Andy Blow, Co-Founder Precision Hydration

Welcome to episode twenty-five of the Low Tide Boyz, a Swimrun Podcast!

On this week’s show, we have Andy Blow, the Co-founder of Precision Hydration. We did a major deep dive into hydration for Swimrun and chat about his quest to solve his own performance issues and how that led him to start PH. More on that later in the show. But we have to tell everyone that Andy was cool enough to set up a discount code for our listeners for 15% off online orders with the code LOWTIDEBOYZ. This code is good through the end of July so place an order and help make us look good while properly hydrating for your training and racing.

We have dual shout outs this week! First, we wanted to give a shout out to Tim Fleming of the Endurance Performance Training Center in Mill Valley. As prep for our interview with Andy for this week’s show, he hooked us up with an appointment to get a legit/advanced sweat test. Tim conducted the test and was incredibly knowledgeable. We learned a ton and could have chatted with him for hours. We really appreciated all the time he gave us and we will definitely have him on the show at some point because he is a wealth of knowledge on all things endurance performance.

Second, we wanted to give a special shout out to an entire country. The country of Japan has started listening to our Swimrun 101 episode this last week at a super high rate. Somehow the word got out and a bunch of swimrunners or soon to be swimrunners are going to be getting after it in Japan. Konnichiwa and Arigato!

We wanted to remind everyone to join our Low Tide Boyz Strava Club. It’s been a fun way to see what everyone is up to training and racing-wise and we make a promise that every person in that group is guaranteed to get kudos from us. So if anyone really wants an extra two kudos for every workout plus the probability of funny comments from us, join up.

Now for some exciting news, our pool has finally opened! (Queue the pearly gates music) We are excited to destroy our shoulders and build back up our swim fitness. We are loosely following a training plan from an article from Triathlete Magazine about returning to swimming after a long layoff.

Speaking of Triathlete Magazine, make sure to check out our monthly column on all things Swimrun! If you have any suggestions for topics or have questions that you want to be answered, feel free to reach out to us.

Now for this week’s interview! Andy Blow has a few top 10 Ironman and 70.3 finishes and an Xterra World Age Group title to his name. He has a degree in Sport and Exercise Science and was once the Team Sports Scientist for Benetton and Renault F1 teams. He raced his first Swimrun (the Ötillö World Championship) in 2014.

He founded Precision Hydration in 2011 to help athletes solve their hydration issues. PH became a sponsor and official hydration partner for Ötillö in 2017.

Andy’s draw to Swimrun was the idea of being able to race in pairs. After knee surgery and essentially backing away from triathlon, he asked his training partner Elliot if he wanted to check it out. They then reached out to Mats and Michael at Ötillö to get into the 2014 race. (They finished in the top 10) Part of the attraction to Swimrun for Andy was the wild west/infancy stage and the adventure.

We chatted about how he started PH by basically trying to diagnose and solve his own fueling problems in races. The idea for the company took shape after helping a bunch of athletes with a lot of success. We also chatted about the misconceptions about hydration and how a lot of symptoms that athletes experience during and after events can be solved by taking proper amounts of sodium.

We did a deep dive into how to calculate sweat rate and properly hydrate and how to unlock better race performances. We broke down the different theories around hydration and why hydration now can be much more individualized and effective. Andy explained to us why they designed their products to have three levels of sodium formulas—1500, 1000, 500—and how to determine which to use and when.

Finally, we talked about how to properly hydrate endurance events generally (they have a great blog post on their website about this) and specifically for Swimrun. Since teams are limited in what they can carry onboard, properly using aid stations to make sure that sodium levels are kept at optimal levels. We closed out the conversation talking about how to properly recover sodium levels after workouts.

Andy and the Low Tide Boyz encourage everyone to take a free sweat test on the PH website and reach out to them with questions at hello@precisionhydration.com. PH also provides free consultations to help individuals get their hydration strategy dialed in which is super cool! Don’t forget to use the discount code LOWTIDEBOYZ that’s good for 15% off through the end of July!

That’s it for this week’s show. If you are enjoying the Löw Tide Böyz, please be sure to subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast player. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify and Google Podcast. You can also follow our meme page on Instagram and on Twitter. Email us at lowtideboyz@gmail.com with any feedback, suggestions and/or meme suggestions. Finally, you can also support us on Patreon…if you feel so inclined.