Geoff & Sandra's   Website

A Rowing Marathon

“Come along Geoff, the medical centre are having a ‘Come and have your Cholesterol checked’ day, are you coming?” And so began the series of events that culminated in my recent ‘Rowing Marathon’. Being in the military – the RAF, I did indeed go and have my Cholesterol checked and at the same time the medics were checking Blood pressure too. This was some ten years ago and with a chosen charity of the Blood Pressure Association, it won’t surprise you to hear that having had my blood pressure tested – they wanted to “do a few more checks”. And indeed, check they did. To be honest I wasn’t aware that I had high blood pressure, and now knowing that I did, seemed to make no difference either. At this time the Royal Air Force had it’s own hospitals and I spent a few days as a patient while the doctors while they worked out which was the best drugs for me. In those early days, I was back and forth for regular checks and eventually settled down with a tablet a day of enalapril. The enalapril was fine but the coughing side effects used to drive me crazy. From memory, that probably took almost a year to settle down.

Throughout my life and indeed, my service career, I have always tried to keep fairly fit. From swimming, football and rugby at school, through to hockey, karate, cycling (I used to cycle nearly 40 miles a day back and forth to work), hill walking, squash and Windsurfing with the services. I have been Windsurfing now for over 25 years and in particular, love the racing aspect of it. I represent the RAF and sail on the national circuit. As an aid to keeping fit for that, I bought a Concept 2 Rowing machine during the summer of 2002. As an added extra, I particularly liked the little monitor that you could purchase to enable you to view and record some basic statistics about your pace and work rate etc. and then with a little bit of extra computer software, ‘e-row’, it was possible to row on-line and compete against others rowers from all over the world. Fantastic, I loved it. The software at this time was in its infancy and online races didn’t always go as they were meant to go. At that time it didn’t seem to matter. My technique wasn’t obviously the best either, as every so often I would put my back out and then spend 3 or 4 months without any rowing while I recovered. Anyhow, time passes, my technique has improved – thankfully – and now with some swish 3rd party software from Digital Rowing, Internet racing on a rowing machine is now a real event. The on-line community is growing all the time, giving support, forums and regular online training sessions and races.

Towards the end of last year (2004), I was back in the swing of rowing again and had completed most of the standard distances apart from the two hardest, the half marathon and the full marathon. I was enjoying my rowing, although I had somewhat plateaued and my racing times had become somewhat static. I was therefore looking for an incentive to change up a gear. As Christmas came, the idea of completing the marathon changed from just that, an idea – to a fully committed plan.

The marathon – more usually known as 26 and a bit miles converted to metres equals exactly 41, 195 – this number was to become embedded within my brain! I had obviously never done this before, but I had managed nearly 14,500m within an hour – which is about a third of the way. At that time, to do an hour followed by the same again – twice – seemed a huge task. This needed some serious preparation. It also occurred to me, that for that amount of effort, somebody else should benefit, hence my decision to row for charity. As it happens, the rowing season finishes at the end of April and as the London Flora Marathon was scheduled for the 17th, it seemed an ideal date to aim for. I also looked at their site to see what charities they supported. In the event I decided on the Blood Pressure Association (BPA) as it’s good for health and I have ‘suffered’ from hypertension for about the last 10 years.

Following my initial contact with the BPA and their very, quick and helpful response, it all suddenly become very real. And from initially expecting a few pounds from close friends and family, I was suddenly keen to ask all my friends and all my family plus colleagues at work to support me. As I am a self-confessed computer geek, I was keen to use my website to help, hence I designed an online form that people could sponsor me from. I e-mailed everybody I knew and those early days were quite exciting as entries on my sponsor list grew and grew - £100, £200, £500 and by the end of the 1st week of March, I had pledges of £1000. I was really pleased. Although the BPA information pack suggested that I shouldn’t be embarrassed about asking anyone and everyone for sponsorship, I did feel a little uncomfortable with this and restricted myself to people that I knew personally.

Whilst the sponsorship was going on, there was also the small matter of the physical preparation! I scoured the Internet looking for a training plan – I found quite a few, which was the good part. The bad part was that they all trained over a full 6 month period and I had only 4 months to go! So, given that I thought I was fairly fit already, I jumped in at the 2 month point, massaged a few figures and came up with my own. The Training plan provided for strength work, power work, VO2 sessions and endurance sessions etc. The end result was that I upped my rowing from maybe 2 or 3 sessions a week for 20 – 30 mins to 5 sessions a week for a minimum of an hour. I kept this up for a good 6 weeks but then it gradually dawned on me that I was more of a ‘steady state’ man rather than a power sprinter. I was quite happy to row for an hour at a given pace rather than sprint here, rest there, sprint again and so on. Consequently, I adjusted my plan so that it was more just getting the miles (metres) in rather than aiming for a world best finish.

Going back to the online community, the marathon became a real goal to aim for, as not just 1, but 4 marathon events appeared within the online racing schedule. A Dutch marathon, a Boston marathon and two for the London marathon; 1 for a faster group, and one for the slower. Based on my training, I was aiming for a finish between 3 hrs 15 mins and 3 hrs 30 mins. This works out at a pace per 500 metres of between roughly 2 mins and 18 secs, and 2 mins and 30 secs, or in layman’s terms – the slower group!

