Low Tide Boyz, a Swimrun Podcast

Welcome to episode 356 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

With ÖTILLÖ Swimrun Austin coming up and a big crew of Wildies heading to Texas, we reach back into the vault for the tenth installment of our Throwback Mixtape series. This one originally ran as episode 276 in April 2025. It's our conversation with Helen Ostet, co-founder of WILD Swimrun and one of the kindest people in the sport. Before we roll the tape, we talk about our history with WILD going back to episode 10, the Wildies on this year's ÖTILLÖ World Championship podium, The Wild O...

Welcome to episode 355 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

The mailbag is back! We get questions in our DMs, in our inbox, and in person at races, and when the same ones keep coming up, it's time for another round of our Swimrun 101 series. We answer these with 30-plus swimruns under our belts since 2018, and our advice is always the same: start where we recommend, then find your own way from there.

First up is metrics. Chip walks through his simple race-day watch setup (total time and distance, lap time an...

Welcome to episode 354 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We sit down for another fika with Coach Liz, a swimrun coach who works with swimrunners and returned to the ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship this year with her partner Jacob. We shared a good stretch of the course with them in Sweden, so we start with a race report from their second time racing it, including a faster finish than last time and what it took to get there with a toddler at home.

Liz walks us through how she and Jaco...

Welcome to episode 353 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We have another race report for you, and this one is a first. Chris just did his first ever solo swimrun at Swimrun Cape Cod, and we sit down a day and a half after he gets home to talk about it. Chris has never been shy about giving solo categories a hard time, so we get into whether that still holds.

Swimrun Cape Cod is in its fourth edition and only its second running, and this year adds a long co...

Welcome to episode 352 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

The 2026 One Water Race is done, and we have been wanting to talk about it since the live stream ended. We obsess over this race, have zero interest in racing it, and love watching it unfold. Joining us is Chris Wright of Team USA France, who raced the inaugural edition in 2022 and finished this year on his third start, touching the Landsort lighthouse at 2:30 in the morning with the whole One Water crew still cheering.

Chris takes us through the year be...

Welcome to episode 351 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

This week we pull another gem from the vault for our Throwback Mixtape series, rolling back to Ep 240, "Taking on Big Challenges w/Susie Moonan," recorded about a year ago on the eve of her One Water Race, one of the longest and toughest swimrun-style adventure races in the world. Coming off ÖTILLÖ this conversation felt like the right one to bring back, whether ÖTILLÖ is your someday goal or you are staring down your own big challenge right now.

Susie is a p...

Welcome to episode 350 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

You just wrapped your A-race for the season. Maybe it was ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship, maybe it was your local A-race, and now you are standing there wondering what to do with yourself. We get this question a lot, and after our own trip to the World Champs, we figured it was time to lay out exactly what we do once the race is over.

This is another edition of our ad hoc Swimrun 201 series, where we get into the more adva...

Welcome to episode 349 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

The 20th edition of ÖTILLÖ, the Swimrun World Championship, is in the books, and this one lives up to every bit of hype. A headwind held on for the entire day, conditions that longtime competitors and former world champions called the hardest they had ever seen, similar in difficulty to the famous 2017 edition but with the wind working against instead of with the field. We walk through the proper pig swim, a hip flexor lockup that left Chipper stuck in the water, our fuel...

Welcome to episode 348 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

The final countdown. Zero months and only days away from the 20th edition of the ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship. This is the last stop in our countdown series before we head to Sweden. We check in with hows the body, hows the mind and the hay already in the barn, and we share how we have been leaning on old race reports and course breakdowns to settle the nerves.

Then we welcome back our friend Dominik Leu, ÖTILLÖ race director, for our an...

Welcome to episode 347 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We're throwing it back all the way to 2022 for our ninth installment of the Löw Tide Böyz Throwback Mixtape. This one comes from our second annual Partners Month, and re-listening to it gave us all the warm and fuzzies all over again.

Chrissy and Bill Lankford, known to the community as Team Mr and Mrs B, join us to talk about swimrun as both life partners and race partners. They found the sport through the Toadman World Series, a set...

