Aaron Palaian
Welcome to episode sixty-seven of the Low Tide Boyz - A Swimrun Podcast!
On the show this week we have the one and only Aaron Palaian from Ödyssey Swimrun. He has a super interesting back story and we discuss everything from his roots in endurance sports to Orcas and Bears in Alaska to driving cross country flying the Swimrun flag and so much more.
More on this interview later in the show.
Training Update
Training continues as usual and we’re definitely getting the itch to start Swimrunning again.
Shoutouts
We are shouting out the Country of Taiwan this week. They recently climbed into the top ten for downloads by country and we loved seeing that! It still blows our minds the people listen to our show from all over the world and we’re full of gratitude for letting us into your ears.
Feats of Endurance
This week’s winner is our friend Sarah Fergot. We’re pretty sure that she’s won this award before but her Marin High 5 Unsupported (solo) 50 mile FKT with 12,103ft (3,689m) of climbing over the weekend is pretty much an automatic award. She’s awesome and this feat is definitely amazing!
Make sure to join the LTBz Strava Club and get inspired by your fellow Swimrunners as they train all over the world.
This Week in Swimrun (Powered by Raceid.com)
We have a couple of updates to share this week.
Torpedo Swimrun held their Cape race over the weekend in Cape Town, South Africa. The course looked epic as it hugged the coastline and had a beach finish. We’re working on getting the folks from Torpedo on the podcast to talk about the growing Swimrun scene in South Africa so stay tuned for that.
ÖTILLÖ announced this week that they are moving the date of ÖTILLÖ SWIMRUN UTÖ to June 19-20 from the original date due to uncertainty around Swedish restrictions around hosting events. ÖTILLÖ also announced that they have opened registration for Isles of Scilly 2022 and encourage participants to book their accommodations early since there are a limited number of beds there and they are booked up to a year in advance.
In the weekly bummer department, Swimrun Costa Brava by HEAD announced last Friday that they had to cancel their event that was slated to take place on April 17th due to COVID restrictions put in place by the Catalonian government. No rescheduled date has been announced.
That’s it for this week. Feel free to email us to tip us off to any events or Swimrun news that you’d like for us to share on the show.
Updates
A huge thanks to everyone that attended our Encore Premiere of All the Way: The Making of Swimrun Champions with special quests Carl Eneroth, George Bjälkemo, and Pontus Lindberg over the weekend. If you missed the Premiere, the film is available for rent or purchase at alltheway.se and all the proceeds go towards The Archipelago Foundation that helps preserve the Stockholm Archipelago that birthed the sport of Swimrun.
This Week’s Interview
It was really fun to have Aaron Palaian on the show. He’s the final person for us to interview from the Ödyssey Swimrun crew. He’s the COO/jack of all trades with a ton of experience in race directing, photography, marketing, and web design. He shared his super interesting origin story and how he found Swimrun. We covered everything from him getting into endurance sports to “impress the ladies,” how he became a uber-successful triathlon race director, how he created some epic Ultra Triathlons like Alaskaman, and how Lars moved to Texas and started to win all of Aaron’s races. We also chatted about the two new races on the Ödyssey race calendar: Luddington and Mackinac Island. Finally, we went into how Ödyssey is working to make Swimrun accessible for everyone that wants to try it.
There’s a lot of good stuff in this interview! You can learn more about Aaron on his website and follow him on Facebook and Instagram.
That’s it for this week’s show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz, please be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player and leave us a five-star review. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast. You can also follow our meme page on Instagram. Email us at lowtideboyz@gmail.com with any feedback and/or suggestions. Finally, you can support us on Patreon…if you feel so inclined.