How to Row a Marathon on a Concept 2 Indoor Rower

Yesterday I rowed the ‘equivalent’ of a full marathon, 26.2 miles or 42,195m on a Concept 2 indoor rower at our nearby gym in Kimberley, Notts. It took 3 hours and 15 minutes, and wasn’t for charity, it was just for the sheer hell of doing it. I didn’t achieve any records, but it was mentally a tough challenge for me, and I’ve written about it here to encourage anyone else thinking of having a go.

This post talks through how I rowed a 42.2km marathon on a Concept 2 indoor rowing machine, including training, hydration, pacing, controlling sweat on my hands, and eating during the row.

Since doing the Zermatt run, I carried on running the hills in the Alps, culminating in a run up and down the Col du Colombiere on the morning of this year’s Tour de France stage. Turns out that was a right daft idea! The number of people stood on the course triggered my ‘man ego’ idiocy and I legged it down the hill far, far too quickly, damaging my right Achilles in the process. Running curtailed for a few weeks, I’ve taken to the rowing machine as a way to stay fit.

Since starting back on the road to fitness back in Dec 2017, I’ve shifted from 90Kg down to around 73Kg which, being below 75Kg, makes me a ‘lightweight’ on the Concept 2, and I’m in the 40 to 49 age category, at 46. This particular machine has a fabulous little computer embedded in it which gathers data as you row, and enables you to compare your rows with your other rows, and with other people in your age and weight category worldwide. Concept 2 have an online ranking system which lets you compare yourself with other indoor rowers – great for motivation (log.concept2.com/rankings).

I sort of decided to do the marathon by accident, and only started ‘training’ for it three weeks ago. The seven months of running have left me fairly fit, and that turned out to be enough to get me through, although not very quickly. I started with a couple of two hour (roughly 25Km) rows a few days apart and then a 34Km row a week ago (two hours and 40 mins), which taught me a few things:

1. My butt hurt! Rowing with no padding for that long rubbed two patches of skin away from around my coccyx, which wasn’t fun. I did the marathon with a soft towel folder over into eight layers, plus cycling shorts, unpadded shorts and pants – 11 layers in total plus some Vaseline! The bony parts were still not comfortable after about 3 hours, but I could roll about on the seat to ease the discomfort.
2. I needed to drink during the row, and worked out I could do this one-handed if I rowed with the other, as I didn’t want to stop. I also used two 50cl bottles of solution made from 1/4 orange juice, a few squirts of lemon juice, a tablespoon of honey, a pinch of salt and water, to get some electrolytes back in me as I sweated ’em out.
3. Blisters were a problem on my hands. I avoided gloves (I’d read they can make matters worse) and used sweat bands instead to reduce the moisture on the handle. This worked out very well, coupled with some calluses which had built up the past weeks. I had to remove my wedding ring for the row, as it caused blood blisters either side of it on earlier sessions.
4. I needed more music, as my playlist ran out at 2.5 hours (I dropped in a few Rocky tunes, as you do, and also accidentally included a silent track somehow, which had me fiddling with my phone and rowing one-handed a while – grrrrr).
5. I could eat dry figs as I rowed without stomach or breathing issues, although I don’t really know if this helped at all.
6. My right trainer had a small piece of material missing inside, at the heel, which started to wear away at skin after an hour or two. I used some gorilla tape to smooth it off.
7. I guessed I could do the row at 2:30 per 500m pace, which would equate to 3.5 hours of rowing. I’ve done similar-length runs so was happy I could handle the ‘time barrier’.
8. I watched various videos on technique and drag factor, and tried to replicate them during training and the row itself. I’ve used Concept 2’s on and off over time, so had a reasonably good starting point.

I did the row starting at about 7:30am on a Monday morning at the local gym. After months of early long runs (13 miles or more) without breakfast, I didn’t eat before the row, which worked well for me. The gym turned out to be surprisingly busy and I had some companions alongside for various sections of the row, which was really good. No-one knew what I was up to, although I **think** I got a few funny looks with a padded seat, figs and juice bottles knocking about!

I’d checked the batteries on the monitor (50% available – plenty), and set the drag factor to about 105 (number 6 on this machine), which was probably a little low but I stuck with it. My pace settled in at about 2:20, which was faster than planned but felt OK so I stuck with it too. In the end I did 2:19 per 500, and was happy with that as it pulled the time down by about 15 minutes.

By far the hardest aspect of the row was keeping steady mentally. All the usual tricks came out – of ‘rewarding’ myself with a fig every 15 mins, a drink every 30 mins, celebrating a little each time the counter ticked over a 10,000m milestone, listening to music, imaging myself up the Alps somewhere, or with my family and friends. Although my pace stayed steady, the rate slowly went up from about 21 strokes per minutes to 25 towards the end, and finally 32 for the last 1000m or so.

And that was it. The meters ticked down, my body held up well and eventually the monitor showed 0m. I was shattered at that point, but made sure I got my phone out and photographed the damned monitor before it went off. I let myself a tiny celebration, not wanting to look like the idiot I am to the other gym-goers. Warming down wasn’t on the cards, I just got up, got some water and staggered off back down the road to home, ate like a horse and slept for a couple of hours!

Since then I’ve found my left hip is sore but otherwise I’m fine. If you fancy the marathon on the rower, I hope this has been of some use, and wish you the best of success. Good luck and enjoy it (as best you can)!

Cheers, Jay