David Ritsema has permission to swim at Seeley Lake, a private body of water open to a gated community north of Greeley. But he still tries to get his workouts in before most of the neighbors are awake. He doesn’t want them to stare.
Ritsema, 45, trains for an event called Swimrun by, appropriately, swimming a lap in the lake, then running around the neighborhood in his wetsuit, then jumping back in and repeating the cycle.
“I’ve got my swim cap on, goggles, all of it,” said Ritsema, who works as a urologist and lives in Greeley. “I’m sure I look like a doofus.”
Maybe so, but it’s the only way to train for the event. Competitors generally refer to Swimrun as a triathlon without the bike, but it’s more than that, as they run first, then swim, then alternate between the two until the finish. Colorado’s first event, put on by the Swedish group Ötillö, offers three distances and takes place Sunday at Horsetooth Reservoir and Lory State Park in Fort Collins.
The race originated overseas and most events take place there, in countries including France, Germany and Sweden, the birthplace of Swimrun. There are still only six in the U.S., although Ötillö hopes to change that. USA Triathlon runs a similar event involving running and swimming, called aquathlon, though the format is different.
The Ötillö race is perfect for Ritsema because he enjoys triathlons but doesn’t like biking. But he’s also attracted to the race because it feels much more like an adventure than the road races he occasionally runs.
“Every course is different, and it’s trails instead of pavement,” Ritsema said, “and I love that you go back and forth between swimming and running.”
Ritsema is a fast runner — he typically wins his age group in smaller 5Ks and is competitive in the larger races. He says his kind is rarer in a Swimrun race: Many of them are swimmers who gut through the running. He loves the running but is not such a good swimmer.
“I pass people on the run,” Ritsema said, “and get passed on the swim. But swimming is so peaceful on the lake. I don’t feel like running is peaceful. It’s a lot of work.”
Ritsema said there isn’t a magic bullet to doing well, other than finding a comfortable wetsuit he could run in and shoes that drain well. There are no transition zones and no drop bags, so many will swim with paddles and a pull buoy to offset the increased drag caused by swimming in shoes. He also had to learn how to eat during the run, as many triathletes load up on calories during the bike.
The biggest advantage he’ll have, he said, is being able to race without flying to Washington, where he’s raced in the past.
“It’s super exciting to have one here in Colorado,” he said.
A 26-hour bet
Ötillö, the race company putting on 15 Swimrun races a year, including the world championship and the Colorado event, means “island to island” in Swedish. It’s a reflection of the core of the sport, as most of them revolve around competitors swimming from one place to another and running trails in between.
The sport began in 2002 with a bet (don’t they all?) According to Ötillö, a group of four Swedish men agreed that the last team of two to reach Sandhamn would pay for the hotel, dinner and drinks. The two teams had to pass three different restaurants on the islands and had to drink and pay for whatever the team ahead of them had ordered. The race took 26 hours, and the four men, Anders Malm, Janne Lindberg and the Andersson brothers Jesper and Mats, are now known as the Original 4.
Ötillö put on the first official race in Sweden in 2006. CNN ranked the world championship, which competitors qualify for by earning points in other Swimrun events, as one of the toughest races in the world. Indeed, that race is 70 kilometers, including nearly 6 miles of swimming, or more than twice of what’s required at an Ironman, and a 61K trail race, aka an ultramarathon (covering nearly 38 miles).
What’s even harder, said Justin Daerr, 44, of Boulder, is that a good portion of the race doesn’t have much of a trail.
“It’s burly,” Daerr said of the World Championship. “Probably of the 60K of running, 30K is runnable. 10Ks of it you’re trotting through the forest and jumping over logs and rocks.”
The Colorado Experience, the shortest of the three distances offered Sunday in Fort Collins, has a total run of less than 5 miles. The swim is 1.5 miles, still pretty far for dog-paddlers.
The fact that the swims are in open water and at challenging distances makes the Ötillö an event for skilled swimmers, although some of that can be alleviated through the team format: A team of two is tethered, so between that and the buoyant wetsuit and equipment, it would be difficult, if not nearly impossible, to drown.
“You can literally roll over and be on your back while your teammate pulls you,” said Lars Finanger, the race director in charge of the half-dozen U.S. events. “That’s not advised, but I’ve cramped up before and deployed that tactic myself.”
