SwimRun Advice For You!

Do you need some SwimRun Advice?

Are you new to SwimRun? We were, once. We know what it's like! It sounds a bit strange at first, running in your wetsuit and swimming in your shoes, with no transitions for changing gear. But this exciting adventure sport is growing very quickly in popularity.

If you are wondering what this sport is all about, you should go to our page on What Is Swimrun first. It explains what the sport involves, and how it came into existence.

STOP PRESS - Ötillö have released a 42-minute documentary about the 2022 World Championships, so go to our Latest News page or our dedicated Ötillö page to see the video!

Two swimmers wearing white tops over black wetsuits and red swim caps running out of the water at the edge of a lake during a swimrun race.

A water exit at a swimrun race

For inspiration, or if you want to search for an event, check our race calendars for 2022:

SwimRun calendar Europe 2022

and Swimrun calendar USA/World 2022.

You can also Search By Country Here.

If you are an event organizer, please feel free to contact us with your dates! Swimrun 2022 looks exciting and we are already planning our 2023 Calendar for you!

MAY 1st 2022 - ALL BRECA SWIMRUN EVENTS FOR 2022 CANCELLED. Check HERE.

Swimrun Advice for Newbies

And, if you're keen to start as soon as possible, you should definitely look at our detailed page about your first swimrun event. This is our cheat sheet for how to get the most out of your first event – all the essentials distilled into one page.

As experienced marathon runners and triathletes we decided to try the new endurance sport of SwimRun. But good advice can be hard to find, so we've set up this website to introduce people to this exciting world of swimming and running from island to island - running in your wetsuit and swimming in your running shoes!

Underwater view of a swimrun competitor swimming over a shallow sand back, in light green water.

Approaching the end of a swim section!

So far, we have competed in four SwimRun events -

in Hvar, Croatia;
Engadin in Switzerland;
Bologna in Italy,
and the full distance Ötillö World Series race in the United Kingdom, 30 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean on the Isles of Scilly.

As the inventors of the sport, the company Ötillö from Sweden deserve a special mention. You can read about Ötillö Swimrun HERE.

In the photo below we are on the left, with Ötillö Race Director Mats Skott on the right of the picture. This image was taken at the prize-giving after completing the sprint distance event at Engadin, Switzerland. But don't be too impressed – we hadn't won our group, but we DID come 2nd in the raffle for some SwimRun gear!

Four swimrunners with their raffle prizes, standing on grass inside a big white tent, with the race director.

Swimrun Engadin - we are on the left.

New Event in Europe - Swimrun 2022

A new Swimrun event is taking place in Malta on 2 October 2022 - the 3 Islands Challenge. This SwimRun takes you on a journey; a 20 KM trail and open water combo to #BeatTheChannel in style, the Channel being the 5km Gozo Channel! It sounds amazing to us!

For more information and to register CLICK HERE.

The most important page on this site is probably Race Day Advice. It's chock-full of information on prerace preparation, and tips and tricks for during the event too. Some are borrowed from our marathon running experience, and others are hard-earned gems from our SwimRun races in very different environments. Click on the race day advice link to see what you can learn.

SwimRun Advice - Equipment

Equipment - What do I need??

At first, we found ourselves wondering what equipment we needed, what to wear and where to find events for this new sport. Check out our swimrun equipment page to find out exactly what you will need! We even have a page dedicated to Swimrun socks reviewing some of the best on the market.

Our biggest page is probably our reviews of suitable watches - take a look at Swimrun watch reviews to find out what you should be looking for!

Choosing a suitable wetsuit is one of the biggest challenges – Mogsy even had to have a suit custom-made to her own measurements, to get a fit that would be comfortable for up to 8 hours of wear! You can read about our own wetsuits.

Wetsuit Reviews

We have carried out a review of the best dedicated SwimRun wetsuits to help newcomers see what's available. Swedish company ARK have announced their incredible new suit which looks like a big leap forward in SwimRun wetsuit design and construction – at a price. Check it out at our SwimRun Wetsuit Reviews page.

Mogsy's favourite wetsuit is the Colting Women's suit pictured below - click here for more information and the best price!

A picture of a black Colting swimrun wetsuit.

