Do you need some SwimRun Advice?
Swimrun Advice is the biggest and best website for people new to the sport of Swimrun!
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 - Odyssey Swimrun in the USA has just announced the cancellation of their event at Dunes Lakes, Fla., which was due to take place on March 5th this year, so go to our Latest News page or our dedicated Odyssey Swimrun page!
For inspiration, or if you want to search for an event, check our up-to-date race calendars for Swimrun events in 2023:
and Swimrun calendar USA/World 2023.
You can also Search for Races listed by Country Here. Just click on that link to go to our swimrun race page where events are listed by country!
If you are an event organizer, please feel free to contact us with your dates! Swimrun 2023 looks very exciting!
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!
So far, we have competed in four SwimRun events -
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!
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.
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 wet suit 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 wet suits.
We have carried out a review of the best dedicated SwimRun wet suits 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 Wet suit Reviews page.
Mogsy's favourite wet suit is the Colting Women's suit pictured below - click here for more information and the best price!
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!
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 is growing around the world, and we have pages with details of organizers who hold a series of SwimRun races. For example;
USA: IGNITE SwimRun Series (now RIP IT EVENTS)
Canada: Mudskipper SwimRun Challenge
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
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.
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.
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.
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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