Full Marathon — Ten Years Later, Still Stupid Enough

Then start more like this:

I’m not entirely sure when “maybe I’ll do the 4-minute piece later” turned into “I’ll row a full marathon tonight.”

But apparently it did.

So at 10pm, once work was done, family stuff was sorted and the house was settling down, I got onto the slides in the BigShed and started rowing.

Three hours later:

42,195m — 3:00:19.4

2:08.2/500m

166W average

24 spm

And yes — 19.4 seconds over three hours.

That one is going to annoy me.

The target had become sub-3, but this wasn’t exactly a carefully prepared marathon attempt. There had been no marathon-specific training. Over the previous few days I’d been bouncing around different distances on the slides — 2k, 1k, 500m, one minute, 5k, 6k, half marathon — and then apparently decided the logical next step was 42,195 metres.

At 10 o’clock at night.

Because apparently sensible decisions are overrated.

The First Half Was the Easy Bit

The early running was actually pretty comfortable.

I was sitting mainly around 2:05–2:08 pace, taking drinks from the CamelBak and picking at sweets and flapjack as I went.

The setup worked well. CamelBak beside the erg meant I could drink without properly stopping, and the food was close enough to grab quickly.

Then, somewhere after halfway, the marathon started behaving like a marathon.

The upper back became progressively more sore. Not painful, just deeply tired from repeating the same movement for hours.

The hands started heading toward blisters.

The mat got soaked.

Then the slide trays got soaked.

Then everything got soaked.

By that stage it looked less like an indoor rowing setup and more like someone had tipped a bucket of water over the floor.

The Strange 2:14 Split

There’s one ugly-looking section in the splits:

2:14.2/500m

That wasn’t me blowing up.

I actually jumped off the erg to sort out the shed door and close it properly to keep the noise in.

Because when you’re rowing a marathon around midnight, apparently being considerate to everybody sleeping nearby is still part of the pacing strategy.

The Difficult Bit

The middle-to-late section was where things became uncomfortable.

There were patches around 2:10–2:14, the hands were getting sore, and my upper back had absolutely had enough.

By then, the sensible option would probably have been to stop.

Instead, I kept going.

And if I’m honest, I think it was a combination of stupidness, sheer bloody-mindedness and one little boy’s question in the morning that got me through.

I kept thinking about Adam waking up and asking:

“Did you finish it?”

I really didn’t want the answer to be no.

Somehow, There Was Still a Finish

The surprising bit was that I managed to pick the pace back up again.

The final 5,270m came out at roughly 2:04.9 pace.

After nearly three hours.

That probably pleased me more than anything else about the session.

I hadn’t completely emptied the tank halfway through. There was still enough left to actually finish the thing rather than simply survive it.

Almost Ten Years

Only afterwards did I properly look back at the last time I rowed a full marathon.

19 December 2016.

Almost ten years ago.

That one was:

42,195m — 2:36:24.2

1:51.2/500m

255W average

Obviously a completely different level of performance.

But it was also a different time, a different version of me, and a very different training background.

This one came nearly a decade later, on slides, with no specific marathon preparation, after a normal working day, starting at 10pm because family life comes first.

So I’m not particularly interested in pretending the two performances are comparable.

The interesting bit is that ten years later I was still stupid enough to sit down and do another one.

Done

42,195 metres.

3:00:19.4.

Nineteen seconds away from sub-3.

Hands battered.

Upper back cooked.

Mat soaked.

Slide trays soaked.

Finished just after 1am.

Would I do it again?

Probably.

Which is perhaps the stupidest part of all.