Colting Womens Wetsuit

BUT we've found that you don't ALWAYS have to wear a wet suit. We took part in a great event in Italy, the Bologna SwimRun, where it was warm enough in the Italian lakes to wear triathlon suits. It was a hot day, and we were grateful to escape from the wet suits for our 5.5 hour event! Read all about our Bologna race.

We have found that there is a small but significant risk of picking up SwimRun injuries during training and racing, especially in salt water events. Discover what might go wrong at our page on SwimRun Injuries. And be sure to read all the way to the bottom to find out about the most dangerous risk!

SwimRun races were originally for teams of 2 persons, but in recent years it has been possible to compete as a solo racer. In September 2020, Michal Jablonski completed a sprint distance event of 12km as a solo racer, but he took his dog Venus with him! Read more about this at Swimrun with your dog!

SwimRun Advice Rankings

A man in a red triathlon suit and sunglasses, standing at the side of a road, rubbing sunscreen into his right arm, with blue sky in the background.

Richard before a 5 hour training stint

SwimRun World Rankings

Once you get into SwimRun, and become competitive, you may start to figure in the results of each race. If you take the sport seriously, and want to get the best results you can over a series, you can compare your overall results against other swimrunners.

There IS a way to see how you match up against the other regular competitors. It's called the TSR Global Ranking System.

If you compete in the "long distance" race at an event, you will score points in the TSR Global Ranking System. You can check out your World SwimRun ranking at the TSR site HERE.

SwimRun Series Organizers

SwimRun is growing around the world, and we have pages with details of organizers who hold a series of SwimRun races. For example;

USA: Odyssey SwimRun Series

USA: IGNITE SwimRun Series (now RIP IT EVENTS)

Canada: Mudskipper SwimRun Challenge

UK: Keen as Mustard SwimRun

UK/Canada/New Zealand: Breca SwimRun

Europe/USA: Otillo World Series

Canary Islands, Spain: SwimRun Canary Islands

But you can also check our Swimrun calendars for Europe as well as for the USA/Rest of World, OR you can search by country here!

Are you an organizer who holds a SwimRun event? Contact us and we can add you to our list of organizers, and feature your races in a dedicated web page for your organization.

But now let's get back to the basics!

You'll need to find out about all the issues involved in SwimRun before you can become competitive in races.

Look at the drop-down menu above to see the various areas we are covering, from

how to start , including a special beginners guide,

events calendars,

equipment reviews,

race reviews,

and our own personal journey.

Our most recent event was the long-distance Ötillö World Series race in the Isles of Scilly, United Kingdom, which took place on June 9th 2019. Due to the pandemic, our 2020 and 2021 races were all cancelled. We then went to live in New Zealand for a year where unfortunately the pandemic followed us and all our NZ events were cancelled!

In June 2022 we moved back to live in Spain, and we are currently training for events in Europe later this year.

Training

We estimated that the Isles of Scilly Swimrun would take us from 7 to 8 hours to complete, and so we incorporated a marathon into our training plan, to build up our endurance. The marathon was in Milan, at the beginning of April 2019. We finished at a comfortable pace, bearing in mind that we were treating this as another training session. Check out our Milan marathon race report.

We think that training for a full marathon or a half marathon is excellent endurance work before a long-distance SwimRun event (say, over 30km). You can read about other marathons we have personally completed.

A man and woman cross the finish line at the Honolulu Marathon, holding their hands up.

Richard and Mogsy cross the finish line at the Honolulu marathon

SwimRun Advice Training

It's also good to look for dedicated swimming events or series, to focus on swimming for a short period. We entered the Barbados Open Water Festival in early November 2019, which involved 5 swims over 5 days. Read about the event - and our training.

A small group of people sitting on a sand bank by blue water, watching the competitors in a swimrun race at the second swim leg at the Isles of Scilly, UK.

Watching swimrunners start the second swim leg, Isles of Scilly

For our most recent BIG race, in the Isles of Scilly, UK, we kept a training log. You can read about how we planned and carried out our training at SwimRun Training.

Of course, don't forget to read 'About Us' to find out who's writing this site - anyone can put up a website, but it's good to know that the authors of this site are genuine SwimRunners!

This website - SwimRun Advice - is very active, and we are updating it continuously, especially the race calendars for Europe and USA/Canada/Rest Of the World.

So do bookmark this page or add it to your RSS feed, and come back soon!

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