So, I talked the wife into signing up for a swimrun. In 6 weeks.
Few questions for anyone on here who has actually DONE a swimrun event (i did a ton of run swim run swim run swim workouts as a LG back in the day, but we never carried/wore shoes or used paddles)…
Shoes: are there any out ther made specifically for this type of event?
Kits: standard tri suit? Wetsuit?
Any tips?
What will the water temp be? And distance? I’ve not needed a warm wetsuit so I can’t speak to that. I just used my normal kit. Had arm warmers once that I shoved down my top during the swim. It worked ok.
For me, ininji toe socks are a must to avoid blisters between wet toes and I like minimal shoes. Once I put taller normal socks over my toe socks but I didn’t care for that. The rest of the gear is awkward but no big deal. Just practice with the gear you will use so you can be sure it attaches to you comfortably.
Also, not sure how long wife’s hair is. Or yours for that matter. Dicking around with a swim cap is no fun if doing a swim run swim. If it is just swim run it isn’t a problem.
I did Ãœto last year with my husband. We wore regular wet suits as the water was 8 degrees Celsius but next time I will invest in one of the SwimRun specific suits that has a zipper in front. Running 34km in a wetsuit was exhausting and we wasted a lot of time unzipping my suit and zipping it back up. After 10km I couldn’t run with it done up anymore.
I wore Mizuno trail running shoes and regular thin running socks. I didn’t have any blisters and I never slipped on the wet rock but maybe there are better shoes out there for this event, I wouldn’t know. We chose not use pull buoys because we thought it would be annoying to run with and only I wore paddles in the swim so that we’d be the same speed.
My wife and I did Breca Buttermere in July. Lots of folks were in Inov8 (the race being in England I guess) or Salomon. I wore Altra Lone Peaks that drained well through the mesh upper. I felt like the foam in the shoe actually helped floatation, but it’s hard to know for sure. There’s a chance the wide toe box created some extra drag though.
We both had traditional tri wetsuits cut at the knees/elbows. I wore compression socks, compression shorts and a Desoto tri jersey (for the pockets). It was cold (water and air) with some rain and sleet at times so I only peeled the wetsuit down for the longest runs. Since it was cold we had Tyr WarmWear caps for some extra warmth – they were the envy of a bunch of people around us when it started sleeting. We both used pull buoys with a small bungee cord poked through and looped around one leg. I used paddles sized down one size from what I normally train with. I used a small running waist pack (for the mandatory gear) and my wife had a race belt that we used to connect a tether for the swims. We also had a collapsible water bottle and gel flasks for nutrition on the longer runs between aid stations.
As for tips, it’s definitely worth practicing swimming tethered together and practicing transitions. If there’s a big swim speed gap, the faster person is going to be working a lot harder than normal. If you’re going to use them, practice with paddles a lot. The best teams went light on gear/nutrition – I don’t know that I would bother with the water bottle, but having it made my wife more comfortable.
The race experience is “weird” but it’s probably the most fun I’ve had in multisport in a long time.
-Nick
It depends completely on the course. I did Engadin this summer and used my Adidas Tempo Boost road shoes, but I think the race you are talking about at the end of October (SwimRunNC) that is surely a trail running shoe event. I personally like the Inov8 Terraclaw 250 but there are many other good options from Inov8 and other brands
If you’re talking SwimRun NC, wetsuit covering torso and thighs is mandatory.
I’m assuming the bibs will be the tank style? This means wetsuits going up and down will be a little more involved…
Do people drill holes in trail shoes so they drain? Or just deal? As long as shoes aren’t waterproof they should kind of drain.
Do people wear tops under their wetsuits if they are wearing a cut down traditional wetsuit as opposed to a SwimRun suit?
Wife and I did Casco Bay SwimRun. Practice with the equipment and definitely practice and build appropriate fitness for swimming with paddles. Wife wore IceBug SwimRun specific shoes and loved them. I wore Solomon TechAmphibian without socks and got major blisters (but the grip was great!). We used the SwimRun specific wetsuits. They chaffed us real bad, but we could have mitigated it better. We didn’t mind having the pull buoy bungied to our leg for running. But we had to run with another blow up buoy which housed our gps tracker and that was annoying to run with.
Here is my n=1 experience from Utö this year
Shoes: I don’t know of any swimrun specific shoes…yet. I used Saucony Peregrines and my partner wore NB Minimus trail - both worked. Shoe choice will be dependent on the terrain and what you are comfortable with.
Kit (will be temperature dependent):
Tips:
Practice running in wet shoes and socks – find some that agree with your feet.
Practice transitions with your partner – order of operations, communication, etc.
If you can, find a rope with some give to it – can help prevent you from yanking your partner around on entries/exists
Write the distances of the segments on your paddles – nice to know if you have a 50m, 500m, or 5km run ahead so you can make decisions about unzipping or taking things off. We also noted where the time check points and feed stations were.
Have fun! Best of luck and let us know how it goes
Thanks for all the tips wveryone!
I guess I should have included a hair more info:
Wife is a former D1 full ride swimmer (read as: fast as sh××), I am just a hair faster (last HIM (i think the course was a hair short) i went high 23 and she went high 24/ low 25 if i recall correct), so we should be able to pace together well in the water
Course is a 12k “sprint” with only about 1.8 K swimming (unfortunatly) we figured we’d try, to get our feet wet in the sport, so to speak.
