Twenty-One Kilometres Before Running

The first half-marathon distance I covered was on a rowing machine.

Or close enough to one that my backside was not in the mood for technical arguments.

By May 2012, the rowing machine had quietly become one of the most important characters in the story. That sounds ridiculous. It was a machine in a gym. It did not have a personality, unless you count the ability to make time slow down and expose every weakness in my legs, lungs, back, shoulders, hands, attention span, and general will to remain seated.

But it mattered.

Running was still the thing in the distance. The marathon was still the absurd goal I had put in motion at the beginning, but Britt had been very clear with me: I was not going to run just because I had declared that one day I wanted to run a marathon. At 142.6 kg, with years of sitting, smoking, poor food, and general bodily neglect behind me, running before I was ready would not have been brave. It would have been stupid, and probably quite a creative way of injuring myself.

The rowing machine was different.

Low impact. Full body. Unforgiving, but not in the same bone-rattling way as running. It let me build the engine without asking my knees, hips, and feet to carry the full bill straight away. It gave me numbers, too, which meant it fit beautifully into the whole no more mr fat guy experiment: do the thing, write it down, let the numbers tell the truth, try again.

Building The Engine

The first proper Jetts session back in February had been four sets of 500 metres. The times were 2:30, 2:30, 2:40, 2:40, and I was out of puff, struggling to keep my knees in, and absurdly pleased with myself for rowing 2 km before breakfast.

The Sixty-Minute Dare

Three months later, Britt mentioned a 60-minute row.

This was becoming a pattern. Britt would say something in the calm, practical manner of a trainer putting an idea on the table, and my brain would receive it as a dare. The 60-minute row lodged itself in there, sat quietly for a while, and then refused to leave. On 11 May I added an extra gym session, warmed up on the bike, put Iron Maiden in my ears, and rowed for an hour.

11.217 km.

Not so long before that, 500 metres had been a proper effort. Now I had sat there for sixty minutes, pulling handle to chest, sliding forward, pulling again, watching numbers move, and somehow made it past 11 km. It was a strange kind of achievement because I had gone absolutely nowhere. I was still in the gym. Same machine. Same floor. Same early morning. But internally something had moved.

A Pre-Dawn Half Marathon

The following weekend got messy in a normal-life sort of way. The plan had been to hit the gym early on Saturday and have a crack at the 21 km row Britt had also floated. Helen was away doing a market down south on Sunday, so the timing looked useful. Then the gym was shut because they were cleaning it before an open day.

So much for the grand athletic plan.

Instead there was Grasshopper Soccer, walks with the dog, taking Kian to the local playground, and the sort of weekend food that happens when two males are home alone and nobody sensible is supervising the menu too closely. There was also the Champions League final, with kickoff at 2:45 am Western Australian time. A man preparing for a long gym session clearly needed football-related sleep disruption as well.

By Sunday night, though, the idea had re-formed.

Early to bed. Up at 3:00 am. Piece of toast. Glass of water. Gym at 3:30.

There is a particular feeling to those pre-dawn gym sessions that still sits somewhere in my memory. The house quiet. The world outside mostly asleep. The body not yet fully convinced that this is a reasonable use of time. The strange little private negotiation that happens before the day has enough momentum to help you. At 3:00 am, no crowd is watching. No one is impressed. There is only the decision to put feet on the floor and go.

I went.

The warm-up was five minutes on the bike, 2.104 km, then onto the rower for the big stupid thing.

Twenty-one kilometres.

Two hours, eight minutes, twenty-eight seconds.

It was not fast. I did not go after it like some indoor-rowing hero trying to rip the handle off the chain. The plan was slow and steady, and that was the right plan. I had a towel nearby because I was going to sweat. I had a water bottle nearby because two hours without fluids would have been idiotic. I had enough sense, by then, to understand that endurance depended on effort and setup. Small practical things. Towel. Water. Pace. Patience.

What The Body Told Me

The biggest surprise was that my heart and lungs coped.

That was huge.

Not easy, exactly. I was working. I built up a decent sweat and I had to keep drinking. But the breathing did not collapse. The cardiovascular system did not throw a tantrum. From that point of view, I felt as though I could probably have kept going a while longer.

That was the first real hint that the engine was being built.

Everything else had plenty to say. I got a small blister on one finger. My backside started filing formal complaints. My neck and shoulders ached. My legs and back did not enjoy straightening up once the row was done. And boredom, dear lord, boredom. A rowing machine over that distance is a wonderful instrument of personal development if what you would like to develop is the ability to sit with your own discomfort while a number creeps upward at a frankly offensive speed.

There is nowhere to hide.

On a walk, the scenery changes. On a run, even a slow one, the ground passes underneath you. On the rower, the world stays still and the mind starts looking for weaknesses. A small ache becomes a reason to stop. A blister becomes a legal argument. A sore backside becomes a whole philosophical position. The distance remaining looks too large. The distance already done starts whispering that surely this is enough.

That morning, for once, I did not let the whispers win.

When I finally peeled myself off the rower, it hurt to stand properly. I was locked up, awkward, and walking in a way that no one would describe as graceful. Naturally, the Facebook announcement focused on the dignity of the moment. My arse muscles were locked, I was walking like something unfortunate was about to happen, but I had rowed 21 km.

