I'D ROW A MILLION METRES FOR ONE OF YOUR T-SHIRTS!

News

Rick Wills / 2007-11-19 14:32:04

Despite the heading, "Leader" sports reporter Rick Wills says he is full of admiration for the subject of this article, Bob Soutar, who on 9th November reached his target of completing a million metres on a rowing machine.

That seems a lot of exercise in any terms, but Bob, who will be 65 in January, has achieved this feat in the space of one year.

He has been a member of the Heartbeat Gym in Urbanisation La Marina for 4 years and when Phil Blissett and John Francis took over ownership there in November last year they encouraged Bob to take on the Concept 2 challenge of rowing a million metres.

Concept 2 is the name of the actual rowing machine he used and is produced by U.S.A. based Concept 2 Rowing, who designed it for the training of Olympic athletes. Every metre done is recorded on a computer chip which Bob and the gym have backed up with a paper record. Bob has rowed between 5200 - 5500 metres every day with the exception of holidays, spending 30 minutes each time on the rowing machine. He says that the worst part is not the physical effort but the boredom factor, so he occupies his mind with anything but the reality of what he is doing.

The support and encouragement of John, Phil and the gym members has only been matched by that given by his wife Ann and daughter Helen, who were there on the day to see him reach a grand total of 1,000,379 metres. Phil presented him with a bottle of wine and once the records are ratified he will receive a Concept 2 Million Metre T shirt from the company.

Bob hopes that this article will encourage others of a similar age to take up exercise and not just settle into the "I'm past all that" frame of mind once they near retirement age.

As someone who is somewhat younger than Bob and uses the same machine at the gym (but am close to collapse after 3000 metres), I can only say that his achievement is quite something. I just wonder what he has planned next!