Rowing in November

10 Nov 2009 posted by Dave Holby

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