Welcome - To the World Record Row blog

Current Location – Braganca, Brazil

27896 km rowed… 12179 km remaining

Never in my life have I been more desperate for the arrival of spring! After ripping a gaping hole in my long johns last week I’ve just about had enough of violent head winds up my trouser legs… cursing the weather and clenching my fist at the sky just seems to make it worse, Basingstoke weather has just got it in for all of us! Although February is a shorter month, we’re still making very steady progress towards the South Atlantic and we’re just a few days away from getting our virtual toes virtually wet in a big virtual ocean… in a sort of virtual kind of way. The pennies are still coming and we’re now just over £12,000 raised for Breakthrough, that’s 32% of our target which is wonderful – I’ve always been of the thought that even we only raise another penny for the rest of the challenge then it’s a penny more towards the fight but I so hope we can raise an absolute bomb. The lovely people of Basingstoke have given again and again, not only with donations but also support in the form of cuddles, fig rolls, woolly scarves and a green fluffy penguin from a man called Bernard. It’s time to get some corporate cash to back up all that good will and I’m keeping everything crossed we can get it – we’ve got a great team in place to move us in the right direction.

Over the last few months it’s been an absolute joy (despite the buttock burning agony!) to row with James and my brother Jonathan on a few occassions and set a couple of world records along the way – the next one up is an attempt with my good friend Ollie Trinder to have a crack at the longest continual tandem world record on 8th May at the Reading Hilton. The record currently stands at 72 hours and 17 minutes and we’re going to try and raise the bar to 100 hours if we possibly can – heavens knows why, I just think Ollie’s mean – he’s a fitness instructor and the right side of 25 with biceps the size of Bournemouth so I hardly think it’s fair I have to row with him… well, he’s not really mean, he’s actually a really lovely guy but I still think he’s cruel… in a lovely way. The plan is to begin at 10am on the Saturday, rowing in 2 hour shifts (swapping to four hours at night) and finishing at 2pm on Wednesday 12th – Ollie is as strong as an ox so I hope I won’t let him down. I’ll pop up more details in the next blog.

Also coming up is the next gig at Basingstoke’s Red Lion Hotel, organised by Stu for Friday 5th March and starting at 7.30pm – if you fancy a fantastic night watching some very talented young chaps belt out their hits then it’s well worth popping down early as the last bash was a sell out and they’d hate for you to be disappointed. If moshing is your thing, you’ll have a riot… if you’re a coward like me and prefer clapping at the back, then please join me for a cuddle, buttock discussions and hilarious fig roll anecdotes. I’ll pop up all the photos from the night in the next entry x

Thank you again guys for all your support – I know I keep saying it but it really does mean the world to me. A huge thank you also to Jae, Kirstin and Auntie Heather for all donating through our justgiving page - we’re now just shy of £2,000 raised online which is brilliant.

 Happy almost Spring and may your days be ever long john free! (at least until October) x

Guys I just wanted to say a huge thank you to all the brilliant chaps and chapesses at Manor Field Junior School for a wonderful day x My lovely friend Jenny teaches in Year 6 (big shout to Upper Jenny Bunkle!) and I was lucky enough to get the chance to talk with them about the row as part of their Democracy Week before Christmas. After talking in the school assembly I then had the pleasure of just being able to sit down and chat with the Year 6’s about their forthcoming school elections and answer any questions they might have had about the rowing challenge. Apart from scaring everyone with my ugly blistered hands (and a slight case of mistaken identity where Tyras thought I was chiefly responsible for cleaning the floors of Primark!) it was a fantastic morning – I thought Jen’s class were just wonderful. A huge thank you to Amy, Georgia, Kirtsy, Abigail, Chloe, Bradley, Elisse, Anna, Shelley, James, Ryan, Zoe, Tristen, Tyras (the lovable scamp!), Tiffany, Leah, Jordan and Alex for my amazing book with all your drawings (Bradley gets first prize for giving me cool red hair!) – I will absolutely treasure it. Finally my apologies for getting the boys into trouble… I sat at their table during Jenny’s maths lesson and talked about cricket and free running rather than letting them complete their potion drawings – I am a terrible person but I’m prepared to make it worse for myself by blaming Tyras!

