Swimrun Mackinac Island 2021 race report

(If you prefer to absorb race reports through your ear-holes instead of your eye-holes, we had a post-race chat with The Low Tide Boyz, which you can listen to here, or wherever you prefer to ingest your podcasts from. But then come back and at least scroll through the pictures and videos here, and make sure you get through to the finish line video. No spoilers.)



This was the inaugural year for Odyssey Swimrun Mackinac Island. When it was announced, it looked so amazing and beautiful, plus the island was part of Matt's Michigan childhood, and we were disappointed that we wouldn't be able to participate in its first year. Because it was just after Rockman.


But then Rockman wasn't. Again.


It's the promposal that keeps on giving.
Hopefully 2022 will be our year!


And so to soften the blow of having our giant, scary A race pushed back another year by covid, we decided to sign up for Mack. To give us something to look forward to.


We ran a lot of hills and swam a LOT of yards to prepare for Rockman, and Orcas on the other side of it, and so I felt relatively ready, training-wise, as we headed to Michigan.


As a logistical note, we had several choices of places to fly into to get to the island. Some were pretty close, but didn't have many flight options from Austin and/or Georgia, our relative places of origin. Some were expensive. Some had 2 layovers. Ultimately we decided to both fly into Detroit, which was the furthest-away option. It was also the cheapest by a large margin, had the most options available for both of us, which meant we could arrive at roughly the same time, and had direct flights for both of us. It did mean a 4 hour drive north once we landed, but we had a lot of hours of catching up to do, so it worked out perfectly (for the flight there).


Mid-Michigan snack stop!


We landed in Detroit Friday afternoon and got to Mackinac City fairly late Friday night, after a drive with snack and dinner stops. We knew that late arrival was a potential, so we had decided to base our weekend out of a hotel on the mainland, rather than try to make it in time to catch a ferry to the island. Plus the mainland, while expensive, was a LOT cheaper than the limited and very expensive real estate on the island. If we decide to make a real Vacation out of this race in the future, it might be fun to stay on the island itself, but I think we made the right decision with the constraints we were working under.


Walked out of our hotel into Lake Huron for our shakeout run and swim.


Because we decided to travel on Friday, we had all Saturday to sleep in a little bit, do our shakeout run and swim, and then head over to the island to scope it out! We decided to rent bikes and go over to Arch Rock, and when Trista learned that renting a tandem bike was an option, she decided that was all she wanted in life, despite it clearly being a VERY bad idea.


We made SURE to bring our No Bikes shirts for our bike ride.


Somehow we lived, and we got to check out some of the many stairs on the course, as well as a few of the swim entrances and exits. And we bought a LOT of fudge, as one is legally required to do when one visits Mackinac Island.




Then packet pickup, dinner, gathering all our stuff together, various shenanigans, and bedtime.



Shenanigans!


And then bedtime was briefly canceled by the VERY LOUD AND EXTENDED fireworks show that evidently happens every weekend. Which was lovely, but when you just want to go (back to) sleep, and the show just keeps having amazing fireworks finales (I swear it had at least 3 things that HAD to have been the finale).. it gets a little old.


But sleep was had, and we woke up to the soothing sounds of rain. Which turned out to be Trista's white noise generator. But when we turned THAT off, it turned out there really was rain, and lightning, outside. Crap.


Nothing to be done but soldier on and hope it cleared out by race time, so we suited up and headed out to the ferry at 6am to be shuttled over to the island for the 6:45am race start. As fun as it would be to stay on the island the night before the race, getting to ride the ferry over with all the other nervous and excited athletes is something special, and we chatted and took photos and tried not to think about the impending race, to keep the nerves in check.


Fellow stripey sock enthusiasts! (Remember these guys for later..)


The ferry dumped us out on the Shepler dock on Mackinac Island, which also just happened to be exactly where the race started! So convenient. We dropped our drop bags, milled about, took more photos, and then waded back to the back of the pack where we always start.


Odyssey VIPs Lars Finanger and John Stevens! 


The lightning had passed, the sun was starting to rise, and we were off to spend a few hours running and swimming around a beautiful island!


Okay, as we head out, a few notes about the race course and about our race plan! (As much as we ever have a "plan".)


