Swimrun Casco Bay 2022 race report.

When we signed up for Otillo World Championship, it felt like it was ages away. So many months, so much training, so much summer heat, time moving so slowly. We had some solid training weekends, a race, some really long runs, but the real pre-WC appetizer felt like the Casco Bay swimrun. Only 6 weeks from Casco to WC, and a race that is about as close as you can get to the WC course, here in the US. Islands. Slippery rocks. Long swims. Perfect. Once we hit Casco, we were in the final countdown to Otillo World Championships.

Well, Casco was last weekend, so I guess .. here we go. Yikes.

I'm going to keep this part as brief as possible, because who needs drama? After months of really solid training, my last month has been.. imperfect.

The good: I got in a really solid trail marathon, in full-on terrible Texas heat, and had great company for half of it, when I was anticipating being alone the whole time.

The bad: Shortly after that, I had a trail fall, which resulted in 5 stitches in my right knee. No open water. Once I could get back in the pool, no flip turns. Eased back into running cautiously. Stitches finally out and knee pretty stable just in time for...

The good: An amazing training weekend in North Carolina with the core team. An incredibly technical 9 hours on Grandfather Mountain, just romping and playing and running and hopping. I don't have that kind of technical trail close to home, so this was so nice. And then some swimrun training in the 4th of July weekend crowds at Lake James the next day, re-baptizing my knee in open water. Returned home Monday to..

Amazing video that Marcus put together of our Grandfather Mountain adventure.

The bad: Covid. I'm That Guy still masking at work, at the airport, on planes, so it was pretty frustrating to finally have this hit me, but I'm super glad nobody else from the weekend ended up sick. I became symptomatic 2 weeks before Casco Sunday, and had no idea whether I would be okay to race, whether it was a good idea, whether I'd still be symptomatic or contagious. I spent an entire week basically just laying in bed, which is REALLY SCARY WHEN YOU'RE 7 WEEKS OUT FROM A GIANT INTERNATIONAL RACE. On the Saturday 8 days out from race day, I walked an aggressive 3 miles to see how that felt. It felt fine. Over the next week, I did a couple 30-40 minute runs, and then on Thursday one 2000 yard swim. It all felt fine. No coughing. No lung burning. No fatigue. No brain fog. Tested negative. Shouldn't be contagious anymore. Decided to at least start the race. Partner races make these kinds of decisions extra challenging! I don't want to let Trista down, but obviously she doesn't want to kill me. At least not yet. Save that for the middle of WC.

And so the decision was made: We race. If I'm okay for a 40 minute run, surely I'm okay for ~23 miles of running and swimming, right? Right.

(That was not brief. Sorry. We all knew how that was going to go.)

But let's not dwell on the pre-race stuff! Matt came with. We had a super fun house of folks, per usual. Shake-out felt TERRIBLE and made me question my decision to race, and be super lame as Trista and Marcus were rock-hopping and having fun and I just sat there hoping to survive. (It was warm.) (In the air. It was super cold in the water. Dynamic!)

Shakeout swimrun! We were gonna swim to that rock back there, but it was cold, so we didn't.

Photo by Matt.

And then race morning! SUPER EARLY. We left the house a little late, so we were aggressively speed-walking through the streets of Portland, Maine at 4:20am, basically at our race pace, to catch the ferry which would leave just after 5am to get us to our 6am race start. It wouldn't even be LIGHT in Austin at 6am, much less raceable. Fortunately if there's one thing I do, it's function early in the morning.

I will not dwell on this item, either, but just be it known that (a) 1 bathroom is not sufficient for a house of 5 people (mistakes were made), and (b) I'm a MUCH happier camper if there is a bathroom at the start line of a race. s'fine.

The ferry ride over was super fun with all our friends, new and old, and contained surprisingly few nerves. Just a beautiful sunrise and a lot of laughter.

My peoples. Team uh.. Adorkafika.

And then it was time to race! Much like World Champs in the Swedish Archipelago in Stockholm, the Casco Bay swimrun is a true island to island (ö till ö!) adventure. The last time we did it, we started south and went north. They change the course every year, and this year it would start north, on Chebeague Island, and run south down to end on Peaks Island. This had little impact on me and Trista, given how terrible we are with courses and remembering things, but there were SEVERAL times that we said, "... I think this looks familiar?"

