Annika Ericsson
Welcome to episode fifty-five of the Low Tide Boyz - A Swimrun Podcast!
We have one of the legends of the sport on the show this week. We are super stoked to share our interview with 5-time ÖTILLÖ World Champion Annika Ericsson. We loved having this conversation and think that you’ll enjoy listening to it.
More on this important conversation later in the show.
Shoutouts
This week we’re shouting out a newish listener, Tad Derrick. He’s been going through our back catalog of shows and we really appreciated this feedback on the show. Hope to see you at a Swimrun at some point dude!
Adventure Time/Training Updates
We’re going back out to Lake Sonoma soon with our suits on to literally test the waters so we’ll hopefully have one Swimrun loop course mapped out before exploring other parts of the lake for maybe a longer point-to-point style course.
In training news, Chipper has been loving his Peloton treadmill and has been putting in some good work on that thing. Chris is still on his bullshit and putting in a lot of volume.
Feats of Endurance
The Feats are back! That means that everyone in our Strava Club is eligible to win a very prestigious weekly award (of a bumper sticker) and our enduring adoration. This week’s winner is Christian Gotz of Munich Germany. Last week he did not one, not two, but three frigid open water swims in the Karlsfelder Lake outside of Munich. We were definitely impressed! Keep up the good work Christian and try not to lose any appendages out there.
This Week in Swimrun (Powered by Raceid.com)
We have a few race updates to share this week.
Breca Swimrun’s Jersey race is set for September 4, 2021. They’ve only opened up registration for the Sprint Course and plan to open the full course at a later date based on the progress of the UK vaccination programs and the easing of restrictions for group events. This course looks awesome and we’re definitely going to make it out to that event at some point. Listeners can check out Breca Swimrun’s provisional 2021 race calendar for the rest of their events.
Another race on our long bucket list, Swimrun Costa Brava, has announced its 2021 race date for April 24, 2021. If you’re in Spain or can travel to Spain we would definitely recommend this race just from the photos alone.
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
We urge everyone to check out Adam Skolnick’s new story in the New York Times about how a group of Nepalese Sherpas climbed K2, one of the most treacherous climbs in the world. Adam was our guest on Episode 28 of the show and an all-around awesome dude.
We’ve been thinking about making some hats for our swag shop. Let us know if that’s something that you might be interested in since our wives are already flush with LTBz gear and we don’t think that they want 10 hats to wear. Send us a DM with a thumbs up or down vote.
This Week’s Interview
As we mentioned at the beginning of the show, we were super stoked to be able to chat with Annika Ericsson and share her story with our listeners. It’s safe to say that she’s in the pantheon of Swimrun legends and we really enjoyed getting to know her a bit in this interview.
In this conversation, we chatted about her elite athletic background, how she competed in the Swedish Classics events, and ultimately found Swimrun. We discussed her first experience racing the ÖTILLÖ World Championship and how she fell in love with the race, and what it’s like to not only have won ÖTILLÖ 5 times in both the mixed and women’s category but also owns the record for the fastest Women’s finishing time with her partner Kristin Larsson set in 2016. Finally, we chatted about the importance of having a good race partner and how to train for something like the World Championship while balancing family, work, and life in general.
We covered a lot of ground in this interview and really appreciate Annika taking the time to speak with us. You can follow Annika on Instagram here.
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.