The long course menu for the day.


The runs in swimrun Mack were a mixture of road, singletrack, jeep trail, and gravel. More road than most swimruns, but each swimrun has to work with the terrain it's given. The swims were very similar to the swims at Swimrun Austin, in that there was no island-to-island (ö till ö!) swimming, it was all around the perimeter of the island. You get in the water, hook a left, swim along the shoreline until you see the exit cone to get out. (In addition to fudge and bikes, Mackinac has a ton of horses, since there are no motorized vehicles allowed. Big visible flappy colorful flags have high potential to spook horses, so Odyssey had to innovate a bit to keep us on course while also obeying the Horse Rules. They did a great job.)


As far our "plan", we were trying out something new! Low Tide Boyz (best swimrun podcast in the world) had a recent episode where they had great things to say about staying tethered the entire race. We typically only tether during the swims, and then stow the tether during the runs. But they tried out staying tethered at Casco with great success, and it clearly works for some super strong, top-of-the-podium teams like the Boston Wetsox, so we figured we'd give it an honest try at this race.




And so, tethered from the start, Team Adorkable headed out to conquer Mackinac Island!


The first run was all road, and pretty immediately goes straight uphill. That was a conscious decision by one A. Palaian, who took us up and around on those hills then back down to the ring road that goes around the island, instead of just turning us directly onto the ring road with no hills. And whose name we cursed repeatedly as we climbed on cold legs.


Cold because we just started. Not cold from the weather. The temperature at the start was 70 humid degrees, and we were immediately happy with our decision to wear the Ark Vigg wetsuit, the most minimal in Ark's stable of wetsuits. Even still, though, it was a warm 1.6 mile first run.


Favorite part of this first run: as we climbed up that first endless hill, someone behind us said they recognized us because we were famous on social media!  Yessssss. Super niche fame! Slowly getting there! She also said I was taller than she expected, which naturally instantly made her my favorite person, and can only be explained by the fact that she was at that moment behind me, and therefore lower on the hill. That was our first encounter with Team Ben and Anna (not their actual team name, but that was all we knew about them at the time), but not the last!


Otherwise a relatively uneventful first run. Since it was all road, we never had the stop-and-go traffic jams you get in a single track trail run starting out. Everyone had plenty of room to spread out and go their own pace.


Which makes it a little mystifying that the first swim was SUCH a cluster.


As we approached the water, we got our goggles on, paddles on hands, buoys ready to go, and we waded into the water quickly like professionals, at least until we got past the several photographers filming as people came by, and then I slowed down and said I had to fix the tether. Turns out when you attach the tether to your belt while the buoy is on your back, you forget to make sure the tether is ABOVE the buoy, so you don't shove the tether down under the buoy when you put it in place. That didn't make any sense, but trust me, I'd done it wrong, and it needed to be fixed before we could start swimming. Fortunately it was an easy fix, and one that only had to be done this once, and THEN we started swimming like professionals!


Except holy crap, it was a roiling sea of humanity out there. I'm not sure whether it was the fact that the first run was only 1.6 miles, so things hadn't broken apart. But we've had shorter first runs that had less congested first swims. Maybe it was because it was a road run, so there was less walking at first, and people stayed more clustered together. Maybe it was because the water was so shallow, everyone was forced to either be together or unnecessarily swim way wide into deeper water that took you further from the swim exit.


Whatever it was, there were a lot of people and they were all swimming on top of each other. Trista did a great job of navigating us through the (literal, sorta) sea of humanity, but there's only so much you can do when other people are angling right for you going the wrong way. It was the first time that we had someone cut directly between us as we went by, and try to swim on top of our tether. I yelled, "Hey. HEY. HEEEYY!!!" until he looked up and noticed he was about to get tangled up with us, and corrected course. And it's not like it was because we had a lot of space between us. I was RIGHT ON Trista's feet, clinging for dear life.


Anyway, that went on for a while and was stressful and frustrating, and really drove home how much that usually DOESN'T happen in swimrun. Eventually it thinned out a bit, mostly because Trista's a faster swimmer than most and pulled us through quickly.


