There’s a New Sport Called “Swim Run” and We Tried It
Tell someone you’re doing a Swim Run, and people think you’re kind of doing a triathlon, but skipping the bike portion. Which is like saying tennis is about batting a ball around. It’s a whole lot more than that: Swim Run is a new type of race that’s attracting triathletes tired of the road, swimmers looking for an adventure, runners looking for something extra, and a whole lot of people who just want to test themselves or celebrate their fitness in a new way.
Swim Run should really be called Swim Run Swim Run, because you don’t just do one sport and the other. You keep switching between them. You swim in your shoes and run in your wetsuit (acquired skills, trust me). You might swim in the ocean for a bit, run over sand to get to a pond, then run on a trail to get back to more ocean, and repeat.
A hallmark moment comes at check-in when they won’t give you your timing chip without showing that you have a First Aid kit that you’ll carry on you through the whole race. (And hopefully, carry it out again, unopened.)
First Aid kit? What do they think is going to happen out there?
Anything.
Which is one of the reasons Swim Run is starting to attract more and more participants. “These races mix a little bit of adventure and off-road with traditional endurance racing,” says Danny Serpico, owner and operations director of the Ignite series, which now has 5 races in the US. “You don’t need a compass and a map, but it’s not a road race. Everyone’s sort of taking it seriously, but having fun while they’re doing it.”
What is SwimRun?
The sport originated in 2002 in Sweden in a race that involved swimming to an island, running over it, then swimming to the next one and many more after that. That became the mother of all SwimRuns, ?till?, The SwimRun World Championships—75 kilometers of race, 10 K being open water swimming and 65 of serious trail running. Less insane—but still challenging and interesting—versions are cropping up everywhere, and there are now about 700 races worldwide. There’s no standard distance (since nature is one of the course designers, and you’ve got to go with what she wants), but a short course can be as short as 6 or 8 miles of combined swimming and running; long course is about 13 or 17.
Why SwimRun Is Getting So Popular
It’s fun for a million reasons, including:
You get to do it with someone.
And sometimes, they’re attached to you. It’s a partner race, not a relay. And you have to stay within about 10 yards of your partner, so some teams choose to tether themselves together. After two races, I’d say that being matched in your sense of adventure (as my team partner, Jen Langgons, and I were) is even more important than being perfectly matched in pace.
You need more than speed and power.
A race like this is about agility and acceptance. You have to take what the course gives you and figure out what you have inside that meets it. You might stand next to a mossy, waist-high boulder and wonder how you’re going to get over it. You might swim in surf that breaks so far out it’s hard to get past. You might be on a trail that’s practically a vertical climb. And it’s all amazing.
Watching your footing, figuring out where you are, swimming in chop, or figuring out the best line to the next buoy: It requires the kind of focus and intensity that wakes you up and exhausts you at the same time.
The Swim Run vibe is pretty low key.
It’s more trail race than triathlon. You don’t go out to “crush the course” because as with any truly nature-based race, it can easily crush you. So there’s a kind of humility that goes with the experience and the people who choose to race it.
Everybody’s still figuring it out.
Everybody has a slightly different setup. You don’t have time for taking your shoes on and off, so you swim in them (definitely weird the first few times). You can use whatever makes your swim easier—including paddles and a pull buoy to keep your shoes from dragging you down so much—but there’s no transition area, so anything you want in the race you have to carry on your body (it’s a DQ if you abandon anything on the course…along with that First Aid kit, GPS device, and your timing chip. That’s a lot to wear, so part of the game is seeing how little stuff you can get away with…and having extra pockets in your wetsuit (we wore Orca SwimRun wetsuits at Ignite Swim Run Rhode Island. Too hot at Ignite Swim Run Knoxville to wear a wetsuit).
You meet your fears and you meet cool people.
In the two races we did in this nascent sport, all the athletes could fit in a single photo. Which makes you feel as if you’re part of a (really weirdly dressed) family. Swim Run culture (and a race rule) is that you stop and help other racers if they’re hurt.
You surprise yourself.
I can’t say Jen and I ran the risk of being overtrained for either race we did—Ignite Swim Run Knoxville and the same series’ Rhode Island race—as we were each training for other, different races at the time. Our transitions were rocky, at best. We didn’t do as much trail running as we should have. We actually stopped at some overlooks to check the view. We were pretty surprised that we won our division (short course female team) in both races. Because for us, we were really going for the win in the “see what you’re made of” and “have the most fun” divisions. And we’re pretty sure we wrapped those up.
Where to Find a SwimRun
Two key players with series in the American market right now are Ignite and Odyssey, although there are more and more local races that you can find with a simple search for Swim Run (sometimes spelled Swim Run or Swimrun).
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