Thank you again guys for a wonderful day and I hope I’ll be able to come back and visit you all again very soon x

Current Location – Braganca, Brazil

26514 km rowed… 13561 km remaining

Now I know that a rather unfortunate by-product of the rowing has been a constant and disturbing monolgue on my part concerning my terribly battered buttocks but the weather has been so bitter of late that I’ve been plodding with rather numb cheeks for too long – five snow falls in six weeks and wind chilling temperatures of -5 degrees centigrade have forced me to wear not one but two pairs of long johns causing a slight waddle and a lot of very unpleasant itchiness!! This has been a long but really good month for the row – despite all the rotten weather we’ve managed to clock up just over 1500km since the turn of the year (the fourth best month in terms of distance since the row started back in May 2008) and a really lovely flurry of donations have come in. One of the most fantastic and humbling things for me during the challenge has been the support of all the brilliant young chaps and chappesses in town and earlier this month Stu (one of Fay’s boys… Fay of fig roll fame!) organised a charity gig at the Red Lion Hotel in Basingstoke. The night was a sell out with over 130 people and the guys raised an amazing £256 for Breakthrough – it was such a success that they’ve booked another date for Saturday 5th March and as they’re all brilliantly talented it would be well worth popping down to watch them in action… more exciting details to follow when the boys confirm the line up.

Here’s Stu below in full flow… (and yes ladies, he is available!)

And a very busy Red Lion!

With just over ten months of the row remaining it was important to get off to a flying start in a bid to raise the profile of the challenge on a corporate level too – I’m delighted that David Taylor and his company 2010media have joined the team. We met up with Craig and Jacqui from The Escape and Simon from Raycon to talk through the row and how we could raise more on a national scale for Breakthrough - Dave had lots of fantastic ideas so I’m more confident than ever that we can hit our £55,000 target. I also had the chance to row at The Ark for the ‘Fit for Business Event’ – it was a great opportunity to talk about the challenge and Breakthrough with some key decision makers in town, as well as our MP for Basingstoke and Deane, Maria Miller, and Destination Basingstoke CEO Felicity Edwards. I’ve got my fingers crossed that the support that Maria and Felicity have shown for the row again helps to spur companies into action to keep the pennies coming in. Clive and Karrin, who organised the event, donated £100 and we collected another £50 that morning alone which was wonderful.

A huge thank you to David, Linda, Seimon and Jack for all donating via the justgiving page. I’d especially like to mention Dave (who’s a lovely guy) - he donated £100 in memory of his mother Edna who very sadly passed lost her battle with cancer on Christmas Day. 500km of our Brazilian route was rowed in Edna’s honour x

We’ve just had a funky new official facebook page set up too in a bid to boost funding – please do join if you can x And thank you so much for all your wonderful messages of support on the original facebook page - it keeps me ticking over in more wonderful fashion than two pairs of chafing long johns x

Guys I just wanted to put up a post about an amazing woman called Kelly who vey sadly died from breast cancer on Boxing Day – she leaves behind a gorgeous little boy called Finley, her husband Jason, and a wonderful family. Many will know Kel as a beautiful woman with an incredible fighting spirit – she is one of the strongest, most loving and inspirational people I have ever known.

Jason set up a facebook page for Kel to raise awareness of breast cancer and her tremendously brave battle against it – if anyone would like to write anything on her wall I know it would mean so much to her family.