And THEN we were able to really appreciate how beautiful the crystal clear blue water was with the sun coming up over the horizon. Then we extra appreciated it, because suddenly Trista stopped and stood up and started filming with her GoPro. Did I mention the water was REALLY shallow? You could stand practically anywhere that you might have been swimming during the race, and often it was only knee- to waist-high. Even on ME. That made for quite a few experiences where you'd go to see where you were, and look up to find like 10 swimrunners just standing or walking through the water, nowhere near a swim exit. Surreal.





First swim done, and we were officially swimrunning! All nerves from the startline gone, just having the time of our lives, as we always do in swimrun.


Fairly sure this wasn't actually the first swim exit, but gotta spread the pictures out.


The second run was 3 miles, mostly road, and we went back up up up again the way we'd come in, then past a cemetery, a fort, neat town stuff, and then up to the Arch Rock overlook! Then we had to get down to the water again for swim 2, which meant dooooown the stairs. We'd demystified the stairs on our recon hike the day before, but now they were wet from rain and muddy from a lot of wet, dirty shoes. Which means they were SLIPPERY. Slippery enough that I wanted one hand on each rail if I was going to try to go quickly, but then that left no hands to keep the tether from being a complete trip hazard between us as I followed Trista down. It was a little harrowing, but also fun, and super unique. Funny how "unique" in races is often a euphemism for "difficult".


But we made it down, and across the rocks into swim 2! The were basically two sorts of swim entrances/exits. The first swim entrance had been a pebbly beach entrance that you could just run straight in. This second swim had the other kind, which was a sea wall sort of affair with big blocky rocks that you had to scramble and scoot over. Again, challenging with the tether and each person trying to do what they needed to do to get over safely, but very doable.


Second swim! Purported to be the same distance as the first swim, ~675 meters. The first swim had taken us ~14 minutes (with photoshoot). Which made it really confusing when, after 4 minutes, we were climbing out of the water, done with swim 2. Evidently there had been some confusion over where the entrances and exits should be, and swim 1 was long, swim 2 short. Nice surprise!


Each swim exit had an aid station, and those were the only aid stations on the course. It made it really easy to figure out where water would be, very predictable, and we stopped at every one but the first one (which I didn't even SEE, and had forgotten about until we were already off and running on run 2). 


Fishing snacks out of our Ark Kangaroo tops! I love being swimrun marsupials.


I think it was this aid station where we came across Team Ben and Anna again, and Anna, making sure she had firmly cemented her spot as Our Favorite Person, said something like, "Why do you swim so fast?" (The answer clearly, is Trista. Which is interesting, because all day Trista kept saying she felt like she was swimming so slow, despite no less than 3 people randomly and coincidentally mentioning out of the blue how fast we were swimming. Perception is weird.)


I was going to just put this here whether or not it was the right place, but I think that IS Ben coming out of the water down there!


Back on the road for run 3, but only back to the stairs up to Arch Rock again. They felt less treacherous to climb up, less chance to slip, but it reminded Trista that she's not a fan of Stairs. Good thing we're not signed up for a race with 4,444 stairs (if we ever get to actually do said race). 


Preview of me pulling Trista up 4,444 stairs at Rockman.


At the top of THOSE stairs, we got to go up MORE new stairs, but THEN.. the best part of the course! 


Tranquil Bluff Trail ran parallel to the ring road, but way up above it, with amazing overlooks, amazing trail, and many opportunities to fall to our death. It was a dark, rooty, loamy, sun-dappled journey up to the northeast side of the island, and we loved it completely. We decided it looked like what we hoped the trails at Swimrun Orcas Island would look like, and were a little afraid in making that comparison that we were going to be disappointed in Orcas if it WASN'T the same. (We'll be fine. But hopefully it'll be just as magical.)




Evidently originally the course was supposed to take the ring road instead of the bluff trail, and kudos to Aaron for moving it up to the trail, so we could all experience that part of the island. Make sure you check it out if you ever go to Mackinac Island and want something less touristy.


But all good trails must come to an end, and eventually we headed back down to the ring road and back up the way we'd come a bit, for swim 3. The required athlete guide video said that swim 3 had a high potential for being rough, because it was a little longer and more exposed. It was the longest swim, listed as 1365 meters.


We have no memory of which entrance this was, or what Trista was chatting with this person about!