This definitely won't be a full rundown of every swim and run, because, as mentioned, memory problems, but here's some highlights!

The first run was about a mile, and started uphill, which felt exactly like the last time we did Casco, even if it was an entirely different island. I'm a slow starter, and I keep Trista's crazy energy in check, so we quickly fell behind everyone else, and were at the very, very back, not worried about it, and anticipating being there all day.

Our goals for this race: Stay upright. Try not to die, of falling, drowning, sharks, covid, etc. Practice nutrition (one gel every 30 minutes). Have the most damn fun of anyone out there. We can do all of that from the very back of the pack.

I KNOW we were at the very back of the pack, because Brent was running beside us, pulling up all the flags as we ran by them. Ha. Nobody else coming through who's gonna need those!

The first run had some beach running in it, which is always truly terrible, especially since Trista's mortal enemy is sand. But LAST time we did Casco, the terrible sand running was at the very, very end, and as such contained precious little actual running. This time we still had some energy, so we wasted it all trying to run in sand! So "fun".

The first swim was across a cove, and reminded us that the water was both chilly (never got a final reading, but I'm guessing upper 50s to lower 60s, sometimes moving between those two temps in two strokes), and salty. When you're not an ocean swimmer, you can do an entire ocean swimrun and still not remember by the last swim that the water is salty.

And then, as with every swimrun, once we got out of the first swim, we were having a blast, all nerves gone, just settled in for a long day of doing stupid shit with one of my very best friends out in beautiful nature.

We had waffled on whether to write the race distances on our paddles, but ultimately ended up deciding to do it, and I'm glad we did, because I referenced it all the time. Including being reminded that this race we considered be very end-loaded (the last runs and swims are all very long) in fact had a 3 mile run for run 2. 

If we do this for WC, we're gonna need both paddles.

Or should have. When we got to the end of Chebeague Island, it turned out.. we just ran to Little Chebeague Island. Low tide means the water is so low, instead of a swim between islands, we just had a sandbar run. Know what's not fun to run on? Sandbars. But this one was runnable, even if we complained the whole time that we were being robbed of our rightful swim. (Some swimrunners are runners. Some swimrunners are swimmers. We are the latter. This race normally favors the swimmers. Not so much when your swims get turned into runs. Rude.)

So instead of 3 mile run, 600 meter swim, half mile run, we just got a straight 3.6 mile run across both the Chebeagues.

Another shortish swim (none of these swims was truly "short" like in some other swimruns that have 0.05 meter swims, they're all pretty chunky unless they just straight turn into runs), then onto Long Island. (Not that Long Island.)

Across part of Long, with a descent down to the water that was last time a tough ascent. It wasn't any easier climbing down the rocks than it was climbing up, but excellent WC practice. Through some TERRIBLE seaweed that was intensely slippery into the water.

What should have come next was long swim, SUPER short run (81 feet!), shorter-but-still-long swim. So much swimming! Yay!

850 meter swim, out onto a little spit of beach to run 81 feet, over the hill to find.. NOT A SWIM. Low tide. TERRIBLE. (Also super smelly. Low Tide Boyz, I'm glad you smell better than your namesake.)

Instead of a 350 meter swim over to Vail Island (Best Island), we had a "run" over rocks and seaweed.

Let's digress a moment to talk about seaweed. When we did Casco in 2019, we complained about the seaweed. It was thick and at most of the swim entrances and exits, in the water, and you'd get tangled and possibly lose a paddle. But it was all mostly encountered in the water. This year we didn't have many problems IN the water with seaweed, but we were plagued by it at the water's edge, and now on this entire 350 meters of not-swim to get to Vail. It was rocky (what Marcus would term "baby head boulders") and those rocks were covered in seaweed. Seaweed that was basically the texture of green beans. SO slick. I'm sure the front runners ran across that, but every time we took a step, we'd slide forward out of control. So we took it SUPER slow and cautious. We learned to find the tiny little sections of exposed rock under the seaweed and step there, because it was the most tractioned place. Despite all of that, I had my first (and fortunately only) fall here, which was more a slide than a fall. Foot slid forward, and I sat back pretty gently onto the rocks and seaweed, onto a knee and a palm. And the seaweed is pretty soft, so it shouldn't have been so bad! Except the rocks are covered in barnacles, since that's normally underwater, and it turns out barnacles are sharp little assholes.