God bless darling x

Current Location – Macapa, Brazil

25111 km rowed… 14964 km remaining

Time for the old winter thermals to make an appearance! I always look forward to the thought of rowing in freezing temperatures to show rugged grit, manly defiance  and steely determination but as soon as it actually happens I find it utterly miserable – for the second time this year I’ve rowed in snow and if I can get away with not seeing it again during this challenge I will be absolutely delighted. Despite the numb bum, the build up to Christmas in the town centre is always exciting and the virtual plod has taken us into Brazil – this time last year we were in virtual Russia which made perfect sense with the weather… I think I’ve properly messed up the route this time round! As we hit the 18 month point in the challenge I popped into the BBC Radio Berkshire studio for the Sarah Walker show to talk about the row  - the interview starts at about 2 hours and 11 mins in and if you’d like to  have a listen please do so here. There’s also a really cool piece on the Breakthrough Breast Cancer website and I’m hoping it will help us raise some corporate sponsorship as we gear up for the last 12 months of the row- we’ve just hit the £11,000 mark which is absolutely fantastic.

Earlier in the month I met up with my good friend Andrew McCargow who works as a professional photographer… we met at night in the freezing rain in the middle of the War Memorial Park - he simply asked me to bring a rowing machine and some tight fitting tops. The result of our liason were a series of outrageous photographs involving multiple rowers – if only there were four of us… I could have had this wrapped up by last Easter! I have popped two of my favourites below.

Andrew is as cool as he is talented – if you’d like to know more about him and see his amazing work please check out his website.

A huge thank you to Sam, Andrew, Paula, Simon, Paul, Bhikhu, Rob, Gwen, Jon and Simon for donating online through the justgiving page and especially to Harvey and Carol for collecting all the left over change from an Indian meal that came to a rather wonderful £50!  I’d also like to thank my good friend Martin (who you might remember from the September blog as running as a gorilla in The Great Gorilla Run in boiling heat over the summer) for giving me a figgy pudding… it’s  like a fig roll but you can add ice cream to it and not look ridiculous!

This last year has been a great one for the row (we’ve covered 17,000km in the last 12 months and rasied over £11,000 to date) and the support has, as ever, been brilliant and utterly vital to me – without it I would have come a cropper a long, long time ago. Hopefully this coming year will bring even more pennies for Breakthrough – they deserve everything we can muster for them.

Thank you again and have a fantastic Christmas and New Year x

Current Location – Puerto Ayacucho, Venezuela

22887 km rowed… 17187 km remaining

Good heavens! Buttocks of burning agony!! On Saturday 7th James Burrows and I began rowing in the attempt to set two individual endurance world records. If Jim could row for a minimum of 25 hours, he would set a new record for the heavyweight 30-39 age category – I had to row for 26 hours to break the current lightweight 20-29 record or 28 hours to set the overall lightweight record.  Jim and I started out at 9am on the Saturday and with all the football and rugby on throughout the day the time really flew. At about 7pm though the old left buttock really started playing up and I popped on the ‘crevice cushion deluxe’, superbly designed by Johnny Stock – I nearly cried with relief! Eating was a bit of a tricky one (we burned just over 27,000 calories between us) and the noodles we couldn’t eat during our ten minute break at the end of the shift tended to be a bit gloopy the following hour! I usually don’t have any problem eating anything at any time but from 3.30am onwards the thought of anything just made by stomach churn – by 7am (with 22 hours gone and 8 left to go) I was beginning to feel really rough – Jim kept wolfing down his jaffa cakes and I just had to keep picking at malt loaf to keep me ticking. 11am was a bit of a low point – Jim set his new record at 10am and by 11am his back just gave in, we’d been rowing alongside each other for all that time and losing him was just awful. Thankfully by midday by brother was perched on Jim’s rower talking me through the last three hours and the rest of the family were with me for the last shift which was brilliant. I wolfed down a roast at home and passed out at about 6pm last night with fig roll nightmares replaced by ones involving malt loaf and a big tube of arnicare! It was a really tough slog but Jim set a new 30-39 HWT record of 26 hours – I stayed on for a bit longer and set a new overall lightweight time of 30 hours – I was just very lucky to have the family with me for the last three hours to pull me through it.

Jim and I recorded some footage of the row ( I apologise for all it’s cheesiness!) and if you’d like to have a watch, it can be seen in 3 parts – Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. 

