Fort Smith residents challenged to swim the length of Great Slave Lake — in the pool

Fort Smith, N.W.T., is encouraging people to swim across Great Slave Lake — in the pool. 

Participants are challenged to swim laps at the community recreation centre equivalent to the distance on Great Slave Lake between Fort Resolution and Yellowknife. 

Mathieu Doucet, the centre's aquatic co-ordinator, said the challenge was inspired by the Walk to Tuk challenge. 

"We're trying to challenge anybody and everybody within the community, or even outside the community," Doucet said. 

It's a 140-kilometre distance, which equals thousands of laps of the pool. Participants aren't meant to complete it in one sitting, but track their progress over time. 

"We're just trying to provide the journey and I guess the destination for people to have a goal and a motivation to come in the pool or to do physical activity as a whole."

Doucet said it's also a good incentive for people to become stronger swimmers, reducing the risk of drowning. 

"The more time people spend time in the pool, they better they'll be in the water," he said. 

Five people are participating so far, but Doucet expects more to join when summer ends. 

"Just start swimming, that's all there is to it," he said. 

For Jesse Woodward, swimming the distance is practice for a much larger event — swimming the English channel from England to France. 

"I'm no God of fitness or anything," Woodward said. "So I picked it as a goal I want to do in my life and something to work towards. I just started doing it."

Woodward said he swims five times a week at the recreation centre. 

He said he's also done a few swims in the Slave River to prepare and get used to being in cold water for a prolonged period of time.