes swimrun what it is really showed up. This was our 25th swimrun together as a team, and the race reminded us exactly why we keep coming back. We also talk about why we think Ötillö Orcas Island is pound for pound the toughest swimrun in the United States, what the race confirmed about where our fitness is heading into the ÖTILLÖ World Championship, and what is next on the calendar including Bellingham Swimrun at the end of June and our sixth Ötillö Casco Bay for the 10th anniversary race. This episode is sponsored by FORM Swim. We have been using FORM goggles for years and they keep getting better. Head to formswim.com to check out their full lineup including the new Smart Swim 2 LT at a great price point. Enjoy! ~~~ That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the **Löw Tide Böyz**, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on **Apple Podcasts**, **Spotify**, and on **YouTube**. Check out our **website** for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page **@thelowtideboyz** on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at **lowtideboyz@gmail.com**. Finally, you can support our efforts on **Patreon**...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 334 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! It is race week at Orcas Island, and we are going back to the vault. Episode 334 is Throwback Mixtape number five — a re-release of our 2021 Orcas Island race report from Episode 91. This race is one of the chapters in the book of the LTBz. Chipper showed up banged up from a fall, bonked hard somewhere in the middle of the course, and spent the better part of four hours getting dragged around one of the most brutal swimrun courses in the US by Chris. This is one of the races we are most proud of. The course is savage. The community was incredible. The pizza after was legendary. Before we roll the tape we share our current thoughts heading into race week — what we have learned since 2021, why neither of us feels the need for redemption anymore, and why we just want to go back and have a great day on a great course. Our friend Tommy is back as driver, photographer, bodyguard, and emergency medic. We are ready. If you are heading to Orcas Island on Saturday May 30th, come find us at the start-finish area at 11am for a fika with the LTBz and Wild Swimrun with Sarah and Viv, then join us at the Envol shakeout swimrun in the afternoon. Details on the Instagrams. Enjoy! That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on YouTube. Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com. Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 333 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! Triple threes. We are officially in taper mode for Ötillö Orcas Island, and we brought back one of our favorite guests to help us make the most of what is left in the build. Brian Johns is Head of Coaching Science at FORM Swim and a three-time Canadian Olympian. He is also the brains behind the FORM training plans that Chris has been running almost exclusively for two years with excellent results — including some very generous feedback from the master swim coach on deck who keeps gassing up his form score. We had Brian back on to talk about what is actually happening inside those plans, how to read and act on the data the goggles give you, and how to design swim training specifically for a race like the Swimrun World Championship. On the product side, FORM has the new Smart Swim 2 LT at $149, which gets you the heads-up display and the full coaching platform. The Pro 2 is their top of the line with Gorilla Glass lenses and high-end anti-fog. And Head Coach Insights — their newest software feature — gives you direct feedback on your swim after every session, including what to work on and why. The coaching conversation is where this one really takes off. Brian walks through the two levers of swim speed — stroke length and stroke rate — and how to manipulate them for open water racing. He explains why tracking your form score length by length beats tracking it by interval, how the goggles can give you real-time feedback that even a coach on deck cannot, and how to use success-based training to progressively build your interval length without grinding through bad swimming. His framework is simple: find the distance you can hold well, own it, and then extend it. For swimrun specifically, the conversation gets into how to structure brick sessions — swim before and after your long run, nothing fancy, just getting the body comfortable transitioning — and our favorite pool set for mimicking race conditions: 10x100s with a deck-up after each one. Brian had the same workout in his notes before we even mentioned it. On race tactics for Ötillö — Brian did his homework watching YouTube footage of the course, and his read is the same as ours. You cannot win the race on the first mile swim, but you can absolutely lose it. The swim is front-loaded, the racing is tactical, and quiet confidence going into the water is worth more than brute force. If you are heading to Orcas Island, come find us Saturday at Rosario Resort. We are hosting a fika with Wild Swimrun starting around 11am, and the shakeout swimrun with Marcus Barton and Team Envol follows in the afternoon. Details on the Instagrams. Enjoy! That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on YouTube. Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com. Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

