Johan Carlsson
Welcome to episode twenty-nine of the Low Tide Boyz, a Swimrun Podcast!
In honor of Ötillö Engadin happening this week, our guest is Johan Carlsson, a member of last year’s winning Otillo Engadin men’s team (Team Simployer). We chatted about his story, mental toughness and, of course, Swimrun. More on Johan later in the show!
Training Update
Well we did Nicolas Remires’ 3-hour Engadin key swimrun workout that he recommends on our Ötillö Engadin Course Preview episode on Saturday at Aquatic Park in San Francisco. We used Hyde Street (a very steep street famous for the cable cars that go up and down it from Ghirardelli Square) for the “hill.” Needless to say, it lived up to its billing. It was super hard and super fun!
Feats of Endurance Weekly Award
On Saturday, we had Ray and Sandrine (members of our Strava Club) join us for the sufferfest for no other reason than they were easily convinced. For that reason alone they are both winners of this week’s Feats of Endurance award.
LTBz Updates
We only have a couple of updates this week. Make sure to check out our latest column in Triathlete Magazine and hit the like button if you enjoyed it. Also remember to check out our latest special edition episode with the ladies from Swimrun Labs all about Orca Wetsuits.
Johan Carlsson Interview
Johan is a super experienced swimrunner based in Stockholm. We met him earlier this year in Catalina and knew then that we wanted to get him on the show at some point. He came in second in the mixed team division at Otillo Catalina with his girlfriend (and stout swimrunner in her own right) Helena Dalivin. He’s raced pretty much every Ötillö race in the series and won Ötillö Engadin in 2019.
We covered a lot of topics in this conversation. We chatted about Johan’s athletic background, his time in the Navy as an underwater mine-clearing diver (yes, you heard that right), and how he found swimrun thanks to his main partner Joakim Brunzell. Joakim had raced Ötillö in the early days of the championship and convincing Johan to take on the adventure. When they started racing, they were doing it mostly for fun and then at some point they started to train very hard and started seeing great results.
We chatted about his experience racing in Catalina, how he trained for it and where he ranked it in terms of difficulty compared to other Ötillö races (Spoiler alert: They are all tough!). We spent some time talking about swimrun training in general (averaging 20-25 hours a week) and how he sets up his training blocks for the specific features of each course. We also talked about the importance of training the mental game to make sure the mind is ready for the effort required to compete at a high level.
We discussed Ötillö Engadin and how he raced in 2019 to win. He shared some funny race stories with us as well. We talked about training in the age of COVID and how to stay motivated when there aren’t races to train for and keep working on the mental aspect of racing to keep sharp.
You can follow Johan and Team Simployer on 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. 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.