I popped back up (carefully, because slippery) and said, "I'm fine!" Then I looked at my hand, and it was covered in blood. Dramatically so! Wished I'd had a camera. But I couldn't even identify WHAT was cut, under all the blood, and if I couldn't find the wound, it couldn't be TOO bad. No missing chunks of flesh. Should be fine. So we kept moving. I noticed my knee had been cut up, too, but it didn't hurt. Just lots of blood. Hopefully no nearby sharks. (Spoiler: it's all fine. Just looks like a cat scratched me. Because barnacles are sharp little assholes. Eventually it stopped bleeding, presumably the salt water cauterized it and staved off my impending Barnacle Fever. And the only bad thing was that some of the cuts were DIRECTLY where my paddle sits on the heel of my hand. For the rest of the race.)

Okay! So after a slow, bloody, slippery, terrible slog that robbed us of another rightful swim... we got to Vail Island! (Can you even call it an island when you walked there?)

Best Island.

Vail is the only truly technical part of the Casco course. The entrances and exits have some cliff climbs and slides, but the trails on most islands are usually grass, gravel, or paved. Vail is all rocks, sometimes boulders, sometimes baby head boulders, sometimes multi-foot scrambles up or down, but it's all just fun.

Trista is very good at this kind of terrain, because she has legs. I enjoy it, but am terrrrrible at it, because I am 5' tall and roughly 4.5' of that is torso. My nubby little legs are not super good at ledges and climbs and jumps. But she kindly holds back for me and doesn't often go all UNCONTROLLABLE WHEEEEEE. But she does bound through with a huge grin on her face. She led us around the perimeter of Vail, picking a solid line through the boulders, not dragging us through any of the poison ivy in the middle of the island.

Oh. As an aside that will seem very random at first..

When I was 10, I had a catastrophic eye injury. Tree branch into the eye, emergency surgeries, patch over the eye for 5th grade, no lens, legally blind in one eye. Fun stuff.

Nothing says "super high self confidence" like going into 5th grade like this!

I mention this because as we started climbing on Vail, Trista stopped for a second and was rubbing her eye. I asked her if everything was okay, and she said she needed to stop to clear her eye, because she couldn't see anything out of it, and needed that for this island. 

And I may have sympathetically said, "Boo hoo, motherfucker!"

Which obviously we then repeated to each other about 100 more times during the race, laughing hysterically.

We are serious athletes.

Once we had 3 functional eyes between us, we made our way across Vail, and then had to figure out how to get OFF of Vail. We could see the flag across the 485 meter swim over back on Long, but there was no flag indicating where to START the swim on Vail. And there was really no good place to do it. We could run PAST the flag over to a beachy area that looked fairly kind, but that was adding distance. Or we could set off through another field of terrible, terrible, gross, slippery seaweed to get down into the water. Which is obviously what we chose.

There were at least 2 other teams right behind us that were letting Trista pick the best line, and they just followed. We yelled at them that we had NO IDEA if this was right or smart, so they should pick whichever line THEY thought best, but they followed us right into the beds of seaweed.

As we all trudged and slid our way through the slimy green beans, the girl behind us said, "This race is not for people who don't like gross things." Amen, sister. I think that's probably true of swimrun in general, and I recommend Odyssey start using that as their tagline for this race.

Vail Island: Best Island AND Most Quotable Island.

Back into the water finally for the longest swim of the day (~1260 meters) over to Cow Island. I'm terrible at swim distances. Both on the map and standing on the shore, every swim looks roughly 600 meters to me, whether it's 300 meters or 1200 meters. Good thing Trista is in charge of the swims. Especially with her (usually) two good eyes.

Cow Island is adorable, short, and almost entirely unpopulated by anyone but swimrunners compared to the other islands.

