Daniel Sand, Co-Founder ARK Sports

Welcome to episode fifty-three of the Low Tide Boyz - A Swimrun Podcast!

This is officially year two of the show and we have something really special this week. So special in fact that we’re afraid that we may have set the bar too high for ourselves with this one.

On this show we have Co-founder and chief designer of Ark Sports, Daniel Sand. This is the guy that literally came up with the concept of a Swimrun wetsuit and revolutionized the sport when he was with Head Sports and then took it to the next level when he started Ark Sports and revolutionized the sport again with the introduction of the next generation of Swimrun suits.

More on this cool conversation later in the show.

Shoutouts

This week we are shouting out our wives, Kristen and Susan, for their seemingly limitless (although there is a limit) support of us and our labor of love for the sport of Swimrun. As we embark on the second year of the show, there is literally no way that this show would be possible without them.

Adventure Time/Training Updates

With the holidays past us, we are ready to buckle down and start making some progress on our plans for charting a cool Swimrun course at Lake Sonoma. We have maps, gels, hall passes, and other stuff lined up to make this happen.

We’re also starting to plan a road trip to San Diego in March to spend a weekend training with SoCal crew of Andy, Mel, Kelsie, Sean, Phillip, and the rest. We hope that this will be first of many road trips taking the show (and the training) on the road.

In other news, Chris joined Tower26 and is committed to making more gains in the pool to be able to keep up with Chipper. If you want to know why, check out Episode 32 with Tower26 Founder, Gerry Rodrigues and Episode 42 with Tower26 coaches Megan Melgaard and Jim Lubinsky.

This Week in Swimrun (Powered by Raceid.com)

We’ve got some Swimrun-related news to share this week.

Ödyssey Swimrun has opened registration for Orcas Island, Casco Bay, and Austin. Register by January 14 to sign up at the lowest prices of the year. They also have a new race on the calendar for 2021: Swimrun Ludington in Michigan. Registration hasn’t opened for that event yet but we have two words that should inspire you to register when it does...SAND DUNES!

For those of you looking for a truly epic event to race, Rockman Swimrun registration is open on Raceid.com. The race is on August 14th. If you haven’t seen the Youtube videos of this race, make sure that you are sitting down when you do. Check out Episode 26 with Rockman Race Director Thor Hesselberg to get even more stoked to take a trip to Norway in August.

The registration window for the ÖTILLÖ World Championship is open. Go to their press release to get all the details on how to enter. Registration is open until January 20th so make sure that your race results are up to date and best of luck getting a spot on the starting line.

Finally, we wanted to let everyone know that Swimrun NC had to move the date of their 2021 event from October 24th to November 7th due to park permit issues.

That’s it for this week. Feel free to email us to tip us off to any events or Swimrun news that you’d like for us to share on the show.

Updates

We’ve got some fun things in the works for 2021 including focusing on Swimrun teams in February, helping to promote the “All The Way: The Making of Swimrun Champions” movie in March, and hosting some live podcasting while on the road at events (COVID permitting.)

We’ve added some new content to our website that folks should check out. Under our resources tab, you can now find a 2021 US Swimrun Race Calendar for all the races that we could find. (If we’re missing one, please let us know!)

This Week’s Interview

As we mentioned at the start of the show, this week’s interview is so good! Daniel Sand is a Co-Founder and Chief Designer at Ark Sports and is singularly responsible for the Swimrun wetsuit that we all take for granted.

Daniel’s journey to revolutionize Swimrun started in 2014 when he started to design the first Swimrun-specific wetsuit for HEAD. In 2017, he revolutionized the Swimrun wetsuit again when he co-founded Ark Sports and created the Swimrun wetsuit design that is commonplace today.

In this interview, we cover the history of the Swimrun-specific wetsuit, its innovation over the years, and Daniel’s role at the center of that. We talked about his rationale for leaving HEAD to start Ark Sports. We also broke down the design process behind some of the key Ark Sports wetsuits like the VIGG, ORNÖ, and UTÖ and, of course, the Keel pull buoy. We asked the tough questions about product durability and learned how Ark Sports is working on that. Finally, we talked about what the future holds for Swimrun equipment and Ark Sports.

If we sound like Ark Sports fanboys during this interview it’s because we are. It's hard not to root for them. You can learn more about Ark Sports here.

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 and leave us a five-star review. You can find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast. You can also follow our meme page on Instagram. Email us at lowtideboyz@gmail.com with any feedback and/or suggestions. Finally, you can support us on Patreon…if you feel so inclined.