Susie Moonan of Push On Coaching

Welcome to episode fifty-four of the Low Tide Boyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

We have a great show for you this week that seems really timely given everything that’s been going on in the world lately. We have Sociologist, Sports Psychologist, and elite Swimrunner Susie Moonan of Push On Coaching. This interview is all about the mental side of training and racing and worth every second.

More on this important conversation later in the show.

Shoutouts

This week we’re shouting out our friend Sarah for finishing the TogetheRelay Challenge. What is this thing you might ask? Well, it's a self-guided race around the entire Bay Ridge Trail totalling over 400 miles in 70 segments with a total of 72,000’ of climbing. Chris ran a couple of the segments with Sarah a few weeks ago and has no desire to do the entire challenge by himself like Sarah did. Tip of the hat to you Sarah!

Adventure Time/Training Updates

We went out to Lake Sonoma over the weekend and surveyed a potential Swimrun course that looks like it will be pretty cool. Now that we’ve sighted all the potential swim entrances and exits the next step is to suit up and see what happens. We’ll have more reporting on this soon.

This Week in Swimrun (Powered by Raceid.com)

We are solidly in the Swimrun off-season so no race updates to share.

Ödyssey Swimrun has opened registration for Orcas Island, Casco Bay, and Austin. They also have a new race on the calendar for 2021: Swimrun Ludington in Michigan. There’s a cool hype YouTube video out for that race with a previous guest of the show John Stevens that everyone should check out.

The registration window for the ÖTILLÖ World Championship is closing on January 20th. Go to their press release to get all the details on how to enter. 

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.

This Week’s Interview

As mentioned at the beginning of the show, our conversation with this week’s guest is really timely. Susie Moonan joins us to talk about the mental side of sports and swimrun. We first learned about Susie during the Champions Christmas Challenge Gala where she shared a message to all the participants that immediately got us thinking that we wanted her on the show. She’s an elite Swimrunner, Coach, Sociologist, and Sports Psychologist with her own coaching platform, Push-On Coaching. 

In this interview, we discussed her elite swimming background, her goals of qualifying for the Swedish Olympic team at age 16, and how she wasn’t mentally prepared for the intense pressure of those goals. These experiences set her on the path to study sociology and psychology and ultimately find her passion for helping others mentally prepare for athletic achievement. We also discussed how she found Swimrun and ultimately qualifying for the ÖTILLÖ World Championship in 2018. She finished in 4th place that year and finished 2nd place (Women’s Division with her partner Anna Hellström) in her second World Championship in 2019.

The bulk of the conversation was about being mentally prepared for training and racing. There’s too much knowledge to summarize properly here but learning how an individual identifies and reacts to stress and then learning how to cope with these situations with positive thoughts and mental cues. Susie also mentioned the importance of thinking through potentially stressful situations before a race to have a “crisis plan” to deal with setbacks, should they occur. Visualizing the race in as much detail as possible before the event to help your mind be prepared for what’s to come since the mind can’t tell the difference between what we imagine from what actually happens. (Insert many minds blown emojis here)

Susie Moonan is a coaching treasure and we will be sure to have her on the podcast in the future. You can learn more about Push-On Coaching on her website and follow Push on Coaching 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 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.