Rowing with the greats

The beckoning Olympics pose a challenge to the non athletic.

To be candid, I am not athletic. I play bad but entertaining tennis; I love a game of cricket; I’m not one for football, nor Rugby; and I liked rowing long ago.

But thrice this year I have encountered great athletes and been allowed to join them in their sport. At the Manchester velodrome I was allowed to cycle with several of our top paralympians.

Then out in Redbridge, East of London, I cycled again, this time with the legendary and delightful Mark Cavendish.

Today I got off the wheels and onto the rowing machine with four-time Olympic champion rower Sir Matthew Pinsent.

Pinsent believes that if each of us rowed the 2km distance (for which he still holds the British record) once a week, our life chances in fitness and survival would be considerably advanced.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Cathy Newman, and I undertook a challenge to see how near the great man’s British Record we could get – on a rowing machine. Actually the machines were pretty sumptuous – but still not much of a match for the boat Pinsent did his number in.

So there we were, the three of us in a line.

You don’t realise how far 2km is, nor how to judge how you should divide your efforts over the time span. I gave the machine hell in the first 500 meters of our 2km challenge – kept the rate up to about 34 per minute  – then a fell back a bit before Sir Matthew gave me a verbal kick up the bum to resume the hell.

I was amazed to finish a mere 3 minutes and 13 seconds slower than his own fine British record.

All I know is that I needed a very large bowl of porridge and a five mile cycle ride from Putney Bridge to my office to put matters right afterwards.

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