Four Rowers were signed up for ‘my’ event, 2 of them had much quicker times, but one, Jasper from London had very similar pace times. We trained together over the internet a few times, but the person I trained most with was a competitor of the Boston event, our times were almost identical, we were almost of he same age too, myself 50, and Bert 56. The Internet forums and online training/racing sessions provided a great deal of comradeship and I can truly say that I have made a few friends thanks to the www.

As the day drew ever closer, a previously booked holiday took me off the rower for a week, but then once back home, I was soon back into the saddle again and rowing without a noticeable loss of performance. Then before I knew it, it was Marathon Day! As I mentioned previously, I enjoy dabbling in computers and had set up a ‘virtual conference room’ for the day. The conference room, enabled my sister – resident in the north of Scotland, plus friends from Swindon, Blandford Forum and Harpenden to ‘chat’ to me – well my support team, and view my web cam to see me suffer.

I had also set up a television in view of my rowing machine so that I too could watch the ‘real’ London marathon. We were scheduled to start at exactly the same time as the main London Marathon. As the time drew closer we were unfortunate that it took a little while to get started so we were some 20 minutes later than anticipated with only 3 of the 4 rowers on screen. (Sometimes someone gets left behind, sorry Jasper!) It felt great to be going, and as a result of my training I had revised my projected finish times time and time again. From an initial ‘just under 4 hours’ to a final wish – and that’s what it was, to an exact target of 3 hrs and 8 mins.

The computer software gives a number of different readouts, I love them all. From average pace, current pace, heart rate, elapsed time and very neatly, projected time (based on your performance so far). My eyes were transfixed on this, and after the initial adrenalin fuelled start, I settled down to a pace that gave a projected finish of just under 3 hours. This was fantastic. Even better, one of the other rowers was rowing at exactly the same pace and we rowed side by side for the first hour. We had discussed strategy during our training and the over riding conclusion was to start slow and finish strong. To finish at my targeted time of 3:08 mins, I would have to maintain a pace of better than 2:14 secs / 500 metres. I was rowing too fast and would have to slow down.

During my training I had practiced drinking and eating on the go, I could do this by myself without slowing down too much, but it was much easier with help – thanks to my lovely wife Sandra. I drank regularly and often but took an actual quick break at the first hour point to change my seat and redo the plasters on my hands to help protect against blisters. I alternated every hour between the gel seat pad that I use and a folded towel – it just changes the pressure points on your bottom. Anyway, as I took a break, my partner carried on and soon opened up a gap between us that grew larger and larger as the race carried on. I wasn’t particularly worried as my main aim was really just to complete it, with a secondary aim of course to get a good time.

For the event, I had brought my rowing machine from outside in the covered car port (cool) to indoors in the conservatory (warm). I felt it really hot and soon had my support team dousing me with water to keep me cool. From an initial careful wipe with a damp sponge and a gentle spray from a mist bottle it soon became “More, More, just pour it all over me!!!” My support team were 3 sets of neighbours and of course Sandra, they all gave inspiration to help keep me going and without them I would have completed a much slower race. My online help was invaluable too, as I had another computer screen right in front of me so that I could monitor their ‘chat’ as well.

The first hour rolled into another and the metres counted down. From 42195, I reached 30000; I’d done that in training. From 30000 to a half marathon – 21097, I’d now done 3 of these, and so on and so on. Tick off the next part, one hour to go, 10000, 6000m the end was in sight, but it was hard getting there. My projected time had slipped from the sub 3 hour start – I had expected this, but I was on course to meet my target, and even though I seemed to take more and more drinks breaks, I managed to keep on course. It was good to see the online chat as my support team commented on my progress. 5000 metres to go – I can do that in 20 mins and then 3000, 2000, and 1000. The last 15 mins were hard but eventually after 3 hrs 7 mins and 22.2 seconds I had completed my goal and achieved my first marathon. It may not have been exactly according to plan, but I had done it.

To congratulate me, my wife had made a medal to hang around my neck and we duly had a ‘medal presentation ceremony’. So there we are, I had completed my goal and received a ranking in the world Concept ranking list. Additionally, as a result of the generous sponsorship pledged, I will have raised over £1200 for the BPA.

In summary I have to be honest and say that having high blood pressure does not make me feel any different, I feel the same now as I did last year, the year before that, 5 years ago and before being diagnosed. My BP is nicely controlled by medication and as time moves on, I am hugely grateful for the medical services that I receive. I am required to keep fit as part of my job, I do not smoke and I try and eat healthily. This is accomplished from my point of view by eating what my wife tells me – she is in charge of our diet! My two little vices – chocolate, and of course a glass of red wine.

The links:

Concept 2 www.concept2.com
Digital Rowing www.digitalrowing.com

Postscript. My training partner Bert completed the Boston Marathon the next day. Looking at his stats, his row was a text-book event. He completed his marathon almost 6 minutes quicker than mine. Thanks to the Internet and our computer software, I have been able to download his ‘race’ and at some point in the future – not this month for sure, I shall add his row to an off-line race – and beat him!