A huge thank you to Patricia and Russell for donating online through the justgiving page - and please keep the comments coming on the rowing facebook page, I love reading them and they really do keep me going x

Current Location – Pacora, Panama

21626 km rowed… 18449 km remaining

Very special time as it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month and my buttocks are on fire! After 227 hours and 43 minutes of absolute horror on a rower, I managed (those goodness knows how!) to set a  new world record for the fastest million metre row in the 20-29 age category. My plan was to try and row 100km a day for ten days straight – an extra 40km per rowing day to what I would normally have to do – starting at 7am each day and hopefully finishing for 5pm. Unfortunately the time on the machine increased as the days went past and by the seventh day I had to row for nearly 13 hours to hit the 100km target. The third day was the hardest by a country mile – I closed my eyes at about 7.45am that morning just to try and relax into a steady rhythm and ended up falling asleep and subsequently falling off the rowing machine! By day eight I was rowing like an absolute zombie – I had hoped that the last couple of days would inject some urgency and excitement into me but the whole thing was just so mentally grinding and horrible that I searched for every possible excuse for just packing up and going home. Fortunately Graham from security was there to shout terrible jokes and abusive comments at me (bless his cottons!) and somehow we bumbled through it together. A huge thank you to Barbara for supplying a tube of arnicare – I applied three applications the day after the row and as horrific as it sounds, my buttocks have never been more grateful!

Now people knock them and say they look like dog biscuits but I think the success of the million metre row was dependent on the power of the fig roll – these biscuity beauties sustained me throughout and when I was particuarly struggling, I found enormous comfort in nibbling the pastry around the fig whilst rowing one handed. My opinion is shared by athletes and rock stars around the world….

Last week we had a visit from the lovely Briony at South Today – she’d previously been in Dorset that morning to follow up a story of a poor deer that had been kicked to death and then she was forced to listen to me wittering on about the benefits of fig rolls for an hour! I promise I talked  so much about Breakthrough but my one contribution in the aired interview was that I was simply terrified of sharks – the shame is unbearable! If you’d like to have a watch, you can do so here - please keep an eye out for Fay (who bless her only stopped by for two minutes and ended up being interviewed and staying for nearly two hours!) – she is my chief supplier of all fig rolls, though I have to mention her sons Harry, Martin and Stuart who do most of the delivering!

A huge thank you to Sandra, Mark, Bells, Tracey & Richard, Joe, Robert, Barbara (she donated her £25 lottery winnings!) and Victor for all donating through the justgiving page - we’ve now raised over £10,550 which is just brilliant – hopefully we’ve got many more pennies to come in over the next few months. Anna from Breakthrough called me last Thursday to say I’d been made their first fundraising champion of the month – such a wonderful honour but absolutely nothing to do with me, all to do with you and the generous donations that everyone has made – I can’t thank you enough x

The next challenge is the longest continual row at the end of this month – I’m hoping to try and break the current record for my age category of 25 hours… sometimes I think I must just really hate myself! All progress can be followed as always on twitter - just general ramblings about fig rolls and the condition of my poor old bum… I promise that is literally all I talk about! Thank you again for all your continued support x

Current Location – Tegucigalpa, Honduras

20249 km rowed… 19826 km remaining

Courtesy of the lovely guys and girls at The Escape we’ve got a cool new banner up by the rower – I know I’m going to be mocked for saying this but it was a very exciting morning as a result… please remember that I don’t get out much and I stare at Primark for seven hours a day!

So, without further ado….

Graham and I do a little adjusting – still wonky methinks… so totally Graham’s fault and not mine.

With Craig and Jacqui from The Escape – both lovely and much less hairy to cuddle than Martin the Gorilla.

And back again to the rowing plod…just got to remember to pull the handle next time!