Then a short swim over to Great Diamond Island, which maybe had the dock jump? Honestly, people, the whole race blurs together in my mind, but especially the end. By the time we got to the dock jump, we were tired, nobody else was around (especially photographers), and the water looked really low, making the dock jump look even higher. We've jumped from things. We like jumping from things. But we're significantly less likely to yard sale all over the ocean if we just run down the ramp and do a cute little simultaneous jump into the water. Perfect. No regrets.

This picture is from packet pickup, but I couldn't find a better place to put it.

Over to Little Diamond Island, which I think is the island I nominated for Most Friendly Island. Not that there was any sort of contest, or that I told anyone other than Trista, who probably didn't care at all. But what else are you gonna talk about after hours of being together? Anyway, the people on Little Diamond were extra out on their porches banging pots and pans for us, cheering on the side of the road, encouraging us as we ran by looking ridiculous, smoking their pipes and saying casually, "So.. why are you tied together?" Solid island. Good job, LD. Sorry I have no actual award to give you.

And then begins the back-loaded, everything's-just-sorta-long-for-the-rest-of-the-race portion. Which seems EXTRA long at the end of a multi-hour race when you are trying to balance "just want to be done" with "sad that we're approaching the last few islands".

We swam over to Peaks Island, which is exciting, because that's our finish island! But not yet. First a 3 mile run around the east side. Peaks is the most touristy island we were on, and reminded us a lot of Mackinac Island, with bikes and hikers and tourists galore. We got a lot of weird looks but also a lot of cheers from people who didn't know exactly what was going on, but were no less excited for that lack of knowledge.

At one point we took a hard right off of the paved road into.. some tall grass. It didn't look much like a trail, just a vaguely clear-cut area. It was a very odd trail, turning from grass to clear-cut forest to boardwalk (literally walking across boards, like single 2x4s), and then suddenly there was MATT! 

His plan for the day was to NOT get up with us at 3am, but to wake up at a more sane time, take the ferry over to the finish line island (Peaks, this very island), and then hike the course backward cheering for people until he hopefully found us. Which is what happened! So many ways this plan could have failed, but it didn't!

A Wild Matt has appeared!

He walked through the sketchy boardwalk area with us, then when we started running again, he ran with us, which was super fun. It's been a while since we've been in weather good enough that Matt actually wanted to run! (Running is not fun in Texas right now. Ask me how I know!)

We caught up for a few minutes, then when we got back to the main touristy road, Matt went back to his touristing, heading toward the finish line, while we resumed our journey also toward the finish line, but in a much less direct fashion.

Byeeee, Matt!

Peaks felt like it lasted FOREVER, but eventually we got down to the south beach and set out for an 890 meter swim. Which is a long swim at any time, but felt extra long because we were tired, and there was a current that was fighting us to get to the shore of Cushing Island. Still, one of our fastest swims of the day, if Garmin can be trusted (it can't, but we're just gonna go with it), because Trista is a mermaid.

Cushing was supposed to be another 3 mile run (3 mile, 900 meter, 3 mile, 730 meter, all at the end of the race, which is why I say it's back-loaded), so when we got to the aid station after the swim and were told it was allegedly short, we weren't too upset about that. Of course, there's 2.97 miles short and there's 0.07 miles short, and we had not the slightest of clues which was more accurate. We had been considering cabbing down for this run, because it was getting pretty warm and sunny, but knowing that it was short of 3, we decided not to.

Actually we didn't cab down all day, despite the air temps ending in the lower 80s. We unzipped a lot for the longer runs, and invariably forgot to zip back up before starting to swim, then had to stop and zip up, but never a full cab down.

Is the very end of the race an appropriate time to talk about what wetsuits we wore? This should probably go at the beginning, right, if I want to ever find it again when I wonder "what wetsuit did we wear for Orcas 2022?" Eh, when have my race reports ever been logical or coherent?

Trista and I both ended up bringing the ARK Vigg and the ARK Uto. The Vigg is super minimal and perfect for warmer air and water temps. This day had warm air temps. The Uto is more hefty and perfect for colder air and water temps. This day had cold water temps. What do you do when it's split like this? That was the subject of a LOT of conversations over the course of the weekend.

