About Us

 So Us:

At Mackinac 2022

Pat and I met years ago when his older brothers were teammates of mine at Michigan State and he was about 15-16. I went on to coach him in water polo at Grand Valley State for 3 years before I moved away for 6 years. When I got back, we played master's water polo together for years and our journeys really came together. The best part about Pat is that every time I suggest something stupid, he pauses, has a pondering look and then says, Yeah, I'm in, I just have to clear it with Katelyn. Never once is he like, that sounds stupid, lets not do that. Just a couple of idiots who like to do new things and find out the hard way that there is a better way. My favorite quote from Pat about why he likes being my teammate, "I just enjoy watching Skav suffer." That's friendship. Now it wasn't always that way. 

    Back in 2009 Pat and I were both weighing in at over 300 lbs! We were playing master's water polo and having a good time, but neither of us felt good about it. When my wife and I decided to have a baby in 2010, I knew I had to lose weight if I wanted to be around for the baby's life. Pat and I independently started working on weight loss. He just cut out sugar and used his freakish willpower to reduce his eating and started running. I used Weight Watchers (Carb Conscious is the latest version of it) and also started to run. 

Matt and Pat circa 2009 (We've Lost A LOT of weight)

Team Skavnak

    We both did our first 5K and 10K together. We were just loving it. We did our first ever 6 mile practice run before the 10K and then the next week did our first ever 10 mile run. You can see where this is leading. Injury! We both ran fast 10Ks (for us) but both had knee pain and soreness. We discovered rollers and learned what an IT band was and then picked up triathlon also. I'm not positive we did our first Tri's together also, but I think we did. So it just made sense when we heard of SwimRun that we would do it together. Pat got to Ironman before me at Lake Placid and I got two of them since at Mont Tremblant and Wisconsin. Lots of stupidity from both of us in these! We've done a lot of My  Team Triumph races where we support a differently abled Captain through a race which is the closest thing to SwimRun that I can think of. Just love doing things as a team and I'm hoping that being responsible to a teammate will help me step up my game. 

Team Lowman

Pat is married with 3 beautiful girls and I'm also married with a beautiful daughter. We both are outnumbered by the ladies who keep us toeing the line! We both are swimmers first, eaters 2nd, and runners third. 

Why The Water Buffaloes?

We competed in our first race as Team PAT (Passive Aggressive Teamwork) and while it was the best I could come up with quickly, its pretty stupid. Pat and I are usually not all that nice to each other and when it came to water polo ridiculed each others play pretty bad. We couldn't even practice against each other by the end because it ALWAYS led to a fight. We brainstormed a lot of ideas: Double
Cheeseburgers and Fries was a favorite, but as bigger guys Water Buffalo just fit us. We both are life long swimmers and would tackle and/or foul opponents in SwimRun if it was allowed! Its a funny name that just kind of reflects us. No one in the SwimRun world is going to be afraid of getting beat by a couple guys who call themselves The Water Buffaloes, but they might be stumped if they see us ahead of them after swim sections and wonder how the hell we got there!