Am I faster than Shaq?
Last night we watched the show “Shaq vs”. If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty entertaining. NBA star Shaquille O’Neal challenges other professional athletes at their sport. I’ve seen a few episodes and I have to admit that Shaq is a good all-around athlete. Last night he got in the pool to challenge Olympic superstar Michael Phelps to a “race” in the pool. To make it even reasonably close, they required Phelps to swim a lot further than Shaq…so it really wasn’t a race.
However, Shaq is actually a good swimmer. He’s not exactly graceful in the water, but you can tell that he’s spent some time in a pool. As we were watching last night I was looking at Shaq’s times and wondering how my swim times would compare. So before swimming my laps this morning, I decided to time myself in some sprints.
Shaq swam 50 yards in 38.76 seconds. My best time was 37.25. So this was obviously closer than I would like, but keep in mind that I had to both stop and start my watch myself…so I figure that added at least a second or so to my time. For comparison, Phelps completed 75 yards in 38.59 seconds, which gives him a 50 yard time of appoximately 25.73 seconds. I guess that’s why he’s the greatest swimmer of all time!
Here’s the full episode if you want to watch. The actual races are in the last 10 minutes of so.
Training:
(3) 50 yards sprints to try and beat Shaq’s time, followed by 15 minutes of easy swimming. I didn’t count the laps, but I would guess that I swam about 750 yards.
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