Welcome to episode 346 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

This week we welcome Jen Schnell, a Bay Area swimrunner and designer who came into the sport from eight years of competitive triathlon. Jen first heard about swimrun on the Rich Roll Podcast, carved out space to try it, and got hooked right away with a solo race at Folsom. From there she raced Whistler solo, found her first partner in Kayla Kobelin at Austin, and this year has raced her way into the Ötillö Elite Program through the wild card process, competing at O...

Welcome to episode 345 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We just got home from Portland, Maine after racing the 10th edition of ÖTILLÖ Casco Bay, our sixth time toeing the line at this race. This week we break down the whole day, leg by leg, the same way we always do after a big race, sitting down fresh with our honest take. 

This was a hard Casco year. A high tide pushed our total swimming up to around 9,000 yards, close to the 10,000 yards we will cover at the ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World C...

Welcome to episode 344 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We are one month out from Ötillö, the 20th anniversary of the Swimrun World Championship, and it is starting to feel real. We open with our own check-in on where our bodies and heads are at heading into Casco Bay, which serves as our final dress rehearsal before Worlds, plus everything we have planned for our Löw Tide Böyz weekend in Portland, Maine including a morning fika, the Envol shakeout clinic, and our post race party.

Then we sit down w...

Welcome to episode 343 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

This week we are back with our third race report of 2026, fresh off Folsom Swimrun long course, a race some version of the Löw Tide Böyz has done every single year for five years running. Spoiler alert, the dynasty continues with another overall team win, but with ÖTILLÖ Casco Bay two weeks away, we treated this one as a B race and a tune up.

The Novato swim community showed out in force. Sarah and Robin, who share a Master...

Welcome to episode 342 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

With ÖTILLÖ Casco Bay celebrating its 10th anniversary in just a few weeks, we are digging back into the vault for this one. This is our race report from the 2021 edition, originally Episode 84 from August 2021, and re-listening to it took us right back to race morning on Peaks Island.

This was our second time racing Casco Bay after debuting there in 2018, and it came after a full training block with a coach for the first time. We talk about the shark sigh...

Welcome to episode 341 of the **Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!**

Race season is picking up, with Folsom Swimrun just a couple weeks out, Casco Bay marking its 10th edition, and ÖTILLÖ, the Swimrun World Championship, coming up later this year. With so many new folks joining the sport, we wanted to put together the newest edition of our Swimrun 101 series, five tips to be race day ready, straight from over 25 swimruns worth of trial and error.

Being race ready starts well before you get to the start line. Our first tip is s...

Welcome to episode 340 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We are two months out from the 20th edition of ÖTILLÖ, the Swimrun World Championship, and this month's Countdown to ÖTILLÖ check-in is all about communication. Before we get into it we run through how the body and mind are holding up, including our tune up races at Folsom Swimrun and the tenth anniversary of Ötillö Casco Bay, and we share some news about a stop we're making at Precision Fuel and Hydration headquarters in the UK on our way to Sweden.

We wel...

Welcome to episode 339 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We just got back from Bellingham, Washington with the full race report from
our third edition of Swimrun Bellingham at Lake Padden Park. This was race
two of the 2026 season on the road to ÖTILLÖ, and true to a six-year
tradition, we are sitting down to break it all down.

Chris came into this one carrying some extra weight after losing his father
just a few weeks before the race, and there is something to be said for<...

Welcome to episode 338 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! 

This week we are climbing back into the swimrun hot tub for a throwback mixtape, and we are pulling out a fan favorite. We are rolling the original gear talk on the Ark Vigg and Vigg Air, the suit Chris has loved since his first swimrun in 2020 and has not stopped talking about since. 

This one comes straight from the vault, originally Episode 188 from August 10, 2023. The crew starts with gear updates, Ark prototype goggles, new flip-flops, and Stasher bags as a solu...

Welcome to episode 337 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! We're going across the pond this week, and not to Sweden for once. We met Bart Vandervaal on the ferry to Sandhamn at ÖTILLÖ last year and immediately started asking about his shoes. Nine months later, Bart and his co-race director Henk de Bock are on the show to tell us about the Dutch swimrun scene and the first ever Dutch Swimrun Championship.

Bart and Henk have been organizing Het Rondje Eilanden, a 6.5-kilometer island circuit race in Vinkeveen just south of Amsterdam, for...

