Team Adorkable

As I detail in our 2019 Swimrun NC race report , pictures from this race are what made me realize swimrun was a thing I needed to try. The foliage, the waterfalls, the amazing photography. And the reality completely lived up to the photos, so we immediately signed up for the 2020 race when it opened. Blah blah covid blah blah, we all know how 2020 went, and our registration was deferred to 2021, where the race would take place a couple weekends later in the year than normal. Which was unfortunate, because it ended up being the exact same day as Swimrun Austin ! My hometown race! The race I'd like to do every year, because it's the only one that I can easily get to, being an hour from my house! But we were already committed to NC, and honestly, NC is a much more appealing course to me. I mean, it completely does NOT play to our strengths: it's very run heavy, very swim light, intense uphill, technical downhill. It's a tough, tough course, which is why you have to apply

The first swimrun I really fell in love-at-first-photo with was Swimrun NC . The waterfalls and the Fall colors and the views from the top of Moore's Wall. I knew I had to do that race. And I did , and it was just as amazing as the pictures had promised. I've done a lot of races since then, but the next race I fell completely in love with based purely on photos was Swimrun Orcas . I've not spent much time in the Pacific Northwest, and the photos made it look like my idea of running paradise. Forests of tall trees and green moss and loamy trails and dappled sunlight.  I needed to do this race. Fortunately Trista felt exactly the same way, and after  Rockman was postponed again, it became my main focus for 2021. It played to our strengths in a couple ways: likely to be cold weather, and definitely cold water, and played against our strengths in other ways: Trista hates uphill, I'm not great at fast downhill. And the course goes up and down two mountains. It's also a