ONE MAN, ONE BOAT & ONE 3000 MILE CHALLENGE

Dedication and consistency is something that comes out of my mouth a lot amongst other dribbles. I also discuss the five P’s of Life – Patience, Persistence, Perseverance, Passion, and Purpose, which are the foundation of many peoples success. Essentially they’re much the same. However there are very few people that I’ve come across that truly dedicate their waking hours to their cause and doing what they have to do every single day. I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with many people who recognise the essential five P’s.

Over the last few years I’ve been working with just such a person, Marcus Beale aka. White Rows, who right now is on his way to row the Atlantic Ocean. Yep the Atlantic Ocean, it’s not a typo. It’s part of the Talisker Whiskey Challenge, which is more than 3000 miles of rowing west from San Sebastian and La Gomera, Canary Islands to Nelsons dockyard English harbour Antigua and Barbuda. He is one of the soloists, meaning he’s on the boat by himself and he is hoping to get it done in under 90 days because that’s the amount of food he has accounted for. Holly Fuck Balls is something Nicole Scherzinger would say.

The specific training for this started early this year, and he didn’t come into this fresh as a daisy either. A few niggles here and a few niggles there, training was challenging at times. The well crafted training program was created by Gus Barton who has himself some experience in rowing the Atlantic and incredible strength conditioning coach. We’ve done a lot of squatting, a lot of dead lifting, a lot of split squats (Marcus’ favourite), a lot of dumbbell rows, well a lot of strength training. That’s how you prepare for the Talisker Atlantic challenge. I drank the whiskey on his behalf. Obviously not while he was deadlifting 150kg that would be very unprofessional.

Throughout this year he has proven himself to be the consummate professional. All this at the ripe old age of 40 something, closer to the 50 something actually. He’s done training camps in Portugal, he’s had some harrowing moments rowing his boat from Majorca to Barcelona, a week long solitude training up in Scotland, done a 24 hour rowing challenge outside Harvey Nichols Leeds, some salmon fishing in Iceland for good measure, and all this to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. No man is an island, John Donne wrote in his poem, and in similar vein Marcus has had his wife and two children, fully support him throughout this venture.

Marcus has taught me a lot along our training journey, but that’s for another time. For now I just want to wish him the very best for the journey ahead.

Fair Winds and Following Seas from your vertically challenged personal trainer.

He is ready. He is a true example of “no human is limited”.