Pucked in the Head is hosting the inaugural Vancouver Table Hockey Extravaganza on September 20-21 to benefit Five Hole for Food and Canuck Place. This article talks about the world record we’ll set starting at 1pm on the Friday, but you can register for Saturday afternoon’s open tournament without nearly this much commitment!
by Jason Kurylo
A few months ago, when we said, “let’s set the world record for the longest table hockey game”, we seriously thought how hard could that possibly be?!?!?!?
*ahem* Yeah. Well. Lemme tell ya ’bout that.
To qualify for Guinness Book of World Records status, participants in a marathon table hockey game must play mano a mano with no substitutions. They must stand for the entirety of the competition, with just five minutes for bathroom breaks, gymnastic demonstrations and/or gladhanding allowed for every full hour completed.
It doesn’t sound like much at first. Thirty hours? Dude, I pulled that in college, like, every week. Then you think about it. That’s 30 straight hours — 1800 minutes — on your feet. No sitting, no lying down, no leaning with your back against the wall. Dude. Maybe I didn’t do that in college.
More after the break.
Standing for that amount of time, focused on a game in which the puck must not stay still for more than five seconds at a time is tougher than you may think. Posture is key. As is preparation.
“One thing you’ll find as you go deep into this attempt is that an engaged core will help immensely,” says Hannah Kess, a personal trainer at Fitness Science on Terminal Avenue. FS has donated training sessions to get us ready for this day+six adventure we’ve signed ourselves up for. “But a whole lot of your success is going to come from being mentally prepared to push through any aches, pains, or fatigue.”
When was the last time you stood in line for any length of time? How many times did you change the way you were standing because one leg was tightening up, or your back was uncomfortable? Now multiply that grocery store line-up by a factor of 100. A wonky knee, or a trick hip, or even a tendency to cramp up when you stay in one position for too long — any of these things will be highlighted just a few hours into a marathon like this.
For someone like me, who hasn’t really exercised in a few years — pretty much since my wife became pregnant with our daughter in 2009 — vaulting into workouts a couple times a week and late night 4km runs is a serious uptick in physical activity.
The result is sometimes less than pretty. Thar be wobbling in that squat thrust, ya soft city boy. Thar be blubber galore on that carcass o’ yours.
No matter what it takes, we’re in for the long haul. “Canuck Place is a hospice for terminally ill children and their families, for goodness’ sake,” says Dr Rob Tarzwell, one of the eight people currently signed up to attempt the aforementioned world record and the founder of One Minute Medical School. “A few weeks of training is nothing compared to what these families go through.”
Still, Tarzwell is the gungest of ho when it comes to the training. He’s adapted his home office into a standing station for his computer, and is ramping up upright sessions from five or six hours this week to ten next week. Stationary, this amount of time on your feet means a lot of rocking side to side, light squats, and other types of weight distribution to ease the load on individual joints and muscles.
Look for 16+ hour sessions a couple of times in mid-September before a week of relaxation just ahead of the Vancouver Table Hockey Extravaganza.
“I’m a firm believer in preparing for as many outcomes as I can predict,” says Tarzwell when Kess gives him 30 seconds between sets of weight-bearing crosscuts to build functional muscle stability in the torso. “The preparation we do in the next few weeks minimizes our chances of having to bow out in the middle of the event. The more we train now, the less chance there is of encountering something we can’t handle in hour 23 on September 21.”
You don’t have to set a world record to be a part of the Vancouver Table Hockey Extravaganza. Register for the Saturday tournament here, or contact us to volunteer: email jason (at) puckedinthehead.com or call 778-688-7586. Part of a corporate team? Register six people at one table in the tournament, and guarantee that two (or possibly three) of you will make the playoffs!
From his bio on the About PitH page: “Dr. Rob Tarzwell is a Vancouver psychiatrist with a second specialty in nuclear medicine. His clinical interests include the use of radiotracers to study blood flow, glucose utilization, and neuroreceptors in brain disease and psychiatric disorders. Speaking of psychiatric disorders, Dr Rob has been a fan of the Canucks since 1988, when Gretzky got traded to the Kings.”
Ditto for me: “Jason has a long track record of starting projects, then getting distracted by pretty lights or, more recently, by his pretty daughter Milla Capri. He thinks all the Luongo bashers should spend some time in a city like Ottawa or Edmonton. Y’all don’t deserve deep runs in the playoffs.”