Fashion's a funny thing; one day the Big Brother stars couldn't move for media offers, the next the producers of Celebrity Ready Steady Cook are failing to return their calls. Sometimes, of course, the reverse happens and after a bit of silence on the 100,000 metre team row front it's sprung back with a vengeance over the last couple of weeks. First off a team from, appropriately, Fitness First raised between 300 and 500 pounds for Macmillan Cancer Relief after completing the distance in 6:12:59 on Friday 3rd November. Then firemen from the Essex Fire and Rescue Service also set about raising some money for charity from the event. With enough people for two teams, it was decided to have one lot in normal kit going for a fire service record, while the second team did the row in full fire gear. As organiser Andy Fearn points out, to row 100,000 metres is hard enough, but to row in full fire gear is madness, but with good coaching and a lot of encouragement from the public we set a reasonable time [6:04:48] and raised a lot of money for charity. The second team set off an hour before the other team and they were there to cheer the others on as they came home in an impressive 5:32:16.Last newsletter we also told you about the LA Fitness team who were going to have a crack at the mixed team record of 5:32:35 held by Wolfson College, Oxford. Marc Jenner takes over: Sadly, despite the support of Olympic bronze medallist Kelly Holmes, our attempt failed, although it was very close. We clocked 5.35.51, just 3 minutes 20 seconds outside the record. It is worth noting that we lost two of our best rowers on the morning of the attempt and replaced them at the last-minute with a couple of willing volunteers from the gym. Not put off by the LA Fitness failure, a BG team from Reading will be having a crack at the mixed team record this Saturday, so hopefully we'll be able to bring you news of that next time around.