The Dutch Swimrun Scene

Welcome to episode 337 of the Löw Tide Böyz - A Swimrun Podcast! We're going across the pond this week, and not to Sweden for once. We met Bart Vandervaal on the ferry to Sandhamn at ÖTILLÖ last year and immediately started asking about his shoes. Nine months later, Bart and his co-race director Henk de Bock are on the show to tell us about the Dutch swimrun scene and the first ever Dutch Swimrun Championship.

Bart and Henk have been organizing Het Rondje Eilanden, a 6.5-kilometer island circuit race in Vinkeveen just south of Amsterdam, for 15 years. The race predates the word swimrun in the Netherlands, and for years athletes did it in Speedos and surf shoes with no wetsuits, no pull buoys, and no idea there was a global sport building around the same idea. This year, to celebrate the race's 15th edition, they're running the championship as three consecutive loops of the course, 19 kilometers total, in pairs, with 750 participants across all distance categories. The race is on Saturday, July 18th. The classic single loop (6.5K) is filling up fast, but the Dutch Championships distance (3 loops, 19K) still has spots. You can find registration and race info at hetrondjeeilanden.nl.

We dig into how the Dutch swimrun community organized itself from the ground up through WhatsApp groups and international race travel, what makes Vinkeveen's clear water and 12-island layout such a natural fit for the sport, and what the race weekend actually looks like: camping on the island, hot tubs, live music, and a party culture that fits right in with the swimrun ethos. If you're a Dutch swimrunner or just curious about connecting with the community over there, the WhatsApp community lives at swimrun.group with channels organized by region and a main hub called the SwimRun Huiskamer, which translates to SwimRun Living Room. Signal groups are also linked there for the WhatsApp-averse.

Henk shares his own path to the ÖTILLÖ World Series this year, and Bart recounts what it was like to race ÖTILLÖ Stockholm for the first time last year on a foot injury, getting towed to the finish by his partner. Bart and his partner Sander Berk also chronicled the whole journey on their Substack, From Zero till Ötillö, at from0tillotillo.substack.com. The first 30 weekly training blogs have English translations, and the blog has since expanded with writers covering swimrun across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, including race coverage from ÖTILLÖ events.

We also get into the broader Dutch swimrun landscape, including the Backyard Ultra Swimrun happening just north of Amsterdam on June 20th at Het Twiske. Athletes do a 5K loop every hour with short swims and runs mixed in, up to a 10-hour max. Find details and registration at swimrun.amsterdam. And if the Dutch race scene has you wanting to plan a European summer, check the show notes for all the links.

On our end, we're two weeks out from Quest Swimrun Bellingham at Lake Padden and heading into the thick of our training block. After Bellingham comes Folsom Swimrun, then the 10th anniversary of ÖTILLÖ Casco Bay, and then ÖTILLÖ World Series in September. The list is long. The stoke is real.