SwimRun Tips - How to Race Together

“By failing to prepare, you're preparing to fail.”  Benjamin Franklin.

Know What’s Coming

The experienced swimmers among you should be beaming. The full distance having six sea swims at around one kilometre and the penultimate swim just over two kilometres for a total of 7840m (if you swim straight) and six runs totalling 24160m for a grand total of 32 kilometres. That is 75.5% running and 24.5% swimming which is a high swim split for most swimrun events. The Sprint distance is just over 20 km in total with almost 6km (30%) swimming and 14 km (70%) running. I don’t think either is to be taken lightly - it’s going to be an epic day. 

I like to write the splits on my paddle so I know what’s coming, but courses change so wait until after the mandatory race briefing. Don’t leave gear selection and tactics until the last minute. Make sure you have trained in your race gear and practiced tethered swimming. Go through the goals and ambitions for the event with your partner again, make sure you are in agreement. The conditions may change in the final few days (or even hours), so it is good to have a plan B and C, even D. This includes your fuel and hydration strategy.

Racing Tips

Here are some of my learnings from 13 years of swimrun racing:

Don’t start too hard.

Swimruns are long endurance events, swimrun organizers seem to have a different definition of “sprint” from the rest of the world! Ask yourself if your starting pace is higher than what it will be on run 5 or 6, if so back off. For the racers among you -  there are race situations where positioning before technical single track can force you to push harder than you should, but be very cautious of burning your matches early.

Fuel early and keep fueling.

Remind one another to keep to your fuel and hydration strategy.

Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Regular check-ins are good. If you are experienced at racing together you will probably know each other's “tells” and know what motivates. If you are a new pair, you’ll need to find out as you go. Sharing the adventure is one of the many special aspects of swimrun racing.

Don’t rush transitions.

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Hopefully you will have worked on this aspect in training but have a  race goal to make the next transition even smoother than the last. Try to achieve a flow-state of movement between land and water.

Accept your ups and downs.

It’s going to be a long day. It is likely that one of you, or both of you will experience high points and low points on the course. Navigating these together reinforces the special bond of pairs racing.

Don’t take it too seriously.

None of us are professional racers. Enjoy the process and the result will take care of itself. One of my best race experiences had us crossing the line in first place without even realizing it! Look after and encourage your fellow racers. Save some energy for the pub and the post-race stories. Have fun out there.

“Just because you made a good plan, doesn’t mean that’s what’s gonna happen.” Taylor Swift

Improvise, adapt and overcome.

To add some excitement, I’ll be racing in the aptly named ‘Team Envol - Blind Date’. We won’t meet until we get to the venue. I’m fairly sure we’ll be making certain things up as we race, sometimes that can work too!

The Planned Course

Note that the Sprint starts on run 3 below with 630m of running then follows the long course.

I particularly enjoy point-to-point racing. The landscape looks amazing and the course that Matthew and his team has put together can’t fail to make it a great day out.

Vi Ses!

If you have any questions you can mail me at [email protected].

Happy Swimrunning, Tom