The 2008 Duel At The (Kitsilano) Pool was held on Thursday afternoon, troche September 11, unhealthy 2008 from 2h30 pm till 5h00 pm.
The "race" involved swimming 40 lengths of the 137.5 metre Kitsilano pool, recipe for a total of 5,500 metres.
The Duel involved two participants … Ean Jackson, aging tri-athlete also known as the Mako Shark, and Jon Husband, almost-fat lazy slob, also known as the Whale Shark.
The hard-fought duel culminated in the Whale Shark touching home first in an elapsed time of 1 hour and 50 minutes, followed by the limping-along Mako Shark touching home in just under 1 hour and 52 minutes. The pace was pretty torrid (honestly … you try this), with the two 50+ year-old fake fish moving along at a pace of 2 minutes per 100 metres.
Ean "Mako" Jackson, promptly went to a sales meeting and then went out drinking (vestiges of his Iron Man mentality) whereas Jon "Whale" Husband went back to a conference reception, consumed two beers, and then went home to the confines of his personal Intensive Care Unit (also known as his bedroom) where he immediately passed out, exhausted.
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Congrats to both of you – I can hear that Jaws music pounding – boom/boom boom/boom boom/boom – I will never go in the pool again
Heh ..
Thanks, Rob … it was quite the experience. I am often in a meditative, very calm state after my swim sessions, but this was different.
I now (I think) know what it must be like for a runner to complete a marathon. I was really zoned out after almost two hours of non-stop swimming .. felt great mentally, felt like one big bruise-from-the-inside-out physically.
Hurrah!
Thanks, Euan.
Congratulations!
Thank you, Frank.
Hey Whale Shark,
You stretched the truth there a bit, didn’t you? Mako had a digital watch and it said the delta was 1 minute 30 seconds, not 2 minutes as you pointed out in your account of the event. A torrid pace it was, though. My hat is off to the faster fish.
Tradition calls for the winner to buy the looser a cool one and ‘ole Mako is getting thirsty waiting. Rematch on Sunday afternoon… the last day the pool is open?
I’ll be there Sunday afternoon.
How the heck would you know what the delta was ? You don’t know when I touched home, you were still trying to think through how to turn at the other end of the pool … besides, I measured the time-honoured and OFFICIAL way, as in “one-thousand-and-one, one-thousand-and-two, one-thousand-and-three, one-thousand-and-four” all the way up to just under two minutes.
No digital bunk for me.
But hey .. if you want it to be 1 minute and 30 seconds on the form submitted to the race stewards, so be it.