Whurrgh whurgh whurgh. As the klaxons pierce the night, lending a sinister counterpoint to the chorus of barking Alsatians, the indoor rowing spotlight weaves its erratic path, searching for someone to focus on. Suddenly the beam stabs sideways, holding in its unblinking eye world record holder and reigning women's 40-49 Lwt world champion Helen Mangan.A 41 year old who lives in Liverpool, Helen started rowing at the age of 27 and after only 18 months had gained a place in the lightweight British women's team, competing at five world championships between 1989 and 1994 in the double sculls. When she 'retired' in 1994 to focus on her work in mental health services, Helen took to maintaining her fitness on the Indoor Rower. In the autumn of 1999, however, she came across a copy of the World Ranking and after seeing the world record for her age and weight, she determined to concentrate her efforts on beating the existing mark. I made my training a little bit more focussed and took myself off to Rochdale, for the Northern Indoor Rowing Championship, where I broke the world record with a time of 7:23.2. Concept 2 then very kindly invited me to Boston for the World Indoor Rowing Championship where I got the title in 7:23.5When I returned, I got myself physiologically tested, mainly looking at my anaerobic threshold (AT). I discovered that I had been training at the wrong intensity in preparation for the Rochdale and Boston competitions – in fact I had not been training hard enough. Accordingly, I altered the intensity of my AT session and, about 6 weeks ago, decided to test alongside 2 juniors who were preparing for junior final trials, invigilated by Neville Orme, their coach. I did around 7:18. Obviously the increased intensity of training is working. I have a bit to go before the British Indoor Rowing Championships in Reading, however, which is now my new target.The last three months have been somewhat of a busy time for Helen, with competitions at the Scullers Heads, Henley and the National Championships. At the National Championship she did what she describes as rather a crazy thing by entering three events, the eights, the double sculls and the single sculls. Despite her worries that she might have been forced to drop out of at least one of them, everything went swimmingly in the end, and she won gold, silver and bronze respectively.