Christmas marathon

I am happily exhausted and having a bit of difficulty typing due to the blisters that are now emerging on my fingers - why? you may ask?

I have just completed my first marathon on the rowing machine this morning.

I got up at 09:00, ate a whole bunch of sweet potatoes, drank a pint of cold water and got my head into gear for the pain that was about to commence.

These are the precautions I took to minimize any discomfort:

• Cycling shorts for extra padding to avoid a sore bum
• Taped up heels with micro-pore to avoid blisters
  
• Cycling gloves to soak up sweat and minimize blisters on my hands (not that successful)
• Tied my hair back to stop it falling in my face
• Lined up two water bottles and some broken chocolate within easy reach for fuel and liquid during the row
• Enrolled the help of Chris to feed me chocolate and change music / films during the row

42,195 metres is a challenging distance. I looked at my half marathon time to help me gauge a race plan which was to:

a) finish the marathon
b) do it in less than 4 hours

I managed to achieve both goals with a time of 3:50:55.8 at a pace of 2:44.1 average stroke rate of 18.

Check out my position on the C2 World ranking site
(Technically it looks like I'm number one!)

My splits are as follows:

8500 = 46:14.9 = 2:43.2 = 18 s/m
17000 = 46:29.2 = 2:44.0 = 17 s/m
25500 = 48:12.6 = 2:50.1 = 18 s/m
34000 = 46:31.8 = 2:44.2 = 18 s/m
42195 = 43:27.3 = 2:39.0 = 20 s/m

I was in reasonable comfort for the first half of the session and was very happy to see when the metres displayed 19,000 metres to go. I felt like I had the worst part over with - I was feeling quite strong at this point. The worst section was with 8,000 metres left to go - I was feeling weary and tired. My bum was numb on the left side and I could feel the blisters starting to build up on my fingers and palms. I battled through with the help of Chris who fed me chocolate in the last 4k. He filmed the last 1k of the marathon so I will upload it when I get a chance - I can't imagine it's a pretty sight.
Overall I am happy that I finished the marathon and its another C2 ranking piece completed for my 2011 - 2012 season challenge. I'm off to slob out on the sofa now...... although that's not as comfy as usual because of some chaffing on my bum cheeks - or is that too much detail?