Welcome to episode 336 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

Three months out from the ÖTILLÖ Swimrun World Championship, and we are bringing you our most-requested episode type: the full day-by-day travel guide for race week in Sweden. We have done this race a handful of times and we get the same DMs every single year, so we decided to just answer everything in one shot. Where to stay, how to get from the airport, whether you actually need cash (you don't), what goes in your drop bag, and yes, how many fikas you...

Welcome to episode 335 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We just got back from Ötillö Orcas Island and this is our first swimrun race report of 2026. Five years after our first time racing on the island, we returned to a redesigned course, a stacked field, and a weekend that delivered from the moment we stepped off the ferry. This is episode 335 and it is a big one.

The weekend kicked off with a FIKA shakeout co-hosted with Wild Swimrun and the newly launched Wild Onez podcast. The turnout was great, the...

Welcome to episode 334 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

It is race week at Orcas Island, and we are going back to the vault.

Episode 334 is Throwback Mixtape number five — a re-release of our 2021 Orcas Island race report from Episode 91. This race is one of the chapters in the book of the LTBz. Chipper showed up banged up from a fall, bonked hard somewhere in the middle of the course, and spent the better part of four hours getting dragged around one of the most brutal swimrun courses in the US b...

Welcome to episode 333 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

Triple threes. We are officially in taper mode for Ötillö Orcas Island, and we brought back one of our favorite guests to help us make the most of what is left in the build.

Brian Johns is Head of Coaching Science at FORM Swim and a three-time Canadian Olympian. He is also the brains behind the FORM training plans that Chris has been running almost exclusively for two years with excellent results — including some very generous feedback from the master swim coach...

This month is Orcas Island month, and we are kicking it off with someone who is, safe to say, super stoked on swimrun. Julia Dinesen is a multi-discipline endurance athlete from British Columbia who found the sport via an Ötillö Instagram ad, signed up for the World Series distance at Whistler on her first ever attempt, and has been hooked ever since.

Before we get to Julia, we share a few tips for getting the most out of your swimrun practice sessions as we head into race season. Have a plan before you show up. Decide what yo...

Welcome to episode 331 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

Four months out from the 20th anniversary of Ötillö, the Swimrun World Championship, and we are leaving no stone unturned. The physical training is building nicely. Chris just finished the London Marathon in 3:37 and downing 90 grams of carbs per hour, and Chipper has been stacking consistent weeks. Orcas Swimrun is at the end of the month. The build is very much on.

This episode is about training the thing most people ignore until it is too late — the mind. We brought back D...

Welcome to episode 330 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast.

A few weeks ago we did our in memoriam for Max Andersson. This week we are going back to the vault to share our first solo conversation with him, originally recorded on June 30th, 2022 — just a few months before he and Hugo Torment would go on to win every single ÖTILLÖ World Series race that year, set a course record of 7 hours and 1 minute at the World Championship, and become the first team ever to run the table in a single season.

This...

Welcome to episode 329 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

You have done a few swimruns. You have the basic kit sorted. Now you are starting to notice the fiddly bits. Episode 329 is our Swimrun 201 breakdown of all of them — the advanced topics that come up once you have done a couple of races and started asking better questions.

We go deep on tether management, kangaroo top organization, gel storage for races of every length, hydration on the move, sunscreen, eyewear, spare gear, and all the small things that separate a comf...

Welcome to episode 328 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast.

On April 6th, Max Andersson — two-time Ötillö World Champion, Otillo World Championship course record holder, and one of the most beloved people in swimrun — died tragically in an avalanche in Norway. He was in his mid-thirties.

This episode is our attempt to honor him. We talk about what Max meant to the sport, share our own memories of time spent with him, and try to put into words what so many in the swimrun community are feeling right now.

Max and...

Swimrun Shoes 101: Everything from the Knees Down | Episode 327

Welcome to episode 327 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

The most popular gear question we get is about shoes. Do you need a special swimrun shoe? Are you going to get blisters running in wet socks? We are busting every myth in this one.

Episode 327 is a full Swimrun 101 breakdown of everything from the knees down — shoes, socks, laces, modifications, how to test your gear at home, when it makes sense to upgrade, and how to retire a pair with dign...

Welcome to episode 326 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

The Countdown to Ötillö series is back. With five months to go until the 20th anniversary of the Swimrun World Championship, we are kicking off a monthly series tracking our build all the way to September. This one is packed.

