Bruno Safara of Swimrun Portugal
Welcome to episode thirty-five of the Low Tide Boyz, a Swimrun Podcast!
On the show this week we are going across the pond to Europe to learn about the Swimrun scene in Portugal with Bruno Safara of Swimrun Portugal. This was a fun one! More about the interview later in the show.
Training Update
Our training plans are still sideways due to forest fires in Northern California and the terrible air quality. We’re basically doing indoor stuff until the air quality improves.
One big piece of news in terms of training is that we will actually have to start training because we are committed to going to the Ödyssey Swimrun Austin race on November 8, 2020. We’ll be doing an Odyssey Swimrun Austin course preview show in the next few weeks in case you need any additional motivation to sign up and join us in Texas for some Swimrunning. In case you need any additional motivation to sign up, use the code LOWTIDEBOYZ, and save 25% of your entry. Just FYI, this race with be either preceded and/or followed by some serious Texas BBQ.
Shout Outs
This week we’re shouting out Per Åström. Chipper did some deep internet research and discovered that Per left the very first comment to our announcement of the launch of the podcast. He’s basically an OG from day 1 so a tip of the hat to you sir. For some reason if you don’t follow us on Instagram you are really missing out!
Feats of Endurance Weekly Award
This week’s award was a toss-up between two finalists so we decided to give the “prestigious” award to both of them. First, Courtney and Christian have put in some major miles together this past week. We think that they are a husband and wife mixed team. Second, Clare busted out a 90-mile ride on her trainer over the weekend. Yes, 90 miles…indoors.
Congrats and thanks for being part of our Strava Club community.
This Week in Swimrun
In case you were living under a rock this weekend and/or somehow cut off from WIFI, the Ötillö Sprint Final 15k race went off without a hitch in Utö. This two-day event featured 3 separate waves of 50 athletes each wave to comply with Swedish COVID rules. This weekend also featured some pretty gnarly weather so that must have been fun.
In more of a bummer than news to anyone, the Ötillö World Championship was slated to take place this past weekend and would have been the 15th race of the OG Swimrun. We are all looking forward to celebrating the 15th edition in 2021!
Swimrun Sumin happened in Sumin, Poland on Sunday. Looked like a cool local event and the photos on Instagram were FOMO inducing with the mix of town and trail runs and lake swims. This race had Marathon (42K), Sprint (27.7k), and Super Sprint (13.8k) distance options.
The Torekov Swimrun took place in Torekov, Sweden. The field was limited to 150 participants due to Swedish COVID rules but it looked like fun was had by all. The race only had one distance: 23k divided into 18 sections with 4.7k of swimming.
While it wasn’t a race per se, the Kraken Swimrun team of former and current Ötillö World Champs and other stout athletes completed the three-day adventure from Arholma to Landsort that we mentioned in last week’s show. The adventure ended up being a total of 242K’s of swimming and running, or roughly one Ötillö World Championship each day for three days! Check out their Instagram page and prepare to get your mind blown.
We’re pretty sure that we may have missed some events. Send us an email at lowtideboyz@gmail.com and tip us off if there’s are race that you are doing and we’ll do our best to include it.
LTBz Updates
Our latest Gear Talk show with Swimrun Labs is out and it’s all about getting started in Swimrun on a budget. Check it out wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Keep sending in your submissions for our “International Swimrun Adventure Guide.” We got a bunch of entries and we’re almost ready to start putting something up on our site. As a reminder, If you have a great training route that you don’t want to keep secret you can head over to our website and fill out the form on our website homepage.
Interview
As mentioned above, this week we go to Portugal to get the story about how the Swimrun scene developed in that Country from Bruno Safara. A badass athlete in his own right, Bruno discovered Swimrun and never looked back. He organized one of the first races in Portugal in 2017 and now runs Swimrun Portugal that puts on six races in some of the coolest destinations in the country. In this interview we chatted about his background, how he decided to go all-in on Swimrun, Loch Ness, and “Nessie,” how he chooses venues and designs his racecourses, and what the future holds for events in Portugal.
Swimrun Portugal’s next race, Zêzere Swimrun, is happening on Sept. 6. We can’t wait to get out to one of Bruno’s races in the future! You can follow Swimrun Portugal on Instagram is you want some FOMO-inducing content in your life.
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.