Ultimately we decided to wear the Uto. The water was cold enough that the Vigg wasn't really sufficient, and given how many people we saw shivering uncontrollably at the finish line, I think that was the right answer. The Uto was warm for the longer runs, but tolerable, and we knew that if we needed to, we could cab down and cool down that way. But as mentioned... we never did. 

Okay, so around Cushing, which it turns out was a 2 mile run instead of 3. Not sad about that at all. My body was pretty ready to be done at that point.

You may wonder, "Hey, how is this 'I had covid a week ago' treating you so far in this race?" Trista was also wondering that, and in fact asked me that back on Peaks. I said it was too soon to talk about it, stand by.

Flashback to the tire swing we ran by on Peaks, simply because this wall of text needs relief.

Photo by a roving Matt.

Because the answer was: I actually felt pretty okay. As far as covid goes, I wasn't feeling anything at all from that, as far as I could tell. No trouble breathing, no lungs burning. I mean, I was TIRED, but I was also doing something really dumb under normal circumstances, and evidence would seem to show that Trista was ALSO tired, so maybe the race was just tiring? 

Completely random and unimportant addendum: Trista said her hip flexors were being problematic for the last few runs, and in the spirit of "fuck you, hip flexors", we renamed that body part "hip fuxors". Please update your medical charts appropriately.

So I was feeling very normal, but I superstitiously didn't want to put that out there and then immediately just fall apart. So I kept going. Then when we swam from Cushing to House Island, we got out and I said, "Actually, pretty okay." And Trista was like, "I have no idea what you're talking about. What?" And I had to clarify I was answering her question from 2-3 islands ago. As one does.

Now that we only had 0.75 miles of running and 665 meters of swimming left to get back to the finish line at Peaks, it seemed safe to talk about it.

About that 0.75 miles of running. The exit flag on House is up on a cliff. It's pretty easy to see. The flags Odyssey used at the swim exits were very visible, as long as the wind didn't turn them around so that you couldn't see them at all. So we swam straight to that exit flag, even though it was very non-obvious how to actually get TO the flag, since there was a cliff there.

As we got to where the water meets the cliff, we started to climb out and scramble up the cliff face to get to the flag. There had been one long course and one short course team that entered the water at the same time we did, and we glanced over to see where they were in relation to us, and .. they weren't. They were swimming off to the right, where there appeared to be a beach. Okay. That's weird, but maybe it's just easier to get out of the water there. We were already climbing the cliff and committed to this course of action.

When we got up to the flag, we saw that the next flag was off to the left. We looked over to the right to the people who'd gone to the beach, and there was a flag way over there to the right. From where we stood, the next flag was clearly to the left, and we also knew this run went around the perimeter of the island, but if you didn't know that, and didn't come up the cliff, then there WAS clearly a flag to the right, and you could think that was the next flag. And thereby skip a portion of the last run.

We may have grumbled a bit. But then we just decided we felt good about the fact that WE were doing it right. That we could only run our own race. That it was a super short run even run properly. That the teams we saw doing it wrong were one long course mixed and one short course, so it didn't impact our standings at all. And once we patted ourselves on the back for being so chill about it, we said there would be HELL TO PAY if a long course women's team passed us because they cut off part of the course. So much for being chill.

Also we had no idea how many other women's teams were out there, or where we were in relation to them. The swims make it very hard to keep track of people. One time we stopped to pet a dog on a beach (#veryseriousathletes), and the dog turned out to belong to Heather's family, and her husband told us we were the first women's team he'd seen. Which.. we knew we weren't first place women's team, but honestly we could have been 2nd, we could have been 11th, we could have been 30th. We had no idea and no way of knowing. But damned if we were gonna let 30th place go as someone cut the course and we ended up 31st women's team!

We wound around and then finally ended up back over where that flag to the right had been, this time at the proper part of the course. Over some slippery, annoyingly-sized rocks, because of course we can't just have an easy cruise to the end, and then back into the water for our final swim!

