Andy Hewitt
Welcome to episode lucky thirteen of the Low Tide Boyz, a Swimrun Podcast!
On this week’s show we chat with the Godfather of Swimrun in the U.S., Andy Hewitt. He put on the first swimrun event in the United States and was our first Patron on Patreon. (Spoiler alert: if you support us on Patreon you’ll likely be interviewed for the show!) More on the interview later in the show.
We’re still under a shelter-in-place order and we learned this week that the order is being extended until the end of April. As mentioned previously on the show, we encourage everyone to follow the guidelines of the WHO and their local authorities on what to do. While our pools and parks are closed we are keeping busy with running and other dry land activities.
Speaking of which, this week’s shout out goes to Drew Sapp. He’s Co-owner of Crew Racing and Rehab and he sent us some dry land workouts for bands after we posted up on IG that we didn’t know how to use them. Thanks for that Drew!
This got us thinking that we should host a bunch of these “pools are closed” workouts on our site. If anyone else has some cool dry land workouts that they want to share, send us an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com and we’ll get that up on our site.
In other news, our collab shirt fundraiser for the WILD Youth Initiative created by WILD Swimrun is still selling well! As a reminder, all proceeds from this apparel will go towards providing scholarships to help girls attend the WILD Swimrun camps. Have enough shirts (and/or pillows)? You can head over to lowtideboyz.com to donate to the WILD Youth Initiative on our homepage.
Now for this week’s show! Andy Hewitt grew-up in San Diego. Rowed Crew at UC Berkeley. He then spent 28 years as an Infantry Officer in the Marine Corps where he participated in 7 wars throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. He did an 8-year assignment at the US State Department and spent time in Renewable Energy, Defense Contracting and worked for 10 years as a “low-grade” Hollywood actor. He’s been married for 31 years to a Super-Lawyer and has two sons.
Athletically, Andy has completed 27 Marathons, 3 Ironman races, swam the English Channel, the Catalina Channel and swam around Manhattan. He has raced in 23 Swimrun events, including 5 Ötillö World Championships. He formed California Swimrun with Sean Durkin in 2015 and hosted the first race in United States on September 20th, 2015.
Finally, it bears repeating that Andy was our first Patron on Patreon.
In this interview we chatted about how he learned about Swimrun. How he pestered Mats and Michael to get into the World Championship with his friend Sean Durkin in 2015 and then hosted the first swimrun race in the U.S. 4 weeks later. We also chatted about how the sport is growing in the U.S. leading up to the first Ötillö race in California.
We chatted about the genesis for the California Swimrun “Rules of Swimrun:”
Tell everyone about swimrun!
Greet everyone you see while running
Stay with your teammate during runs and swims
Dog in and out of the swims (Funny story about this one!)
No complaining…ever
We also chatted about the genesis of Ötillö Catalina and the role that Andy and California Swimrun played in getting that race to happen. The team of Sean, Natalie Foote and Andy worked really hard to help design the great course that we all raced.
Finally, we chatted about Andy’s thoughts on how to best grow the sport in the U.S. while keeping the soul of the sport as it will inevitably grow in the U.S. Whether by supporting solo divisions to help introduce the sport to folks or showcasing local events, the future of the sport is about getting people to show up to the races. Andy feels that the team aspect of the sport is where the magic is. The biggest part is hosting swimrun events and the rest will take care of itself.
That’s it for this week’s show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz, please be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. We are on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google Podcast. You can also follow along on Instagram and Twitter. You can also support us on Patreon, if you are so inclined. If you want to drop us a line, email us at lowtideboyz@gmail.com.