Built for the Course: Two New KimDem Tracks for Triathletes and Open Water Swimmers.

There’s a moment before a triathlon where you check three things. The wetsuit zip. The bike rack number. The lace tension on the run shoes. Three checks for three races, stitched together by transitions.

That’s the moment KimDem made Don’t Drown, Don’t Crash, Don’t Trip for. Three disciplines. Three things that can go wrong. One race.

And there’s another moment, earlier, in still water. Wetsuit on. Goggles checked. The course buoy a long way out and barely visible. The first arm goes over. That’s the moment Every Stroke was made for.

Two new releases. One for triathletes. One for open water. Both out now on Spotify.

01 / ContextWhy KimDem is releasing triathlon and open water music.

KimDem makes music for athletes who train seriously. The kind of training that doesn’t fit neatly into a forty-minute gym class. Long sessions. Early mornings. Cold water. Solo work.

Triathlon and open water swimming both ask for that kind of training. They are not stadium sports. They are not gym sports. They happen in lakes and bays and reservoirs and on roads at sunrise. The athlete is alone with the discipline for a very long time before the race ever starts.

Most “workout music” doesn’t speak that language. It speaks the language of forty-five minutes on a treadmill. KimDem wrote two tracks for the longer, quieter, harder language.

The race is mostly silent. The hours before the race are silent. The music has to fit inside that silence, not fight it. KimDem brand note

02 / The Sport FirstTriathlon. Three races stitched into one.

Triathlon is not one race. It is three races and two transitions, scored as one time. Athletes who win triathlons rarely win any single discipline. They win because they lose the least time across all three.

The format is consistent across distances:

Each distance asks for a different version of this. The Sprint distance is short and aggressive, namely a 750-meter swim, a 20-kilometer bike, and a 5-kilometer run. The Olympic distance doubles most of that. The 70.3 doubles it again. The full Ironman is its own category of suffering. Across all of them, the core problem is the same. Stay efficient. Don’t blow up. Get to the next discipline with something left.

And inside the sport sit three quiet fears that every triathlete carries to the start line:

• Don’t drown. Open water swims have panic attacks, sighting errors, contact in the pack, and cold-water shock. The swim is the leg most likely to end a race before it starts.
• Don’t crash. The bike leg is the leg with the highest serious injury risk. Wet roads. Tight turns. A bottle in the wrong place. The DNFs nobody wants to talk about.
• Don’t trip. Out of T2, the legs do not work the way they should. The run is the leg where good races are saved and bad races become disasters.

Three disciplines. Three things to manage. Three things not to do. That’s the sport. That’s the song.

03 / Track OneDon’t Drown, Don’t Crash, Don’t Trip. The triathlon anthem.

Don’t Drown, Don’t Crash, Don’t Trip is named for the three things every triathlete is actually thinking about on the start line. Not “win the race.” Not “set a PR.” Get through the swim. Get off the bike. Cross the line on two feet.

The track is built to move through the three disciplines. It opens with the rhythm of an open water swim. It picks up into a steady aero cadence for the bike. It changes gear again for the run, the way the body has to. Same race. Three different engines.

What Don’t Drown, Don’t Crash, Don’t Trip is built for

• Race-day warmup. Walking from transition to the swim start. The last twenty minutes before the gun.
• Brick sessions. Bike-to-run, swim-to-bike. Training the transitions, not just the disciplines.
• Long bike rides. The middle hour of a four-hour ride, when the head game starts.
• The Sprint and Olympic distances. The full song matches the full race.
• 70.3 and Ironman training blocks. Use it on hard sessions, not easy ones.

04 / The Sport FirstOpen water swimming. The long, lonely rhythm.

Open water swimming is its own sport. It is not pool swimming in a lake. It is something different.

There are no walls. There are no lane lines. There is no black line on the bottom to follow. There is current, chop, cold, and a buoy somewhere on the horizon that the swimmer has to find every five or six strokes by lifting the head to sight.

The events range from short to absurd. A 1.5-kilometer race in a calm bay. A 5-kilometer point-to-point in current. A 10-kilometer marathon swim that the Olympics recognize. And then the unsanctioned distances that ultra-swimmers chase, namely the channels, the lakes, the long-course swims that are measured in hours rather than minutes.

The challenges are different from the pool:

• Sighting. Lifting the head to find the buoy without breaking stroke rhythm.
• Cold water. Wetsuit-legal and non-wetsuit categories. Hypothermia is a real risk.
• Pack swimming. Drafting another swimmer’s feet, getting kicked, finding clean water.
• Mental endurance. No clock. No splits. Just stroke after stroke for a very long time.
• Feeds. On longer swims, taking nutrition while still moving forward.

Open water rewards a specific kind of athlete. Not the fastest one. The most consistent one. The one who can hold the same stroke at minute fifty as they had at minute five.

05 / Track TwoEvery Stroke. The open water anthem.

Every Stroke is written for that. Not for the race finish. Not for the medal. For the long middle. The kilometer where nothing is happening except stroke, breath, sight, stroke, breath, sight.

The song is a meditation on consistency. The thing that wins open water races is the willingness to keep doing the same thing for a very long time without getting bored or scared. The track sits inside that mindset. It does not push. It does not hype. It paces.

What Every Stroke is built for

• Long pool sets. 5,000-meter sets. 10,000-meter sets. The sessions where the body has to negotiate with itself.
• Open water training swims. Pre-race confidence sessions in lakes, bays, and reservoirs.
• The mental warmup. The morning of a long swim. The drive to the start. The wetsuit zip.
• Marathon swim training. 5K, 10K, and longer.
• Triathlon swim leg preparation. Pairs naturally with Don’t Drown, Don’t Crash, Don’t Trip.

06 / Side by SideTriathlon vs open water: two endurance sports, two anthems.

Both tracks are endurance music. Neither is interchangeable with the other. They are written for different sports, different time domains, different mental modes.

Use them differently. Train differently to them. Race differently to them.

07 / For Coaches and AthletesHow to actually use these tracks.

Both songs are made to be put to work. Not background music. Not playlist filler. Tools.

A few suggestions for triathletes, open water swimmers, coaches, and content creators:

• Training session videos. Brick workouts, long rides, open water sessions, dryland. The pacing of each track sits under footage without fighting it.
• Race-day warmup. Pre-race transition setup, walking to the swim start, the last twenty minutes. Use Don’t Drown, Don’t Crash, Don’t Trip for triathlons. Use Every Stroke for open water races.
• Instagram reels and TikTok edits. Race recap content, transition tutorials, sighting drills, brick session breakdowns, season highlight reels.
• Team and squad hype content. Championship-season videos, taper week edits, masters team reels, coaching content.
• Race-day final track. The one song before the gun. Athletes have specific opinions about which song that is. These are made to be in the running.
• Coach edits. Athlete tributes, end-of-season highlight packages, recruiting and squad-building content.

Both tracks are streaming on Spotify. Tag @kimdem if you post. The brand reposts triathlon and open water content from athletes and squads using the music.

Spotify links:
→ Don’t Drown, Don’t Crash, Don’t Trip
→ Every Stroke