Returning to Indoor Rowing
I started rowing when I was 13, a nerdy, very unfit kid at Bedford Modern School. Little did I know, it would change my life. Five years of intense training, lots of defeats, including sinking in the National Schools in 2008 but also happy highlights such as making Captain and winning the before mentioned event in 2009.
However, I left the sport with two takeaways aside from the good memories, how sore my back was, and how much I hated doing the Concept 2 ergo. Any river rower would tell you the sheer fear of doing an ergo test, the absolute exhaustion doing a 2k or a 30 minute full effort row.
I drifted away from the sport during my time at Durham University, a top tier rowing institution, despite rowing briefly as a lightweight there, both at college and uni level. I found the training hard, and I lost my love for it. I wanted to experience other things, balance my life a bit after spending so many years in the rowing bubble. I then joined the corporate world and the years drifted by.
In 2015, three weeks before the British Indoor Rowing Championships, I heard that they moved the race from Birmingham (where I raced once in 2006 as a junior) to London, near where I lived. With rushed training — I raced, and got the third fastest time, but was disqualified because I failed to make weight, at 76.8 kg (1.8 kg too heavy). I was so frustrated and embarrassed.
In 2016, I took it more seriously, I trained for longer, raced in the Welsh Indoor Rowing Championships, despite having to stand in the entire train journey as it was full due to a Rugby match, and got Silver and a personal best of 1.30.3. In the big race, the British Champs, I under performed, getting 1.30.9 for the 500m and coming a really disappointing 5th. What infuriated me was that this was due to an influx of fast rowers, I would have gotten a medal the year before. With two failed campaigns, I pretty much ditched indoor rowing.
I thought nothing of rowing, till 2020. A pandemic happened. Everybody was stuck at home. My access to the gym, where I swam a lot, stopped. My running races, cancelled. So I tried to do what I could, I watched fitness YouTube videos, I ran the same lap around my local park. But I had no motivation. I saw during that summer they had the British Virtual Rowing Race. It looked fun, and I was gutted I couldn’t compete because I didn’t have a rowing machine. I hadn’t touched a rowing machine for over a year, in 2019 I pulled my back badly and I blamed the occasional touch of the ergo when I saw the gym.
Yet my back continued to be sore. My partner noted both my lack of motivation and my poor mental health from all the career uncertainty, and gave me the green light to purchase a rowing machine, even though it would have been noisy and take up a lot of space in a small London flat. I managed to over pay one from Ebay, such was the demand with a three month waiting list for a new one.
Since then, it has changed my life. Rowing has come a long way since my school days. The excitement of uploading scores online to compare scores connecting to virtual challenges (currently trying very slowly to cross the Atlantic), acts as a fantastic motivator. Most indoor rowing races are now virtual too, allowing me to race in places I could have only dreamed of. For example, I competed in the Australian Indoor Rowing Championships, getting Silver, despite having to row at 4 am and weighing in at 2 am. Even just making weight was a great way to get fit, cutting out sugar and junk food. Surprisingly, its also strengthened my back!
I am someway from my peak fitness, perhaps that’s not even possible now that I turned 30, but it’s been the best investment I’ve ever had. It’s given me goals, as I try, for the third time in my adult life, to get a medal in the British Championships but it’s given me more than that, it’s given me passion for life again, I need that more than ever in 2020.
There is a lot more we can do in the sport of Indoor Rowing, a sport that is growing rapidly but that’s for another post!
