Mario Fraioli
Welcome to episode thirty of the Low Tide Boyz, a Swimrun Podcast!
We have the one and only Mario Fraioli on the show this week. He’s an Olympic level running coach, host of the morning shakeout podcast/newsletter, and the last member of the Marin County Holy Coaching Trinity of to be interviewed for the show. (Mike Olzinski and Nate Helming are the other two members of that crew.) More on Mario later in the show.
Ötillö World Championship Update
If you’ve been off the grid or just getting all your Swimrun reporting from us, then you haven’t heard that Ötillö made the tough decision to cancel this year’s World Championship. You can read more about their decision here. You can also read about how the slots are being set for the 2021 race here. This hasn’t been without controversy but there’s no way to please everyone and we are living in unprecedented times.
In other (happier) news, Ötillö Engadin happened last weekend and it looked like it was an epic weekend in Switzerland. If you’re curious as to what the course is like, check out our course preview episode and start planning for 2021!
Training Update
Chipper was on vacation in Lake Tahoe and enjoyed some time away from the show while swimming and running in one of the most beautiful places in California.
Chris and Sandrine teamed up to race the Swimrun Edmonton Virtual Race at Aquatic Park in San Francisco. “Team Untethered” made their debut and apparently won a prize box from the race organizers. True to the LTBz pact, we didn’t use a tether. (This was a good thing since Sandrine is an amazing swimmer and Chris would have been dead weight on that tether.)
Shoutout
This we’re shouting out Patrick from Italy. He’s a triathlete that was looking for something else to do and DIY’d his own pull buoy, got after it, and is now “100% hooked.” Glad we played a small part in his new Swimrun journey. If you have questions about swimrun gear be sure to check out our swimrun gear guide!
Feats of Endurance Weekly Award
We had a lot of feats of endurance this week!
We had a couple of folks in our Strava club that raced Ötillö Engadin over the weekend. Tobias and G Flo raced the World Series race on Sunday and looks like they had the best time in Engadin. You can check out their race report on Spotify here.
We also wanted to give a special shout out to the Swimrun Labs crew doing a 50k distance Swimrun. (They can’t win the Feats of Endurance because we co-host a show with them) Here’s their description of the Swimrun:
“12 runs, 11 swims, 50k total distance, volcano views, bracing ocean swims through kelp forests to secret coves, single track climbs through prehistoric old growth forest, new friends, old friends, mobile roving aid station, PBJs for days, currents from all directions... we’ve often said we could swimrun all day and today we actually got to. We were back, middle, and front of the pack, had highs, lows, swallowed some seawater, and shouted out loud about the magic.”
LTBz Updates
We have a new Patron on Patreon! Thank you Dirk for the support all the way from Germany. We really appreciate the support!
We also want to announce yet another new project, the International Swimrun Adventure Guide! With races being canceled and a lot of people training on their home turfs, we’ve noticed in our Strava club that a lot of teams have their go-to training locations. We thought it would be fun to compile them all in one place so swimrunners can explore new training grounds if they happen to be visiting from out of town/state/country or if they are looking for some variety in their training. We need your help to get this off of the ground. 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 and we’ll start compiling the entries and getting them on the site.
Mario Fraioli Interview
Our guest this week needs no introductions in running circles. Mario Fraioli is an Olympic-level running coach, a journalist, the host of the morning shakeout podcast, the creator of the morning shakeout newsletter and one of the greatest human beings around. We’ve known Mario for years (Full disclosure: Chris’s company helps to produce the morning shakeout podcast and newsletter and manages sponsorship and sales) and frankly, he has no business being on our show, but he’s just that awesome!
In this interview we cover a lot of topics including his coaching background, how the morning shakeout newsletter got started and how that expanded to the super successful podcast, and what he’s up to now.
We spent most of the interview talking about running and how to approach any Swimrun course and reverse engineer the type of build that you would want to have a successful race. According to Mario, every race is about problem-solving and understanding the course. We also talked about the mental game and how to work on “perspective” while training for races and the importance of making sure that every session has a purpose and some type of “quality” to maximize both the training effect but also developing mental toughness.
All in all, there was a lot of knowledge being dropped on this episode. We encourage everyone to sign up for Mario’s newsletter and listen to the podcast. You can also follow Mario on Twitter and 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.