Well, the first weekend of May was a busy one. We stayed in downtown Vancouver while my eldest went to a gymnastics competition on the Saturday, then a training camp on the Sunday. The Lightning Kid had an ultrasound at BC Children’s hospital, then on Sunday he auditioned (successfully!) for Vancouver Kids Fashion Week.
My big adventure was probably the Canaqua Sports MudSkipper Swim Run “Ice Cracker” Try It” event.
So, swimruns are events where you swim with shoes on and exit the water and start running immediately, without a transition of any kind. Everything you need for swimming or running must be on your body. I’ve been curious about this for a while, and I got so curious that I bought a pair of Solomon tech amphibians in anticipation of the event, after having tried to do a little swimming with a pair of Vibram Barefoot shoes – that attempt did not seem promising. The purchase was made in a bout of stress-related retail therapy, but sometimes buying something will prompt you into taking the plunge into a new venture so you can retroactively justify the purchase.
Swimrun seemed like a natural fit for me, since it’s an outdoor multisport endurance event, and it even takes out the biking from triathlon, which is probably my least favourite discipline. The Ice Cracker event was the first of the season and promised the coldest water temperatures, but since I play around with cold plunges and cold therapy and I have a killer wetsuit, I was less intimidated by that part.
What I was intimidated by was the technical aspects and the overall distance. Most of the events are described in total distance, so how much of it is swimming and how much is running seemed to be up in the air. The “try-It” event was a great idea for me, because it would give me a taste of it without me putting in too much extra training time to get up to swims more than 1km.
Due to the Vancouver Marathon occurring that same morning, we had some trouble navigating our way out of Vancouver, and when we got to Belcarra Regional Park, we couldn’t find the race site. Luckily, Chris the on-site race director was available and responsive by text, so we found ourselves at the race site with a small number of brave souls, many of whom were there for a pure open-water swim race (no running).
The pre-race briefing made it clear that it would be a 900m swim followed by a 2.6km run around Lake Sassamat for the total of 3.5km. I would rather that swim had been broken into 2 legs of 450m with a run between them because I think that represents the swimrun experience better, especially at higher levels (the other swimrun events were 6.5 and 13km) and also because I wasn’t confident about finishing 900m at a respectable pace.
The longer swimruns went in the first waves, whereas the Try-It athletes started with the open-water swimmers. I have to say, swimming with shoes is like torture. It’s common for swimrun athletes to use a pull-buoy and hand paddles (this is legal) so that their legs are inactive but floating while they get extra pull from the hand paddles. My wetsuit always ensures my lower body is floating, and I didn’t like the idea of the extra strain on my shoulders by using hand paddles for the whole race – I only train with them for 100-200m at a time. You’re also responsible for carrying everything with you on the run, so I didn’t want to do that.
The swim course was triangular with the leg to the first buoy probably being well over half the total distance. Nowhere did I feel slower due to the drag of the shoes than going around the buoys. The open water swimmers had left us way behind, but I thought I was in second of the swimrun athletes doing the Try-It Course. It was a beautiful day, and the water temperature had been reported at 16.5 degrees Celsius. I was worried about my hands getting cold, but I hadn’t thought about my face! I stopped noticing the cold, or got warmed up after 200-300m.
When I reached the swim exit, there were no other swimmers exiting the water, so I gently clambered over the rocks to the trail. One of the volunteers warned me about “swim brain,” and sure enough, I felt a little off-balance on my first few steps. Once that cleared, I was on my way. The Techamphibians did fine on the trail, which was gravel in parts, but in others, a regular hiking trail with roots, rocks, etc. I had tested them out on a short run or two beforehand. Swimming with them counts as breaking the “nothing new on race day rule”, but the upper mesh ensured water drained out so I wasn’t sloshing around as I ran. They felt almost like sandals, but slightly more supportive. I did notice a lack of cushioning when I went over the cement “Float Walk” that spans the southern tip of the lake (people use it to fish off of), but for trail-running, they are reasonably suitable – overall, I’m pretty happy with my purchase.
I had taken off my swim cap and held it in my hand to stay cool, and I unzipped the back of my wetsuit, but I was reluctant to take off the top part for cooling, as that’s not what a swimrun athlete would do if they had another swim leg to look forward to. I think managing your pace to not overheat might be a fundamental part of the sport, at least if you wear a wetsuit. I felt the heat the most when exposed to the sun on the Float Walk. Eventually, I did take off the top part of the suit, not only for cooling, but my arm was itching something awful.
When I had rounded most of the lake and saw a beach, I thought I was done, but it turns out there are two beaches, so I did have to gut it out a little further.
I only got passed once on foot, which was by a bone-dry couple out on a fun/training run, not part of the Swimrun. So at the end I figured I had finished second. Not so, I was second last.
I’m a little unsure if I want to pursue this sport further. I have to get up to longer distances in both swim and run anyway, so maybe it’ll make sense to try a longer one that will expose me to the ins and outs (literally, in and out of the water) of swimrun.