Last time we did Casco, my arms started to ache pretty early on, and then by the end, my shoulders felt like they were just going to secede from my body and detach themselves out of self-preservation. This time I've done a LOT more swimming (a LOT lot more) to prepare, but then also in the last 2 weeks before the race, I did literally one 2000 yard pool swim. So I wasn't sure how I was going to fare. I'm happy to say my shoulders didn't start complaining until the very last swim. I was having to work to stay on Trista's feet for that one. I guess that might have started sooner if we'd actually gotten to do ALL the swims that were supposed to be swims, but I'm glad that it waited so much longer this time. Hurray for training properly!

As we crossed the water on the last swim, we couldn't see the finish line, but we knew it must be nearby because you could hear Mark announcing from the water. Usually you hear the finish line of a race as you get close, but usually you're RUNNING. It was weird to hear the finish line while swimming.

As we got to the shore, we could see a lot of people standing there cheering, and as we got out of the water, we had so many friends there cheering for us, including Matt! We felt very loved.

Some last rocks to climb over, why not.

Photo by Chipper McLowTideBoyz

But we had a mission! We've developed a reputation for crazy finish line antics, and this time we had a bold plan, but that bold plan required that we take off a lot of our equipment. Not possible wearing a buoy and paddles.

So we started trying to deal with stripping off equipment, but then there were these STAIRS. It's generous to call them stairs. It's a steep hillside with some rotten wood thrown in periodically. Evidently a lot of people wiped out while trying to run up them. We were NOT running up them, we were trudging up them, while also trying to remove our gear. 

Our paparazzi were all there with cameras and gopros, filming our amazing last run, and we were a complete shitshow, definitely not worth filming yet, just trying to get TO the finish line.

Finally made it up the hill, and I would say we ran to the finish line, but the films clearly show we slowly walked to the finish line. Stopped. Dumped our gear on the ground to the side. Completely failed to look behind us to see if we were blocking any other teams finishing, which the film clearly shows we ABSOLUTELY DID (sincerely sorry, team behind us! thank you for being so kind!). And then we did this:

We are very, very extra. #nailedit

Video by Marcus, Official Adorkable Videographer

I would like it to be known that this has been on our "maybe" list of finish line antics for a while, but we had no idea if we could actually DO it. We finally had time to test it during our shake-out one day before. And despite saying we had no idea HOW to do it.. we nailed it the first try. When we retire from swimrun, we're absolutely joining the circus. Trista's already a handstand pro, so it's an obvious next step.

And then we were done! Final finish time: 6:27:56, over an hour faster than the last time we did it (7:39:31 in 2019), and a lot less destroyed in the process.

I feel like we got everything we needed out of this race. We think we missed one gel, and maaaaybe we should have done one more near the end, but we were so close we just couldn't, but otherwise nailed the gel-every-30-minutes goal. Trista is amazing as our food timer, and unforgiving if we try to skip one because we missed the exact time. Even if it means 2 gels 10 minutes apart. Even if it takes her 15 minutes to eat one gel sometimes.

We got some really good slick rock practice in, and gained confidence in our shoe choices on said slick rocks.

We got a multi-hour swimrun practice in, with long ocean swims, and a lot of the gear we'll use on race day for WC.

We kept moving forward even when we were suffering, and kept our wits about us and kept good humor the whole time. 

I said near the end it was a little concerning that our legs were as sore as they were after ~18 miles of running, when WC will have 41 miles of running, and Trista pointed out that we weren't at WC to win. We were there to have the experience. To get through it. And at the end if we're walking the entire thing because we've completely fallen apart, we're still going to have an amazing time traversing the  Swedish archipelago together.

 

Friiiiends.

Super solid training race, and as we were saying goodbye to everyone at the end of the weekend, it really hit home that the race is soon, as we said, "We'll see you in Sweden!"

SO EXCITED.

Oh, and we were 2nd place long course women's team. I still don't know how many total women's long course teams there were, but at least 2!

Representing Team Envol!

Spam Fika: 1st men's team, 2nd overall

Team Adorkable: 2nd women's team, super cute

Thanks, Odyssey, for another great race, great course, amazing course markings, stocked and enthusiastic aid stations, stellar post-race media, and a super fun day!