Team Mr. and Mrs. B

Welcome to episode 109 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! 

Welcome to the second annual “Partners Month!” For the entire month of February we will be sharing conversations with Swimrun teams from all over the “world” (Europe and the U.S.) to highlight one of our favorite features of the sport of Swimrun…the partner part. 

Our first conversation this month is with the wife and husband duo, Chrissy and Bill Lankford, a.k.a., Team Mr. and Mrs. B. This happily married couple have raced a ton of Swimruns including what we think is the holy/unholy trinity of super hard events, ÖTILLÖ Engadin, Rockman, and ÖTILLÖ, The Swimrun World Championship. We are super stoked to share our chat with all of you.

But first... 

Training Update

Whelp, we’re still training…but for Swimrun Lake James. Most folks have already heard that ÖTILLÖ Catalina has been postponed (more on this in This Week in Swimrun later in the show.) While it is a bummer for sure we still have potentially six races on the 2022 schedule so the show must go on. We’re not sure how our training will be changing now that we don’t have to optimize for Leg 3 of the Catalina course but hills always pay the bills so we’ll probably keep running those for the foreseeable future.

Shoutouts

This week we’re shouting out @the_radberg. He’s an artist out of North Carolina and drew up a cool Creature of Endurance design in honor of Swimrun that he is going to let us use as our 100k download sticker. (We should be hitting that milestone in a few months.) Super rad of you…Radberg! He’s also signed up for Swimrun Lake James which that too is rad.

Feats of Endurance

This week’s winner is Bay Area local, Clayton Cook. He threw down a spicy 30k trail run in the Marin Headlands over the weekend and we don’t know if it was the beautiful weather or the 3,773ft of climbing that gave us FOMO. At any rate, strong work Clayton!

Sign up for our Strava Club and join Swimrunners from around the world as they train for Swimruns and stuff.

This Week in Swimrun

Welcome back to the LTBz news desk.

We are kicking off this week’s update with a bummer…to get it out of the way. Last Friday, ÖTILLÖ announced that they are postponing their Catalina event citing ongoing concerns related to COVID-19. We know that there were a lot of people that were super stoked to be either racing for the first time…or the second time but we applaud Michael, Mats and the rest of the ÖTILLÖ crew for making the tough decision and prioritizing the health and safety of all the participants, volunteers, and spectators. You can read the press release here.

Today is “Swimrun-mas!” By the time of this podcast’s release, ÖTILLÖ will have announced the results of the 2022 World Championship ranking application. As we record this on a Monday, we still think that we have a decent chance of qualifying but regardless of our fate, congrats to all the teams that qualified! We will be posting memes all day long to both celebrate and commiserate with our fellow teams so make sure to check out our feed.

One final bit of ÖTILLÖ news to report. They have opened registration for most of their 2022 events starting with first event of the year (one final *sad face* for Catalina) ÖTILLÖ Utö taking place on May 21 at the cradle of Swimrun in the Stockholm Archipelago. 

In other news, Swimrun Lake James is super close to selling out with only 6 team entries remaining for the Long Course. The race takes place on Saturday April 23rd and we hope to see you at the startline.

Staying in the U.S.,TBF Racing in California has opened registration for their Folsom Swimrun. As far as we can tell, TBF primarily puts on triathlons and this is their first foray into Swimrun. The event is taking place on July 23rd in Folsom California which basically means that it will be a crazy hot race and they are offering two distance options: a 3.5 mile short course and a 7.8 mile “long” course. Not to sound like Mr. Swimrun or anything, but those courses look very easy and probably a great event for beginners. Experienced teams might want to try to do two loops of the whole course, if allowed.

Finally, while ÖTILLÖ Catalina is postponed, it looks like there will still be a Swimrun extravaganza in Two Harbors at the end of March. Intrepid Swimrunners from Wild Swimrun, Envol Coaching, California Swimrun, and the Löw Tide Böyz are still planning to go out to Catalina and engage in a weekend of Swimrunning. More details are forthcoming so stay tuned for more updates.

That is it for this week. Feel free to reach out and let us know if there’s anything that you’d like for us to mention on the show.

Updates

It’s Chinese New Year! We hope that everyone who celebrates the holiday is getting red envelopes with crispy money and/or shiny coins and munching on moon cakes.

Make sure to check out our LTBz Swag shop to get some headwear, apparel, stickers, or all three to show off your Low Tide pride.

Team Mr. and Mrs. B (Bill and Chrissy Lankford)

This is a conversation that we’ve been wanting to have for a long time! Bill and Chrissy have been huge supporters of ours since we started the show and it was great to finally chat with them about their Swimrun journey and their life and Swimrun partnership. We chatted about all kinds of stuff in this episode and it’s safe to say, if we ever find ourselves at the same race, there will be fights over who will be buying the post-race pints. We loved everything about this conversation and think that you will too. Enjoy!

That’s it for this week’s show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz, 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, Google Podcast, and on YouTube. 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 our efforts on Patreon…if you feel so inclined.

Thanks for listening and see you out there!

-  Chip and Chris