California Swim Run 22k Race Report

I first heard about swim-run when I met a guy form Sweden at Ironman Arizona in 2014. If you haven’t heard of it let me explain.  Essentially you swim and run and swim and run your way around a course with a partner. You are allowed to use equipment but since you are all over the place you have to carry it all with you. It is HUGE in Sweden and has just started taking off here in the US. A friend of mine asked me to join her for a 22K swim run event in San Diego so of course I said yes!

She was not quite ready for the challenge once the race rolled around so I paired up with her husband. The race happened to be in between a couple of really big storms to hit the area, so that added a bit of fun to the mix as well.

OMG, so much fun but really really hard! As you can see from the pictures below we swam and ran our way all over Mission Bay in San Diego.

The water was super cold so every time we got in the water it took a good 20 strokes before I could even get my face in. The weather was so crazy that they had to cut out one swim where we supposed to swim in the ocean around a pier. Because they took that section out, we ended up running close to a 10 K straight, half on the beach and half on the boardwalk by Mission Bay. You can see the Garmin data here. I messed up with my watch in the beginning so it is missing the first run and swim.

We were ran on the beach, on the grass, through parking lots, on sidewalks, up stairs, over bridges etc…

DCIM105_VIRB

Even every swim was a bit different. Sometimes we had nice beach entries and exits, sometimes we have to scale big sharp, slippery, unstable rocks to get in or out. Only one swim was really tough. We swam across Sail Bay and it was really choppy and hard to site.

We swam with buoys and paddles and shoes and then ran with buoys and paddles and shoes! As partners we actually were did very well together. I was a bit better at the swim which was good because Scott could just followed my bright colored shoes. He was a bit faster on the run so I just did my best to keep up. We were both working hard and having fun so it was a great day.

Stuart and Tracy were chasing us around on bikes taking pictures and posting Facebook Live videos. It was a ton of fun!

The race organizers  put on a fantastic event! We started and ended at the San Diego Rowing club so we had nice hot showers and a huge spread of food. I may have eaten 4 slices of pizza and two sandwiches after the race! If you ever have a chance to do one of these, do it!

 

UPDATE!!! Here is a video from the day!