I started indoor rowing during the summer of 2002 , mainly to improve my strength and general fitness for competitive Windsurfing. We have bought ourselves an indoor rower and I love it. We spent an extra few bob and got the one with the PM2+ monitor, this enables you to connect it to your computer for more varied workouts - and - and this is the best bit for me, with an extra bit of software, you can compete or train with rowers on line from all over the world! Brilliant! So, I am now a confirmed online rower and have joined a virtual rowing club! Although at the moment, I am not currently active active in the online world, I am still clocking up the metres in preparation for something much more exciting - read on....
 
My incentive at the moment (I'm writing this at Christmas time 2004 / Jan 05) is to row a marathon in April 05 - to coincide with the London Marathon on the 17th. The Marathon for rowing is 42,195 metres - Unsurprisingly, I've not done that far yet, but I have done 1 hour in which I managed 14,359m - about a third of the way. A second incentive is to get all my personal best times to the current season. If I'm going to do a marathon, it seems a shame to put in all that effort and not get something from it, therefore I intend to row for Charity! Click on my Rowing Sponsorship page for the details - and an opportunity to sponsor me online! If you really want me to bore you, I have listed my training programme somewhere within the depths of my website

Rowing update 9 Mar 05. Fantastic, I have topped £1000 with pledges to date. Many many thanks to all my sponsors, I am sure I will not let you down. Training has been going well, although I have moved away from my original training plan! I have realised that I am a plodder - or stayer on the rowing machine, I am quite happy to sit at a cruising speed for a whole session rather than sprint here, relax there, sprint again and so on. Consequently, I am 'doing my own thing' and just getting in as many metres as possible. normally it is an hour's row, or maybe 40-45 minutes for 10000 metres. Longer at the weekend. I have also started training online with my colleague for the day - Jasper Mahon who is also rowing for charity. Altogether, there are 9 of us rowing for the London marathon, but only two in my target time of 3:15 - 3:30 hrs. 

Update 20 Apr 05. Phew, I've completed the marathon. For a full report follow the link. More
 
As a confirmed computer geek, it will not surprise you that I record all my sessions within an online log book - along with thousands and thousands of others. Visit the Concept2 website to see their lists of world rankings.  

I have extracted mine to my own rankings page for you to have a look at if you wish. It will give you an indication of my current times for the various distances, so you could, if you wanted, try and work out my finishing time for the marathon.

Update Mar 08.  Whilst still in use, my rowing machine is not getting so many metres on it these days.  We now have in our home gym a treadmill and cross trainer.  I'm currently sweating the pounds off using these.