Water temp should be about 65. I’m somewhat loathe to cut my tri wetsuit’s sleeves and legs…
Would a shorty surf suit work or should i just be trying my tri kit and warm back up during he runs if I get cold? Longest swim leg is only on the order of 400m…
What’s the longest run?
Did Casco Bay this year, wore my regular long sleeve tri wetsuit and was mostly fine. Water was cold so I was glad to have it there. The longest run was over 3 miles and that late in the day it was really warm so I just peeled down the top for that one. Made for long transitions there but by then we were not exactly in contention so not a big deal. Depending on how long the longest run is, just keeping your tri wetsuit as is might be fine. I have heard people complain about running in the wetsuit but it really wasn’t that big of a deal for the other runs which were mostly between 1-2 miles at a time. I think if I did another one though I’d get a swimrun suit, it’d just make things easier. But for just one race? No problem.
They do make swimrun specific shoes, but like the wetsuit, didn’t want to spend money on something I wasn’t sure I’d need to use again. I wore Zoot racing flats and for me they worked great, even when traversing rocks and stuff. No blisters, no issues running in them when they were wet. I barely even thought about the fact I was running in wet shoes, no socks either.
If you’re going to be swimming in the race with paddles, start now and swim with those paddles ALL THE TIME to practice leading up. Although it sounds like you aren’t doing a whole lot of swimming so maybe it won’t matter. We had to do over 7K so it was definitely a lot for the shoulders according to my teammate. Our swim speeds matched up perfectly with me swimming without paddles and her with them, and she said her shoulders were VERY tired by the end.
Also we just wore tri kits under wetsuits, don’t really know what else we would’ve done there. It worked fine.
San Diego?
San Diego?
Yep. Discovered there is a whole series and signed up on a whim. Wife hates the idea of seimming in running shoes (o guess one of her coaches had them do that back in college and she wasn’t a fan, so rather than start ofg with the 40k race, the sprint seemed a good idea to see if she likes it.
Plus it was only something like 44 bucks to sign us up!
Mission Bay should be a bit warmer than the ocean especially in the shallow areas where the swims are - in the start photo on their web page of last year’s race it looks like most people are wearing lycra, not rubber. With the short swims (<250m) and how fast you’ll be doing them, you don’t need wetsuits - the swimming only totals 1350m, at your speed you’re going to be in the water for maybe 15 minutes and probably less than 4 minutes at a time, less if you use paddles. I’m thinking of doing the sprint as well, and would not use a wetsuit.
Course is a 12k “sprint” with only about 1.8 K swimming (unfortunatly) we figured we’d try, to get our feet wet in the sport, so to speak.
Water temp should be about 65. I’m somewhat loathe to cut my tri wetsuit’s sleeves and legs…
Would a shorty surf suit work or should i just be trying my tri kit and warm back up during he runs if I get cold? Longest swim leg is only on the order of 400m…I have done many swimruns, from longest (otillo x 3) to sprints and warm water races (e,g, Aquaticrunner in Italy last Saturday).
With short swims and your both swimming background I would opt for a tri kit and an optional shorty top. You will not spend a lot of time in the water and you will not get very cold. It’s partly a mental thing: just dive and ignore the sensations. If the weather is hot, you could ignore the shorty as you could overheat in the runs.
Another thing you could do is to ask your tri friends if they have an old wetsuit that they should have binned for a long time but have forgotten. We all have old kit that we will never ever use again, but never got to throw away (don’t say that to my wife though 
).
As Herbert said, shoes really depends on the run course terrain. Something you would run in regardless of the swims.
Pullbuoy: many ‘real’ swimmers (like you) don’t use them. However my wife who used to be a competitive swimmer now uses one in fresh water (not salty water like the Mediterraneean). Rationale: she doesn’t kick much anyway with shoes on, it allows her to maintain a good form whilst saving legs, and it weighs nothing so no hindrance when running.
Have fun !
San Diego?
Yep. Discovered there is a whole series and signed up on a whim. Wife hates the idea of seimming in running shoes (o guess one of her coaches had them do that back in college and she wasn’t a fan, so rather than start ofg with the 40k race, the sprint seemed a good idea to see if she likes it.
Plus it was only something like 44 bucks to sign us up!
Yeah I’ve seen the website. Did SOS last weekend and was hoping they’d have an event before the race to try out some kit. I’d agree that in October the water will be cooling off a bit but still the swims are so short if I were doing it I wouldn’t wear a wetsuit.
Wife and I did Casco Bay SwimRun. Practice with the equipment and definitely practice and build appropriate fitness for swimming with paddles. Wife wore IceBug SwimRun specific shoes and loved them. I wore Solomon TechAmphibian without socks and got major blisters (but the grip was great!). We used the SwimRun specific wetsuits. They chaffed us real bad, but we could have mitigated it better. We didn’t mind having the pull buoy bungied to our leg for running. But we had to run with another blow up buoy which housed our gps tracker and that was annoying to run with.
Can you please explain the GPS thing? Does everyone have to carry an extra blow up buoy for that? It does sound hella annoying
It may have been unique for this event. A safety measure.
Yes, I believe it was specific for this one event, not sure if others will require it. The buoy was required to be worn by ONE member of the team at all times. And we all carried a GPS tracker in it. Both items were supplied by the race. Didn’t notice the buoy when swimming though my teammate said it made it easier to stick with me. Apparently it is easy to carry sort of like a football when running, but I always just used a clip on the belt to hold it up higher on my hips when running. It was somewhat annoying while running, but not too bad. With your event being so short I doubt it will be required. We were in some wide open water with potential boat traffic, they wanted to make sure we were very visible.