If you get the chance, there should be an interview on BBC South Today on Saturday 25th on the row – I’ll pop a link up as soon as it’s available. Once again thank you to everyone for all your continued and wonderful support – it keeps me going more than you know x

Current Location – Guatemala City, Guatemala

20,062 km rowed… 20,013 km remaining

At last… we’re halfway through the challenge! After 10 weeks of virtual rowing through Mexico, I’ve just arrived in Guatemala… the difficulty being the closer we get to sunny South America, the more winter sets in in Basingstoke! It’s a great feeling knowing it’s downhill from here on in. Met the lovely Molly Forbes from Heart FM today for the second time during the row - many thanks to Harvey, Dan, Ben and Carl for staying by me to be interviewed. You can listen to the first interview with Molly here – the next interview should hopefully go live on The Breakfast Show this Wednesday.

Just a few days ago I met up with a lovely chap called Martin in town – next Saturday he’ll run 7km in London in The Great Gorilla Run  but stopped by the rower on a training run for a quick cuddle. You can follow his progress on twitter.  

And here Martin is again in his full glory…

I’ve had a bit of a funny rowing month because of work but I’m clinging on to the world leader board in terms of kilometres rowed in a season by the skin of my teeth. If I can keep the average over 16,540 km for the season, we should have a another world record by the end of April next year.

My third record attempt will start next Monday as I attempt to row 1000km in ten days and set a fastest million metre row for my age and weight category. I’ve not rowed further than 87km in a day (and then had two weeks off through sore buttocks!) so I’m a bit twitchy but hope it will be good training for the longest continual rowing record that James and I will attempt together in early November.

A huge thank you to Kevin, Paula, Steven, Bex, Sal, James and Cogz for all sponsoring the challenge through the justgiving page  (we’re now  up to a fantastic £10,200 for Breakthrough) and as always to Sam and Faye for wonderful donations of chocolate and fig rolls x

Finally, and I know he’s going to give me such a thrashing for putting this up, but I found a picture of Graham (the security supervisor who’s become a bit of a celeb with the young chaps and ladies who follow the row in town) and had to show it to the world. I can’t even describe how hard it is to get him to be in a picture, let alone wearing an elf hat, but here he is in all his magnificence… the big softie.

Current location – Palerique, Mexico

19331 km rowed… 20744 km remaining

Brilliant donations in the last few days have seen the money raised for Breakthrough just tip over the £10,000 which is marvellous. Had a mini panic at one point as we stuck on £9,999 – however I managed to scrabble together another 14 five penny pieces from around the house to complete a £5 bag and we were in business!

I was very lucky to meet the lovely people of the Basingstoke Writer’s Circle last Tuesday - Bruce, a good friend of mine, is working on a documentary for the rowing challenge and got in contact with Joan and the guys to see if they would write some poetry for the project. It was a fantasic evening and the poems they had been working on were superb, even giving the impression that I knew what I was doing, which I found hysterical but loved them for it. Here’s a photo of them just below and I’m hoping I can put their poems on the blog very soon.

I’m now hopefully just over two weeks away from the half way point of the challenge. The support from everyone is, as always, just brilliant but my limbs have just felt a bit heavy over the last few weeks and I think psycologically it will make such a huge difference to get to that half way marker – downhill all the way to the finish at the end of next year!

Huge thank you to John for making me a brilliant new seat pad for the rower – nicknamed by John as the ‘Crevice Cushion Deluxe’. Unfortunately he had some last minute testing issues and on discovering that there were no vent holes into the gortex cover when the seat took John’s weight, the escaping air had no-where to go and opened one of the seams down the side. With 20km remaining last Saturday, I did exactly the same – my hefty buttocks slapped down so heavily that the whoopy cushion effect and resulting release of air  nearly blew out half of Primark. I also had nearly two hours of very paranoid rowing after John convinced me that I’d spent a year and three months with my seat the wrong way round! Bless him for sparing my blushes by checking it out when he got back home to assure me it was okay .

A huge thank you too to Susan and Joost for donating via the justgiving page and Sam and Faye for their continued chocolate and fig roll support x