We created The Big Battle because we were bored. There were cancelled races, laws and rules against gatherings, closed pools and why even think about travelling somewhere. We wanted to do something that brought some life back into the swimrun community. Something that made us come together.
Envol Swimrun had just became partners with the Sea Shepherd and we decided to donate part of The Big Battle registration fee to them. This was a 30 days swimrun battle for fun. The Sea Shepherd battle every day to keep our oceans alive. As swimrunners and human beings we have an obligation to help.
We reached out to our network and a bunch of people we figured would make good team leaders. Because this was the point, creating teams all over the world and make them engage in The Big Battle – the international swimrun challenge. And we were right. On June first we had 23 teams from Russia in the east to the USA in the west. More than 390 hungry swimrunners ready to go head to head with each other.
#sneakydoubledutch
The rules were simple. Do as much swimrun as you can during 30 days. Every swimrun activity gave points, every kilometre during the activity gave more points. There had to be a minimum of two swims per activity. We had set a limit of two swimruns per day and some teams quickly figured out that in order to win, this was the way to go! The #sneakydoubledutch was created as the Dutch Swimrunners were raking in the points! The strong Westside Swimrunners from Stockholm, Come On Swimrun from Russia and the Polish team Swimrun Mafia by GoSwimrun were on their heels and The Battle was on! It was a tight battle between the teams but finally it was orange on top. The Dutch prevailed with 50 points margin.
There were however many winners in this challenge. We had many comments like “This gave me a new habit – my morning run is now a morning swimrun!”, “Thank you Envol Swimrun, you made my world bigger!” . This was the point, to give that extra incentive to just go out and swimrun! Because we know – and you know – it’s good! We also wanted to point out that swimrun is a sport that doesn’t have to be about racing, it can be your daily workout or an awesome weekend adventure with some friends.
The numbers aren’t important but we still like to mention the 34238 km swimrun during 3800 activities done during The Big Battle. We were quite a few that managed a 30 days swimrunstreak!
24h swimrun
There were a few mini challanges during The Big Battle. The last weekend we dropped the Big One – 24h swimrun non-stop. The team had to have at least one swimrunner out there between 12 noon Saturday and 12 noon Sunday. This was not for everybody. Some teams tried and failed (but still had some awesome swimruns!). 7 teams actually made it! Hats off to you! Did you ever get up at 2 in the morning to go swimrunning? This is how memories are made.
