Ötillö Catalina Course Preview 2 & Swimrun Gear w/ Team Baywatch

Welcome to episode six of the Low Tide Boyz, a Swimrun Podcast!

We are releasing another episode this week to give our listeners yet another Ötillö Catalina course preview and some more deep diving into swimrun-specific race gear. On this week’s show we chat with the Huntington Beach-based swimrun team Kawika and Blake, A.K.A. Team Baywatch, to discuss the world series course and all things gear with two veterans of the sport.

Before getting into the interview, we want to give a special shoutout to our first Patron on Patreon, Andy Hewitt of California Swimrun. He’s basically the Godfather of swimrun in the U.S. and it means the world to us to have both his blessing and support for two average dads that are trying to help grow the sport. We look forward to interviewing him soon for the show.

Now right to this week’s special episode! We are stoked to have Team Baywatch on the show this week. Not only are they super experienced and have raced a ton together, they are also total gear heads and share all their wealth of knowledge with our listeners. As if that wasn’t enough, they have been working with Andy Hewitt and the Ötillö folks to test out the Catalina course and have previewed the course several times already and they’ll share there knowledge with us.

Kawika found swimrun in 2016 and was hooked after his first race in San Diego. His first partner at that race was not hooked. Kawika then asked his friend Blake to partner up and the rest was history. Their first race together was the California Swimrun in 2017 and then signed up for Odyssey Swimrun’s Casco Bay long course event the same year. Since then they have competed at a ton of Swimrun races in the States and internationally and raced the Ötillö World Championships in 2019.

They chat about the Ötillö Catalina course on the show and provide a much of gems of wisdom for folks racing the World Series distance. They also chatted a lot about swimrun-specific gear. Everything from what type of swimcap to don to what shoes have worked best for them and everything in between.

Besides dropping serious gear knowledge, Kawika and Blake gave us a series of “pro-tips” that were so good that we needed to list them for everyone:

1. Wear goggles that you can easily grab and clear during the swim while wearing swim paddles.
2. Make sure you test out whatever swimrun wetsuit you plan on racing in to make sure that it doesn’t cause hot spots or chaffing.
3. Use 4 inch wide KT or Rocktape on your neck to help prevent chaffing from the wetsuit.
4. Timing chips can cause some chaffing so wearing tall compression socks can help with that.

We really appreciate Kawika and Blake for sharing their experiences with for our listeners and we look forward to having them back on the show in the future.

That’s it for this week’s show. If you are enjoying the Low Tide Boyz, please be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. We are on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google Podcast. You can also follow along on Instagram and Twitter. You can also support us on Patreon, if you are so inclined. If you want to drop us a line, email us at lowtideboyz@gmail.com.