And.. it was fine. Beautiful. Not choppy. Tranquil. Still shallow as hell. Just pleasant.


Oh, haven't mentioned the water temp. It was probably mid to high 60s. Very manageable. Perfect for me and Trista. Perfect for the Vigg. Perfect to cool off after running around in the sun in a wetsuit. We just cruised through this swim smooth and steady. Other than that one time I hit Trista's shoe with my paddle to get her attention, and when she stopped to see if I was having an emergency or needed help, I said, "TRISTA. I saw a fish." She was like, "... aaaaaand?" Evidently she'd seen lots of fish. Evidently she was scaring all the fish OFF before I got to them. Whatever. I saw one fish. One tiny, minnow-sized fish. I'm happy.


As we turned toward the swim exit, there was a photographer in the water. Trista turned toward the photographer and swam straight toward her, and seeing what she was doing, I tried to keep my unnecessary sighting (I have control problems, I'm trying to sight less, but I still do it a lot) to a minimum, because I knew Trista was hoping to get some awesome pictures of us looking like badass swimmers, which wouldn't be aided by me coming up and gasping dramatically behind her. I think I was successful. After we'd passed the photographer, Trista got to her feet, and as we headed into shore, she asked the photographer if she was with the race, since we'd seen her several times on the course so far. Turns out she was not, she was just the amazing photographer wife of someone racing, and then we found out that someone was Anna of Team Ben and Anna!  She brought her own professional photographer with her, which is just a clever move.


Coincidentally, as we were eating a gel and drinking some water at the aid station on the water's edge, Ben and Anna were about to start their run! Kimberly (said photographer) was snapping pictures, and so we were like "Ben! Anna! Group photo!" and made them turn around and run back to us to get a picture. They joked that we better not have cost them a podium spot by making them turn around. They SAY they were joking about that, but, spoiler alert, they got a podium spot! So we didn't have to live with THAT guilt, AND we got an adorable photo of all of us! Win-win-win.


Team Ben and Anna! (fine, fine, actually Team Kalamanders)


Next up was a 2.5 mile run starting out on the ring road again, then up onto some more beautiful trails. Full disclosure: I remember very little of this run in particular. That's good news for the already ridiculous length of this race report!


The trail took us over to the west side of the island for the first time, and British Landing, where we got back in the water for a short little 400 meter refreshing swim.


I probably wouldn't have included this anecdote in the race report, but since there's a picture, I feel obligated, because it is my favorite photo from the race. Team Ben and Anna had headed out ahead of us on the previous run, because they are much stronger runners than us, but we had passed them back right at the end of the swim. Anna clambered up on the rocks with no problem, but Ben slid backward as he tried to climb out, his feet came up from under him, and he very slowly toppled over onto his back in the shallowest of waters. And just lay there, looking as if he was taking a purposeful break to enjoy the lake. And as we were laughing and bemoaning the lack of video, a race photographer stepped up and snapped this great shot to commemorate the event. 


And THEN, after we were done laughing, we thought to ask and make sure Ben was okay and uninjured. (He was uninjured, fortunately.)


Ben, havin' a mid-race lay-down. Enviable.


 Back onto the trails again for a 2.3 mile run. This run took us back to the middle of the island again, and by the airport! Turns out there's an airport in the middle of the island. We ran along a fence line and got to see the planes, but none were taking off or landing as we ran by, which was a little disappointing. We would like the race to coordinate with scheduled flights next time, so we can enjoy a plane. Uh, and since everyone was going by at different times, we might need lots of planes. Complicated.


I can't remember which trails were which, but the last run and this one had some grassy areas to run in. Some dense overgrown weedy bits where it was hard to see the trail. Some "horse jumps". And lots of mud. The rain had made the middle of a lot of trails a bit of a bog. A bog of unknown depth, so you didn't want to run through it. Which meant you ran the edges, which was super peanut-buttery mud. The kind where you put your foot down, and then your foot slides sideways and you pray to your deity(ies) of choice that you stay upright and your hamstrings remain the same length they currently are.


