How the Heck Do You Swim With Shoes On?

It has to be one of the first questions that goes through people's mind when they try to understand what SwimRun is! It certainly was one of mine. Most people including myself think in terms of triathlons and think you Swim then Run and its over or when they find out you have a partner think one of you Swims and one of you runs. Your brain almost can't handle the information that you are running and swimming together over multiple legs and have to switch between the two!

The Low Tide Boyz podcast does a great job of covering the basics of SwimRun, so if you want more info, follow the link!

Swimming With Shoes On

Once you understand you are doing multiple legs of swimming and running together the next question is: "How do you swim with your shoes on?" Its pretty funny watching people's brains try to figure it out. 

Me, demonstrating how not to wear the pull buoy during the swim!

The answer? The world's greatest swim toy! THE PULL BUOY! As you can see in the picture below of me and Pat we've got the mondo ARK Keel+ pull buoy and the pic captures it in both positions. I've got it on my back in run position and Pat has it down between his legs in swim position. The switching between these and the speed at which you can do it is very important to your overall time.

This image doesn't do the Keel+ Justice! Its the GMC Yukon of pull buoys!

In our first SwimRun we saw everything from the Keel+ to no pull buoy. How those poor suckers completed the swims while trying to kick with shoes is still a mystery to Pat and I. I think we spent more time talking about how AWESOME swimming the Keel+ was and how could anyone not want to use it than anything else. I mean if you aren't a large person there is the slightly smaller ARK Keel or the ARK Keel S for smaller folk. We saw some people just using the started pull buoy we use in the pool as well. Any of them work, but the Keel+ has you practically on top of the water! 

DEATH TO KICKING!

As you can see in the video the Keel+ has our hips in great position, nearly on top of the water even with shoes on! Due to my health, we took the swims pretty easy, but we still made a lot of time up on many teams in the water. Some other teams had the Keel+ as well, but many didn't and you could see the struggle to keep their hips up was real! Those that know our swimming group well will know of our overall distain for kicking and kickboards, so a sport that has swimming and no kicking? That's like our dream come true! So if you like to run, love to swim, and hate to kick, this is the sport for you!

Get that coffee!

Skav