(thanks to Florian Eigenmann for the pictures!
Visit his homepage for some more pictures.)

Background: at the skiing weekend with GC and Belvoir, we from Nordiska were rather disappointed with the appearance of people from our neighbour clubs... Therefore Henrik P. challenged the eight of GC to a duathlon back in Zürich.

The duathlon consisted of 1000 m rowing in the wight, and then 8x 0.5l of beer in a "hunting start". That means that GC will start the drinking contest x seconds before us, where x is the number of seconds they beat us in the rowing part.

In advance, it was quite obvious that GC are better rowers than us, and that we are better drinkers than them. But since the challenge to the duathlon, three weeks had passed, and we knew that GC had been training hard on the drinking part. We ourselves had been training on the rowing part...

Since we did not find any term where all 16 could come, we decided to take the times from the long distance race, Zürich-Thalwil, which is approximately 6.4 km and divide that time through 6.

That gave GC a lead of 32 seconds for the drinking part....

The guys from GC in their concentration stage, after the rowing, before the drinking...
Pleased with their rowing, and quite confident that 32 seconds should be enough...

The audience was exited before the start of the challenge...
To the left - our cox Anna.
We agreed on that the coxes were excepted...

The GC team ready to start.
The beer bottles were lined up along the table.
GC on the left side, Nordiska on the right.
You were not allowed to start drinking, until the guy before you had finished his bottle completely!

GC (to the left) has started!
Nordiska (to the right) has to wait 32 seconds before they are allowed to start...

GC is now on number 2.
Henrik S. has now started for Nordiska.

Bjørn is number 3 for Nordiska, and we have already cached up the 32 seconds advantage!

The guys from GC seemed to be too confident to win this.
Maybe they should take the hand out of the pocket the next time, and "pull" with both hands?

Florian for GC vs. Sebastian for Nordiska.

Number 5 is drinking for GC...

...but if you have to take breaks it is not "optimal"...
The guys from GC don't look so confident any more...

Martin drinking as number 7 for Nordiska has started, while number 5 for GC still has not finished...

Because Jon had to leave early, and Henrik S. was thirsty that day, he took another bottle.
It was the last one for Nordiska, and GC was on number 6...

Henrik P. and the others from Nordiska are finished!
Number 6 is still drinking for GC...

Nordiska cheering the GC guys to help them finish!

Nordiska cheering.
From left to right:
Martin (only half), Sebastian, Fredrik, Bjørn,  Henrik P. and Nicklas.

At the end we beat them with 52 seconds.
Of course we were pleased, and now it is clear that we do not really need to train any more rowing. We could even catch up an advantage of one minute... :-)

Here are some impressions from the spaghetti offered by RC Thalwil after the race:

Last modified 4.4.01.