From the airport, we went back west to the shore again, and into the water for our next-to-last swim, which was the second longest swim at 1275 meters. I imagine some people who don't love to swim like we do might have bemoaned such a long swim so late in the race, but we were looking forward to it. And actually that's one interesting thing about this race. There was never a Dread part for us. The run legs in this race were all roughly 2-3 miles. Usually there's some 5-7 mile run in most races that we dread, because it's such a long run leg. But the runs were just so even, we had no dread. It was delightful.


Swim 5 was relatively uneventful. The water was starting to get choppier as the day went on, and so we were getting tossed around a little more, which was exciting. This was also the swim with the most Standing Around. At one point we had to swim around a kayak with several racers standing around it, and honestly we have no idea if someone was injured, sick, or if they were just doing photo-ops. I guess in some cases people were just tired of swimming so long a swim so late in a long race, and they just wanted a break, and why not stand up for a break when the water is so shallow?


I'm not sure if this is when Kimberly snapped this shot, but let's just say it was.


With this long swim done, we were getting near the end of our race! Which was sad, because we were having such a great time.


Run 6 was just over a mile, and all on the ring road. Which was definitely getting more crowded as the day went on! But never too bad. The road had been PACKED with tourists on Saturday, as we attempted to navigate a tandem bike around, and I was afraid as the day went on on Sunday, it was going to end up like that. But while there definitely were more bikers and hikers out by the end, it was never scary or inconvenient or anything but exciting. Especially when they cheered for us, which many of them did! I don't think they knew what to make of us, but they were excited to see and cheer for us, in most cases.


Run 6 was also when we noticed that the wind had picked up. As we started to run, we realized we couldn't hear each other at all. We could only hear a whooooooosh as the wind blew by our swimcaps. We had to yell a bit to hear each other.


Also we were cruising pretty well on this run, especially for us, especially this late in a race. Of course, Trista had to ruin it by looking to see HOW much we were cruising. Turns out what felt like a blazing 8:30 pace was more like a 10:30 pace. But hey, 10:30 pace for us that late in a race is pretty solid! (Also garmin says we were mostly faster than that, so I'm proud of us for staying strong.)


Cruisin' by Kimberly on the ring road! Clearly sprinting.


As we cruised up to the last swim entrance, team Tardigrade ran past us. They were our stripey sock friends from the ferry, and we had been leap frogging with them all day. As they ran by us, and they said something about how we were such strong swimmers. I retorted that clearly they were super strong runners, since they kept passing us on the run!


This last swim was only 565 meters, but it was a wild ride. All the chop we were promised in that first long swim that never materialized came and found us on this swim. We were tossed around and pushed into the shallows and forced up onto waves that then came crashing down. In other words, it was SO MUCH FUN. An opinion that evidently wasn't shared by people who are less in love with swimming than we are, but we really enjoyed it. 


We even swam by Kimberly, who was bravely standing in waist-deep choppy water to get shots of Team Ben and Anna, and kindly snapped some of us as we floundered by! I'm glad no expensive cameras ended up in the drink.


We got tossed around so much, I got Trista's shoe right in my lower lip at one point. It wasn't this point, probably, but this picture reminded me that that happened.


Eventually the waves spit us out on shore at the swim exit, and we grabbed one last cup of water before we started our 2.3 mile last run back to the finish line.


As we started to run, I made a proposal. Team Tardigrade was presumably behind us, because we had been swimming faster than they had and we had started the swim at the same time. Team Tardigrade were better runners than we were, and presumably we couldn't hold them off for 2.3 miles given our relative paces. But.. what if we tried? What if we pushed and held them off for as long as we could? It wasn't Trista's FAVORITE idea, but she agreed we could play that game.


And so for the first time in Team Adorkable's rich and storied history.. they were racing.


And let's not let the imagination go wild. We were on trails, the trails were muddy, at one point I finally lost the slidey mud lottery and my foot slid into a muddy rut while my body kept going forward, and I laid out flat in the gross mud, but.. we kept pushing. We walked things that were uphill if we needed, but we walked aggressively, and went back to running when we were able. Trista didn't like me during some portions of that run, but she never cursed my name (out loud) or said mean things to me (that I know of).