This month is Orcas Island month, and we are kicking it off with someone who is, safe to say, super stoked on swimrun. Julia Dinesen is a multi-discipline endurance athlete from British Columbia who found the sport via an Ötillö Instagram ad, signed up for the World Series distance at Whistler on her first ever attempt, and has been hooked ever since. Before we get to Julia, we share a few tips for getting the most out of your swimrun practice sessions as we head into race season. Have a plan before you show up. Decide what you are testing. And do transition drills — the Boston Wet Sox, the best US team in history, are still doing them deep into long practice sessions, which tells you everything you need to know. Julia found swimrun the way a lot of people do — an Instagram ad showing someone running off a cliff in their running shoes into the water. She saw it, looked up Ötillö Whistler, realized it was an hour and a half from her house, signed up, and loved it. In this conversation she shares what that first race was like, what she learned from it, how the 859-day running streak actually works, what it is like to be a swimrunner in Western Canada where nobody has heard of the sport, what gear changes she is making for Orcas, and what she would tell anyone who is on the fence about signing up. One moment worth flagging for anyone who has ever talked themselves into finishing something: Julia once rode 25 kilometers on a flat tire at a triathlon in the Okanagan, finished an hour after everyone else, and ended up qualifying for age group world championships in Australia on the roll-down. Her take on getting through hard things — it is more embarrassing to quit than to come last, the training is where you get all the benefit, and crossing the finish line is just the proof that you did the thing. FORM Goggles are sponsoring us all month as we build toward Orcas. The new Smart Swim 2 LT is their entry-level goggle — $149 for the heads-up display and full access to their training platform. Send us a DM if you have questions about it. We will see Julia — and a lot of you — at Orcas Island at the end of the month. Enjoy! That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz, be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on YouTube. Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com. Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris

Welcome to episode 331 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! Four months out from the 20th anniversary of Ötillö, the Swimrun World Championship, and we are leaving no stone unturned. The physical training is building nicely. Chris just finished the London Marathon in 3:37 and downing 90 grams of carbs per hour, and Chipper has been stacking consistent weeks. Orcas Swimrun is at the end of the month. The build is very much on. This episode is about training the thing most people ignore until it is too late — the mind. We brought back Dr. Erin Ayala, sports psychologist and host of the Feisty Women's Performance Podcast, who joined us last year right after Ötillö to help us process the other side of the mountain. This time we asked her to come back four months out and answer the harder question — how do you actually prepare mentally for a race like this before you get there? Here is what we covered. If there is one thing you take from this episode, Dr. Erin says it is mindfulness and meditation — and she has the numbers to back it up. The effect size for consistent mindfulness practice on sports performance is 1.35 standard deviations, which puts it well above most physical interventions. Three times a week, five to ten minutes at a time, is enough to start. Her top free recommendation is the Healthy Minds app out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which removes all decision fatigue and walks you through a structured user journey. On visualization — the number one mistake people make is visualizing success. What actually works is visualizing reality. The anxiety at the start line, the chaos of a mass start swim, the moment three quarters through a long run when you want to walk. You plan for those moments, visualize your response to them, and on race day it is easier to execute because you have already been there. For Ötillö specifically, that means the jellyfish at the first swim, the cold water on your face, the sighting into the sun, the sharp rocks coming out of the water. Make it vivid and make it real. On team psychology — communication is everything. Dr. Erin walks through the pre-race conversations every swimrun team should have, including what you each need on race morning, transition quirks, how you want to be supported when things get hard, and what your partner's body language looks like when they are struggling. The hive mind Chip and Chris describe at their best races is a skill you build, not something that just happens. On navigating the noise — the athletes and coaches worth following are the ones who say it depends, who are willing to be wrong, and who are not selling you a system. Major in the boring. Consistency with hydration, nutrition, sleep, and strength training is 95 percent of the work. Everything else is optional. Follow Dr. Erin at @scattisportspsychology on Instagram and check out the Feisty Women's Performance Podcast. Enjoy! That's it for this week's show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz , be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star rating and review since that's the best way for people to discover the show and the sport of Swimrun. You can find us on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , and on YouTube . Check out our website for Swimrun resources including gear guides, tips, how-to videos and so much more. Also make sure to check out our meme page @thelowtideboyz on Instagram. If you have any suggestions for the show or questions for us, send us a dm or an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com . Finally, you can support our efforts on Patreon ...if you feel so inclined. Thanks for listening and see you out there! Chip and Chris