First, super intern Dave Damer joins us to break down the 2026 Ötillö start list. 199 teams, 24 countries, and nearly half the field doing Ötillö for the first time. US participation has gone from 16 athletes in 2022 to 68 this year, and two new countries, Argentin...

Welcome to episode 325 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We’ve got a great show for everyone this week! We’re going back into the vault for our Throwback Mixtape series with a conversation from 2020 with the one and only Erika Rosenbaum. Not only is she an amazing Swimrunner, she launched the “short course” Swimrun movement, and if that wasn’t enough, she literally coined the name “Swimrun” and then gave it away to help grow the sport. She’s a legend and we’re excited to re-share our conversation with her.

Enjoy!

...

Welcome to episode 324 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

Get your note pads out for this one! Our friend and race director Brent Molsberry is on the show this week to share a course preview for the 2026 edition of ÖTILLÖ Orcas Island. This show is a must listen/watch for anyone racing the event, whether it’s your first Swimrun or your thirty-third. We discuss how to get to Orcas Island, share a leg by leg breakdown for each race distance, and give some training and gear recommendations. This show is guaranteed to get...

Welcome to episode 323 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

Joining us this week is pro triathlete (and Swimrunner) Eric Lagerstrom. He made his Swimrun debut last year at ÖTILLÖ USA Orcas Island and kicked off their “charity chaser” fundraiser with Eric starting 15 minutes after the start of the World Series distance began. Check out the show to find out how it turned out, what he thinks the future holds for Swimrun, and so much more.

Enjoy!

~~~

That’s it for this week’s show. 

If you are en...

Welcome to episode 322 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We’ve got our first race report of the year this week! Chipper and his wife Kristen raced HYROX Las Vegas as a team a few weekends ago and they are here to share all the sights (six-pack abs), sounds (DJ music all day), and spectacle (it’s Vegas) of the exercise craze that’s taken the fitness world by storm. Spoiler alert: they had a great race!

Enjoy!

~~~

That’s it for this week’s show. 

If you...

Welcome to episode 321 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We’re back this week with our second installment in our new series: Throwback Mixtape. In this episode we go all the way back to 2020 to re-share our conversation with Amber and Erin A.K.A., Team Better Tethered Together. Now six years later, this is still one of the most fun conversations we’ve recorded for the show. We interviewed them on the eve of Catalina 2020 and we can’t think of a better throwback to wrap up this year’s Partners Month. 

Welcome to episode 320 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

Partners Month continues this week! Joining us on the podcast is mixed team Sarah and Hugh, A.K.A., Team Party Pace. (An all-time great team name!)  These teammates from afar have put together some impressive performances including competing in last year’s ÖTILLÖ, The Swimrun World Championship. In this conversation we covered how they met, how they work together, and shared a mini-race report from their journey across the Archipelago. 

If that wasn’t enough we are also joined by our Super...

Welcome to episode 313 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

Our 5th annual Partners Month continues this week with a great show for everyone! Joining us from The Green Mountain State (Vermont) is Team Wild VerMamas, A.K.A., Amanda and Fiona. This team has burst onto the Swimrun scene with some impressive ÖTILLÖ wins in the women’s category as well as inclusion in the inaugural ÖTILLÖ Elite program for 2026. If that wasn’t enough they are also collaborating with Wild Swimrun to get more women and girls into the sport. If it wasn’t...

Welcome to episode 318 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We’ve reached February and that means that it’s time for our 5th Annual Partners Month!!! We aren’t shy about saying that one of our favorite things about Swimrun is the partner aspect and we’re stoked to kick off this year’s Partners Month with Allison and Brooke, A.K.A., Team Girlz Just Wånna Häve Buoyz. Get ready for a great conversation where their enthusiasm for Swimrun is infectious. We can’t think of a better way to get the month...

Welcome to episode 317 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We’ve got something new (sort of) for everyone this week! We’re kicking off our new monthly series, called Throwback Mixtape, where we share some of our favorite conversations from our 6+ years of podcasting. We’re kicking things off with a conversation from all the way back May 28, 2020 (Episode 21) with Annie Molsberry and Brooke Lindsley, A.K.A., The Swimrun Labs. This episode was the beginning for a friendship that we are forever grateful for as well as the progenitor of our Gear Tal...