I did learn one very important thing about Trista, though. She was willing to push when I put it forth as a plan. There was SOME complaining, but not a lot of complaining. Because evidently she chose to deal with her inner feelings and pain by.. making horse noises. Was it because we were on an island full of horses? Was it because she had embraced her inner horse on the "horse jumps"? Or was it just completely random? I'm not sure, but hey, if making horse noises gets her through tough times, you go on with your horsey self, Trista. It was highly entertaining.


Oh. Uh. Also there were some more stairs. Which we are clearly racing up.


We'd been told that once we got to the cemetery, it was all downhill on the road toward the finish line. That sounded really great, and it was! Except the unspoken addendum was "until the road ends, and then the trail goes off to the right, straight uphill, to the finish line". Of course.


As we got to the trail, we caught up to a male team and a solo male who were running together, and once we looked behind us to make sure that the Tardigrades weren't breathing down our necks, that we'd managed to stay ahead of them!, we let the guys get ahead of us and have their finish line moment. Because we needed our space to realize our terrible, terrible plan.


When you develop a reputation for wacky finish line antics, and someone tosses out the words "wife carrying competition", and you google that and realize.. that needs to happen, it turns into this:



Even with the push at the end, we'd run our whole race with the knowledge that I still needed to have some leg strength at the end to pull that off, and indeed, we pulled it off! Nobody had any idea what to make of the whole thing.


Good news for Trista is it was mostly my side coated in mud from my fall, not my butt.


 Mission accomplished.


😍😍😍


And it turned out that in addition to holding off Team Tardigrade by a couple minutes, we also managed to get 2nd female long course team! When we took off from the start line, it looked like everyone in the world took off ahead of us and we never saw them again. There could have been 20 female long course teams up there, and we had no idea. We just assumed there were. So when we found out we got 2nd, AND that this time 1st place was only 9 minutes ahead of us instead of 2 hours!, we were pretty proud of ourselves. Finish time: 4:47:54. It's always about who shows up that day, but to have "raced" and ended up on the podium was a nice way to cap off a really super fun race and weekend.


Women's long course podium! Team Adorkable (2nd), Mel Beach Buoys (1st), Tardigrades (3rd)
So fun to bookend our race with photos with the Tardigrades!


So many thanks to the Odyssey Swimrun team for a super fun, well-organized, amazing race. We'll definitely be back!


IT HAS A TURTLE.


I just realized I never followed through on The Great Tether Experiment. It was great! We stayed tethered the entire race, swims and runs, and it saved us SO much time and angst during our transitions, and saved Trista so much time and angst having to constantly stow it neatly and then deploy it again. I did have to get used to either having a hand on it during the runs, or being prepared to grab it, so it didn't drag or catch on things, but I immediately got used to this, and it wasn't an issue at all. A+++, will continue to stay tethered the whole race unless it's unsafe, like a cliff jump. Thanks, as always, for your Knowledge Bombs, LTBz!


Post-post-post-post script: I alluded at the beginning to how flying to Detroit worked out really well on the way IN. Trista says I should follow through on that. We ended up at the finish line later than we expected (Tom is FINE now, thank you for asking), and our already-close timeline fell apart completely when we hit massive storms on the way to Detroit, with cars on the interstate crawling along at 20-30mph for many miles, blindly. Trista's flight announced a delay fairly early, but mine was standing firm on its 8:55pm departure time as I madly tried to rush through the thankfully-sparse security line at 8:45pm. (Fudge evidently triggers the scanner and earns you a bag search pretty often: note that for the future, readers.) I then sprinted (sub-8:30s for sure) across the airport to, of course, the FURTHEST terminal possible, only to pull up a sweaty panting mess to have them tell me that my  flight had also been delayed. Then I got a text message saying my flight had been delayed. Massive eyeroll. BUT. That gave me and Trista some bonus time to drink a beer in the airport and chat about how much fun the race and the weekend had been. Lots of bonus time, as the flights just kept getting delayed. Eventually my flight took off just before 1am, and I FINALLY got home for a post-race shower around 4:30am. Fortunately everyone on the plane had to wear a mask, so theoretically they couldn't smell me. Anyway, all that might have happened no matter where we flew into, but obviously the further away the airport, the more potential for things going wrong on a tight timeline. I'd still fly into Detroit again in the same circumstances, but maybe I'd pick the slightly later flight home.


Bonus airport beers.

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