Get in.

That little bit of silliness mattered too. I was tired, sore, and proud, and the humour stopped it becoming too grand. There is a version of this story that could try to make every milestone sound noble. That would be nonsense. A lot of the time I was just a sweaty bloke in a gym before sunrise, pleased with himself and physically negotiating with basic tasks like standing upright.

Still. It was proof.

The daily details around that row tell their own story. After the gym there was a bacon, egg, mushroom and cheese sandwich with orange juice. Then a bus ride, rest, and a nap. Then, as if one breakfast was not enough for a man who had just dragged himself through two hours on a rowing machine, a long mac and a bacon and egg sandwich. Later there was a morning walk, banana with yoghurt, nuts and seeds, then a lunchtime walk and a wholemeal roll with chicken, cheese and avocado. More banana in the afternoon. Meatballs, wholemeal pasta, sauce with lentils and vegetables in the evening. About four litres of water across the day.

That is not a purity story. Thank goodness.

It is a fuelling story. A recovery story. A learning story. I had done something big enough that the rest of the day had to support it. Fluids mattered. Food mattered. Staying gently active mattered. Sleep mattered. The body was no longer something I could ignore all day and then complain about when it failed me.

The body had done its part. Now I had to do mine.

Not Broken

The next morning is one of the reasons this chapter matters. I did not vanish into a week of heroic suffering. I got up at 3:45 am, went back to the gym at 4:00, and did a weights session. Five-minute bike warm-up. A 500 metre row in 1:53. Leg press, chest press, assisted chin-ups, seated row, triceps, biceps, shoulder press, abs, stretching.

The day after rowing 21 km, I was not broken.

That was new information.

It did not mean I had become invincible. It did mean the work was being absorbed. It meant the earlier weeks of water, walking, gym sessions, food awareness, and sleep had changed how I recovered. A few months earlier, playing soccer with Kian for half an hour could wipe me out for the weekend. Now I could row for over two hours before breakfast and be back training the next day.

I do not want to skim past how strange that must have felt.

When change happens day by day, it can be hard to notice the size of it. The daily increments are small. A few seconds faster. A bit more water. A better lunch. A slightly earlier bedtime. A gym session survived. A bad day handled without torching the whole thing. But then a day like 21 May arrives and the accumulated work shows itself. Not as a miracle. As evidence.

The first 500 metres had once been challenging.

Now I had rowed 21 km.

Two days later, I hit 34 seconds for a 200 metre row and was immediately thinking about shaving off another second or two. Again, that detail matters. The half-marathon row had not been a finish line. It had become one more piece of the training language. Long and slow one day. Short and sharp another. Weights. Push-ups. Recovery. Water. Sleep. Repeat.

This was the point where I was starting to understand endurance as a practice rather than a personality trait.

I had always assumed other people were simply made differently. Runners, cyclists, gym people, endurance people, whatever label applied. They had something I did not. Discipline, perhaps. Natural fitness. A different brain. A less complicated relationship with discomfort. And maybe some of that is true in individual ways, but the rower was teaching me something more useful: endurance could be built.

Not declared. Built.

One 500 metre row at a time. Then four of them. Then 11.217 km in an hour. Then 21 km in 2:08:28. Then, a couple of weeks later, another 21 km row in 2:07:46, forty-two seconds quicker. Tiny improvement over a ridiculous length of time, and I was delighted with it.

Proof Before Running

It also changed the marathon goal.

Until then, the marathon still sat mostly in imagination. I had chosen it because it was the hardest thing I could think of, but I was not yet a runner. I was a man preparing to become someone who might one day run. There is a difference, and Britt protected that difference. No running until ready. Build the engine first. Strengthen the body. Use the rowing machine. Let the work take as long as it takes.

The 21 km row did not prove I could run a marathon.

It proved I could stay with an endurance effort when the novelty had gone, when the body was complaining, when the mind was bored, and when stopping would have been very easy to justify. That is a different kind of proof, and maybe a more important one.

Because later, in the Perth Marathon, in London, in Bunbury, and across Australia, that same pattern would return again and again. Not the rowing motion, obviously. The inner mechanics. The decision to keep going when nothing dramatic is happening except discomfort and time. The practical setup. The fluids. The food. The boring middle. The small negotiations with pain that is not injury. The need to know the difference between a warning and a whinge.

HAA was eventually made of huge outdoor days, support crew logistics, feet, weather, towns, verges, highways, road trains, and the odd deeply questionable meal. But some of the mental foundation was built in the most unromantic possible place: on a gym rower before dawn, watching numbers change.

There was no scenery.

There was no applause.

There was just the handle, the slide, the water bottle, the towel, the clock, and me slowly learning that a body I had written off could be trained to keep going.

Twenty-one kilometres before running.

That was the point.

Long before public races, medals, finish-line photos, and the strange moment when I could call myself a runner without feeling like a fraud, I sat on a machine and rowed the distance of a half marathon.

Then I got up, walked badly, ate breakfast twice, drank a small reservoir, and carried the proof into the rest of the day.

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