Adam Skolnick
Welcome to episode twenty-eight of the Low Tide Boyz, a Swimrun Podcast!
This week we have journalist and swimrunner, Adam Skolnick. We had a great chat with him about his super interesting life and his Swimrun origin story. More about Adam later in the show.
Training Update
Training continues to go well. A lot of swimming happening lately and we’re ramping up to take on Nicolas Remires’s 3-hour Engadin swimrun workout. You can check out that workout at around minute 48 of our Engadin Course Preview show. That should be fun…and painful.
For shout outs this week, we’re tipping the hat to our friend Ray who we convinced to come out to do a swimrun practice with us. We had a wetsuit for him and he was sold after the first transition.
Feats of Endurance Weekly Award
For this week’s Feats of Endurance, we congratulate Nancy and Denise from upstate New York that had a cool swimrun practice last weekend. Nancy also sent us a nice email with feedback for the show so thanks so much for that. We love hearing from our listeners. If you want to get in on the Feats of Endurance be sure to join the Low Tide Boyz Strava Club.
LTBz Updates
The main update this week is that our second column in Triathlete Magazine, “What’s the Deal With the Swimrun Tether?” is out now. Check it out and give us a thumbs up if you liked it. We’re always on the hunt for ideas, so let us know your burning swimrun questions and we’ll answer them…or find smarter people than us to answer them. If you have any questions about swimrun gear, head over to our Swimrun Gear Guide!
Vivobarefoot ECS Tempest Review
We also wanted to give a mini-review of the new Vivobarefoot ECS Tempest that that folks at Vivobarefoot sent over for us to try out. Check out our interview with Asher Clark if you want all the details about the Vivobarefoot Tempest. We thought that we would give everyone a short review and then plan to do something longer at some point.
Our initial impressions of the shoe after testing them on a couple of swimrun practices are that they are definitely amazing swimrun shoes…with a caveat that we’ll talk about in a bit. The shoe fits true to size and were great in the water and on land. In the water, it felt like you weren’t wearing shoes and in transitions they didn’t collect sand or rocks. We ran with them on trails and road and they performed well on every surface. The main caveat for these shoes is that you need get comfortable with running in minimal shoes. If you’re already on that train, then we can’t recommend them enough. If you’re not on that train, you need to make sure that you take it easy as you transition to minimal shoes.
We now have the full on review of the Vivobarefoot ECS Tempest shoe from our swimrun gear review show, Gear Talk!
Adam Skolnick Interview
Now for our interview with Adam Skolnick. He’s an award-winning independent journalist and author covering adventure sports, environmental issues, travel and human rights for The New York Times, Outside, Playboy and Lonely Planet. He’s traveled the world, contributed to 35 Lonely Planet travel guides and is the author of One Breath: Freediving, Death and the Quest to Shatter Human Limits. If that wasn’t enough... Adam was the ghost writer and narrator of David Goggins’ hit memoir and audiobook Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds, which has sold over two million copies and counting worldwide. Notably for Swimrun, Adam wrote the New York Times article chronicling Rich Roll and the Ötillö World Championship in 2017 and the article about the inaugural Ötillö Catalina event earlier this year.
We had a great conversation that hit on a lot of topics. Adam shared with us how he became a journalist and how he wrote his first book. We also chatted about how he met David Goggins and ended up ghostwriting the book that has sold millions of copies worldwide. We also discussed how Adam ended up writing the story for the New York Times about the 2017 Ötillö World Championship and how writing that article led him to sign up for the Experience distance at the Inaugural Ötillö Catalina in 2020. Finally, we chatted about Adam about becoming father in a few months and how plans to keep swimrunning.
You can learn more about Adam on his website. You can also listen to Adam on the Rich Roll Podcast “Roll On” episodes twice a month.
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. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google Podcast. You can also follow our meme page on Instagram and on Twitter. Email us at lowtideboyz@gmail.com with any feedback, suggestions and/or meme suggestions. Finally, you can also support us on Patreon…if you feel so inclined.