Most competitors, Finanger said, are much like Ritsema who enjoy triathlons and want to try something else. One aspect veteran triathletes especially enjoy is the opportunity to run part of the race before diving into the water. Triathlons usually feature cold starts, even in the summer, as competitors swim first, in the early morning hours before the sun gets going, and wait in the water before the gun goes off. Running first gives them a chance to warm up.
Even so, those doing the Fort Collins race shouldn’t expect toasty conditions, as it can get cold in Colorado by race day in October. Finanger admits he’s a little nervous about it, even though he said most competitors love cold weather given that they’re running in a wetsuit, which tends to trap heat. In fact, racers fear a clear, warm sunny day much more than cold, cloudy or stormy conditions.
“The water is typically in the low 50s, and they tend not to blink an eye at that,” Finanger said. “What would be on our radar is air temperature and water.”
Swimrun competitors tend to be uncomfortable the whole race, and they want it that way, Daerr said. If you’re not hot during the run, for instance, you’re probably going to be too cold while swimming. “I tend to balance being kind of cold in the swimming and then not being too warm during the run.”
If it is an unusually cold day, Finanger may start the race later in the day, take out some of the swimming or even eliminate it, though it would have to be pretty cold for that to happen.
Finanger is familiar with Colorado’s climate: He lived in Boulder for 10 years and brought the race to Fort Collins because he has a brother who lives there. He checked out Horsetooth during a visit and thought it would be a great venue. He may change the Colorado date next year if this year’s race is problematic.
“We want to put them in challenging situations,” Finanger said. “Not dangerous ones.”
Out for fun
Swimruns resemble ultramarathons in more than just the adventure: Most of the competitors are there just to finish, said Gordon Byrn.
“You’ll usually get about 5% who are out to win it,” said Byrn, who lives in Boulder. “It’s really just an adventurous, fun day for most. Everyone is doing something slightly crazy out there. That’s the vibe.”
Byrn’s actually done both. He won the 2010 World Championship team title with Jonas Colting, a multisport legend, and Byrn writes about fitness at Substack’s “Feel the Byrn.” He’s enjoyed competing with his son, Axel, 14, for the past couple of years.
“A neat aspect is you can race with people of different abilities because of the tether,” Byrn said. “There aren’t many events you can do with someone who is less experienced and stay the same speed. This is a great thing we can do as father and son.”
The tethered-team is a unique aspect of Swimrun: Triathlons have teams but they’re relays where a competitor does one or two legs of the event. There are solo spots, but the teams are a treasured part of Swimrun given its roots, and Ötillö offers a pressure-free place on its website where racers looking for a teammate can find one.
“The opportunity to race with a partner is the best part of it,” Daerr said. “Not just one of the best, but the best part. I love tris, but it’s different when you’re racing for yourself. I think people would be surprised as to how much they would enjoy it.”
Ötillö hopes to grow but not as fast as, say, the Ironman group, which offers dozens of events a year and owns stakes in others. Ötillö’s goal is to offer 10 races in Europe, 10 in North America and 10 others worldwide, Finanger said. The first U.S. race was in 2016, and growth has been bumpy: The pandemic halted it for a while, and not just because it was hard to put on an event with hundreds of people, even one with organic social distancing.
“There was a lot of excitement, and then the sport stalled out during COVID-19,” Finanger said. “I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I think people became a lot more adventurous on their own during that time. They wanted to do their own thing that didn’t require crowds. The last couple of years, we’ve been clawing our momentum back to where it was the first couple of years.”
As of Sept. 1, a month before the race, around 150 people had signed up for the Fort Collins race, a number that Finanger calls small but not disappointing.
“If we could get to 200, we’d be really happy,” Finanger said. “There would be some really promising signs with that.”
Daerr believes the event could catch on in Colorado once people learn about it.
“I’ve rarely seen someone do this who wasn’t psyched about it afterward,” Daerr said.
Byrn said he and Axel will do the sprint distance together in Fort Collins, which should take them a couple hours.
“He keeps asking me when we will do a longer one of four or five hours,” Byrn said and laughed. “Not for a few years yet.”