Swimrun

Kalmar hosted a contest called "Swimrun" today. As the name implies it is a contest where you complete a track of 21,5 km consisting of 18 km of running and 3,5 km of swimming using the coastline south and north of Kalmar plus the city centre with its canals and waterways as well. 

They compete in pairs, connected by a five meter string during the whole competition so, it's also about cooperation and encouraging each other. The winning couple completed in a couple of hours, the last couple in almost five hours. The weather was just perfect. Sunny with a bit of clouds, 22 degrees warm and 19 degrees in the water. Hardly no wind at all.

The canoe club was asked to participate as safety and guides along the water parts of the tracks. I was one of them, helping on one of the first tracks consisting of 400 m of swimming. The task was to help them keep a straight course towards a buoy before they swam in to shore for a bit of running to the next swim, and so on. Quite an exciting event to be part of.

I was sitting in my kayak for nearly three hours and was quite tired in my back when I got back to the club to change clothes, have lunch and then go home for a good rest. The swimmers you see was in the lead  when they passed me but that was early on in the competition. I don't know if they did actually win. The extra is a group of swimmers passing the buoy.