Rowing – Heights of Madness

Marble Arch to Arc de Triomphe – 300 miles of running, rowing and cycling

Party poopers. That’s the French. We had run 90 miles in relay from Marble Arch in Central London to Dover; we had rowed 26 painful miles across a lumpy, brown English Channel; we had cycled 185 miles from Calais to the Arc de Triomphe in the chaotic heart of Paris. After cycling a loop around…

London to Paris: running, rowing and cycling – please sponsor!

PLEASE SPONSOR TEAM ARCH TO ARC HERE Remember comedian John Bishop crossing the English Channel in a rowing boat to raise money for Sport Relief? Bishop raised more than £3million for charity in his so-called ‘week of hell’. He cycled from Paris to Calais and rowed the Dover Strait before running three marathons in three days to reach…

The hardiness of the long-distance rower

I am well-acquainted with the loneliness of the long-distance runner; now I understand a little of the hardiness of the long-distance rower. It was on the second of two four-hour stints yesterday that the magnitude of rowing the 20-odd miles of the Dover Strait became glaringly apparent. We were rowing across the waters of Langstone Harbour on England’s…

Rowing the English Channel: a (tricky) introduction

I have long admired the graceful fluency of rowing that masks the reality of the brute force being applied. This fluency is more apparent, naturally, the more there are in a boat, like in the Boat Race when eight men pull in perfect, beautiful symmetry. We are a team of four – although possibly swelling…