Recently, the two major swim series here in Russia have changed things up. Both involve the beautiful town of Sochi!

The Eurasia Swim Cup, the wonderful folks who gave me one of their t-shirts and who welcomed the crazy wetsuit-less foreigner with open arms, had a swim on their schedule in Sochi, set for 17 September. Unfortunately, that swim is now missing from their schedule. It hasn’t been replaced by anything, it is simply gone. I was looking forward to that swim as I haven’t ever been to Sochi. The closest I’d ever come was the lovely town of Gelendzhik, some miles up the coast from Sochi.

But Sochi may not be out of my plans completely. Just announced today is the Cup of Champions’ new event on their schedule: The Sochi Swim Festival. The Festival will run from Friday, 29 September through Sunday, 1 October. They will hold workshops throughout the weekend, in the pool, in open water, and in classrooms. But there’ll be lots of swimming, too. On Saturday, there’ll be a 30-minute and a 60-minute swim for distance in the pool. There’s also a team event: 3 people swim 100s for 15 minutes, trying to out-distance other teams. These seem to be popular over here. This organization has a whole series of these pool swims throughout the winter. I might have to try my hand at the hour swim, or find two friends to do the 15-minute event with.

Sunday is open water day! They’ll have three individual events: 5.5k, nautical mile, and 1k. There’s also another 3-person event, 3 x 1000. Swim map below.

The yellow is for the 1k course. The red loop for the other two events: one loop for nautical mile and three loops for 5.5k. The timing is such that I might be able to do both the 5.5k and the 1k, or maybe even the 3 x 1k! Unknown what those green arrows are, but probably they are where the workshops and host hotel are. The host hotel looks nice. It’s the Imeretinsky Resort. These types of resorts are very popular here. You pay one price for room and board (2 or 3 meals a day) and live in a communal and social (ex verbo socialism) environment. This is the type of place I stayed in for my Cyprus swim all those years ago.

For now, decisions decisions. Can I go? Can I find two friends who want to swim with me? We’ll have to see.