A week ago on Tuesday, I did my toughest challenge to date - the 100,000m row, known to the club as the Dodentocht (after the Dutch walking challenge) or Death Row. In saner rowing clubs, this event is normally only attempted by teams of rowers, and has always been considered a significant challenge for the individual. Concept2 has times for only a few dozen people per season attempting the 100km row.

With no background in endurance events of any description, I had very little idea what to expect. To my mind, it seemed little more of a challenge than the 4 back-to-back days of 50km rows I had done in late November, and while I rested for the couple of days beforehand, and made sure to eat substantial amounts of pasta and other carbs, and keep my fluid intake high, I didn't expect to suffer all that much. As I learned, my optimism was misplaced.

The target was to finish inside 8 hours, which seemed at the time challenging but achievable. I didn't plan to take substantial breaks - just long enough to take on board some fluid (I had over 5 litres of Lucozade Sport made up, as well as a few litres of water to hand) and occasional food (bananas and chocolate, which is all I ever eat while erging) although the breaks themselves would be quite frequent (every 10km), and to row consistently at around a 2:15 split.

The first 40km went largely according to plan. I settled into quite a nice steady rhythm at a 2:10 or 2:11 split, and extended the breaks a little to compensate, so things were staying pretty much on schedule. My average heart rate over the first four 10km segments showed a reassuring lack of strain: 128, 131, 135 and 138. Things started to go a little wrong in the final 10km before halfway - I developed a slight pain in my left calf, and my heart rate suddenly started climbing sharply, averaging 155. I had not previously measured my heart rate during an endurance row, but was familiar enough with the muscle pains from my earlier 50km rows, and I think these symptoms can be attributed to blood sugar depletion.

The halfway mark came up in just a minute under 4 hours. Here I took a substantial break, both to try and give my system a little while to recover, and to read the messages of support and encouragement on the forum and post a quick update on progress. When I restarted some minutes later, I already knew that 8 hours was not going to be within my grasp, but retained some hopes of finishing inside 8:15.

Having eased off to a less demanding 2:15 split almost immediately at the start of the second half, my heart rate settled back into the mid 140s, though eventually climbed back into the 150s, and even to 162 by the finish. At this stage however, the muscles are desperate not for oxygen so much as for fuel to burn.

Much of the final few hours is just a blur. The segments were not regular like the first half, due to the desire to record times for 1.5 marathons (63292m), 75km and double marathon (84390m), so these distances determined the endpoints of each segment. The splits gradually crept upwards, and I was forced not to extend the rests too much as I saw 8:15 and then even 8:20 slipping away.

Even the rests at this stage provide little comfort, and it is just as much agony when the time comes to get back on the erg after a break. Your quads and other muscles are still screaming in protest, and have to be gently coaxed back into working again. The pain becomes all-encompassing, and only the little counter ticking down those metres with what seems like ever-increasing slowness keeps you going.

Although my final time of 8:24:14 was way outside of what I had hoped, I feel a great sense of achievement to have got through the event at all, and have a new appreciation for what endurance athletes put themselves through. I felt like quitting from around the 60km mark to past 90km, but whether you attribute it to mental toughness, a stubborn streak or an inability to accept losing face, something drove me on to complete the challenge.

Now I've reached a reasonable level of fitness, my main aim is to increase my total metres each week and month, and to complete a lot more endurance challenges. Free Spirits consider anything from half marathon (HM) upwards as an endurance or extreme event.

Physically, I've recently begun to find the half marathon itself in some ways the hardest of all the endurance events, despite it being the shortest. The reasons for this are at least partly psychological. With the longer events, it's largely a case of getting into a sustainable rhythm and then simply sticking with it. The HM is short enough (at between 1 hr 20 mins and 1 hr 30 mins) that I feel able to actually race it, rather than just aiming to finish it.

The effect of this was shown yesterday, when I powered to a new HM PB of 1:22:54.9, taking nearly 4 minutes off my previous best (set in early December) of 1:26:48.5, and breaking the magic 2:00 split over the HM distance for the first time. However, this hurt more than any other piece I can remember doing, even day 3 of the Nijmegen 50km/day challenge.

With the longer events (or just longer training pieces) the main problem is boredom. This is an issue even in a gym where there are music videos and the odd piece of eye candy to distract the attention, but it's much more of a problem when you're erging in a cold damp garage at home, with noone else around.

I've now taken to watching TV or a video some of the time while erging in an effort to relieve the boredom, but this isn't always very motivational, and it can also be quite hard to hear over the noise of the flywheel! I still haven't decided what the best programmes to watch are... natural history shows have the advantage that the sound is relatively unimportant. At the moment, it's mainly repeats of Inspector Morse, which are also a good distraction.

At other times, it's also useful to just let the mind wander, trying to completely separate it from the physical discomfort being experienced by the body. At these times, being a chessplayer probably comes in quite handy, as I can replay my past games or opening variations in my mind. While this isn't of much value from a chess training perspective, it does give me a not unpleasant way of passing the time.

So... never done a blog before, but it seems like the thing to do. The aim of this blog is to record the highs (and lows) of my fitness training using the Concept 2 indoor rower (or erg, as it's more commonly known). There'll probably be some other stuff along the way as well... chess, computers, films, and other subjects of interest to me. Mainly however, it'll be erging.

What's gone before? Well, I'm 30 (not yet in mid-life crisis territory) and have oscillated for a number of years between fairly fit and hopelessly fat, largely depending on the stresses of my job and my motivation (or lack of it). I've been familiar with the erg for many years, first experiencing it at school in 1989 and then again at university in 1995-7. I've owned my own C2 (model D) for about three and a half years, but for most of the first three of those it was used infrequently at best.

As of three months ago, I'm on a major new fitness drive, and since then I've erged a little over 1000 km. Most of that is down to joining Free Spirits IRC - the best rowing club in the world, on the net or off it! I joined them on November 20th 2006, and haven't looked back since, covering 700 km in 7 weeks. I've still got a way to go to beat some of my all-time PBs, but my fitness is improving every day, I've lost 7 kg since joining Free Spirits, and I'm having fun while I do it (well, most of the time, anyway!).