Andrew Burrows: On Saturday 13th August, Team Oarsome IRC set about breaking the four-man Full Marathon British Team Record set by the MAD Team earlier in the year. The team that was attempting this was made up of the following - Matthew Balch, Grahame Todd, Nick Rockliff and Julian Tomkinson. The venue was The LivingWell gym at the Hilton Hotel in Bracknell and the target to beat was an average of 1:39.3 per 500m. After an early meet up that day the four set about practising for the first time the changeovers, these have to be done by the four taking part only with no outside help from others. After 30 minutes they thought they had it slick enough to start the attempt at midday. The order of the rowers was Matt, Graham, Nick and finally Julian. Each rower had to take it in turns to row a minimum of 2,000m each before swapping for the next man. They decided to do five lots each of 2,100m, which would leave Julian an extra 195m on his last piece. From start to finish the team stayed ahead of the current record; there was not a weak man amongst them and they all hit their required splits on each and every stroke. Matt was the strongest on the team and rowed the equivalent of five sub 6:30 2,000 metres and the others were not far behind which, combined, meant the team finished with a final time of 2 hours 18 minutes and 1.1 seconds which equates to an average per 500m of 1:38.1 at 28spm, beating the old record by over 90 seconds. There was great support on the day with various people from the Concept 2 Forum turning up to watch so a big thank you to all of them, also a huge thanks to Andrew Sansom (http://www.andrewsansom.com) who took lots of photos on the day, some of which can be seen here.