He's done!

After an awful four hours he actually made up all that time and finished five minutes ahead of his plan at 17:00:54.

I do have some pix I'll post later.

150 to go!!!

No pictures, no time. He's not swimming alone - Andrea is still pacing him.

400 to go

The plan is that Tony will swim the last 200 m alone. I'll try to take a pic.

550 m to go

I can barely contain myself!

700 m to go!

Dave Lyons in the foreground, Tony in the back left, being paced by Andrea on the right.

900 m to go

Ron Adams says he can smell the barn. He's smoking.

1200 m to go!

He hit 41 km in 16:33 - he did the km in 19 minutes! He's barely paused before launching on his last full kilometre. I'm now extrapolating .... 10:04 p.m.!!!

9 p.m. PDT

Tony's still taking his 39.5-km break. He's only 500 m down from his original plan.

UPDATE: Tony's eating, and Dave is going to join him for the last 2.7 km.

The crowds gather (II)

A very bad picture of the crowd at the other end of the pool. Tony has a lot of friends.

38 km

After a long break, he swam the 1 km in one go, finishing at 15:22. He's done 90% of the distance, and has 4.2 km left. I'm extrapolating a finish at 10:34 p.m. His stroke looks good (see video in previous post), he only had half a cookie between km 37 and 38. Rhonda says he's swimming on guts because he has nothing else in him.

The first length of km 38

You can see that his stroke is much better than 4 km ago.

UPDATE: In response to a question, yes, Tony is in lane 2, and he's drafting. He's been drafting most of the day.

36 km

For whatever cause, Tony is now a rocket. He finished km 36 in 21 min total. His stroke count has dropped to 17. He took barely 90 seconds' break, and he's into km 37. 6.2 km to go!

Tony in km 34

Tony being "dragged" by Daryl.

34 & 35 km

Sorry for the delay - been an eventful hour.

Tony hit 35 km at 13:22, and I extrapolated a 10:20 p.m. finish. But he started drinking defizzed Coke, and seemed to be doing better. He went to the washroom twice, and had a hit of oxygen, and began negotiating - not a bad thing here. If he swims 1 km/h he can finish ...

Anyway, at 7 p.m. PDT he was at 35.9 km, only 1oo m down. He hit 36 km at 14:01, so I'm now extrapolating 17:51. Right or wrong, I detect a change in his attitude. I didn't capture it with the camera, but we saw the old Tony grin, and he even had a "groupie" come up to him. :-)

We all applauded as he struck out again. And after a very brief break, he's swimming again.

Tony's back in the water

Tony threw up - probably a good thing - declined a hit of oxygen from the staff, and is back in the water after nearly 20 minutes between 500s. He's asked for Pringles and chicken broth, though, which is probably on the right path to getting some food into him.

The probably means no more day-old Wendy's chicken fingers, which is surely a good thing.

Tony now needs to dig deep into his suitcase of courage. He has four hours of suffering, mental & physical, ahead of him.

6 p.m., 13 hours in

Tony's on his 33.5-km break. He's definitely feeling low. At 33.25 km he stopped and I wondered if he was going to quit. When I passed on Lee C.'s message he was a bit snarly (well, for Tony).

Anna said Rhonda should tell him he's at the Bear - an in-joke re IM Canada.

In terms of adherence to plan, he's right on schedule now.

33 km

In 12 h 45 min. He's done 78% of the distance, and has 9.2 km to go.

Extrapolating the last 5 km predicts a finish at 9:54 p.m.

31 km

(Tony's aunt Hilda and uncle Darryl.)

In 11:50 - 10 minutes ahead of his schedule. As I expected, he's converging on his plan. He's done 73% now, and has only 11.2 km left!

What's going on

Tony took a 13- or 14-minute break after 30 km, trying to get things going in washroom, but he's still hitting slightly over 9 minutes for every 500, so that puts him pretty much on track or slightly ahead of sched.

I was asked about his rash - it does look bad, but hasn't looked worse in a few hours. He's covering both it and his left cheek with BodyGlide frequently.

Finally, I was asked about why I was here. Well, it's because Tony has been awfully helpful and gracious to me in my Ironman quest, and two or three months ago he was in a bit of a low spot about this marathon swim & I decided my best "donation" (as well as a money donation I had made) would be to come out from Toronto and help. So I flew out yesterday, I'm staying in a local hotel, and I'll fly back late tomorrow morning. (I'm already close to my Toronto bed time; I won't be as tired as Tony, but I'll be beat tomorrow!) Thanks for asking!

Tony's coming up to 30.5 km. I can't express how exciting this is.

30 km!

Big milestone - 11 hours and 21 minutes. He's now "only" 19 minutes ahead of schedule.

71% done, 12.2 km to go.