Yorkshire man Philip Stubley was born in Leeds in 1939. A civil engineer by trade, he gave that up in order to manage the family industrial painting and cleaning business. Married with 5 grown-up children, he's also the current British record holder for the 60-69 Lwt events and is a two-time winner at the British Indoor Rowing Championship. We caught up with him last week to find out what was the secret of his success and whether he had any tips to pass along… I've always enjoyed sport, but have been a Jack of all sports, usually competent but never excelling at anything. Running has been my favourite sport since I was a schoolboy - I once got as far as a Yorkshire trial for the 440 yards! Apart from that my proudest achievement was running a sub 3 hours marathon at 50 years old.Indoor rowing only became a serious activity when I saw how fit my running pal, Geoff Knight, kept himself by using it for regular training. Memorably, he beat me in a 10 kilometre road race, not having been running for a year because of a knee injury, whilst I'd been bashing out 30/40 miles a week all year! I also 'twigged' how much less stress rowing causes your body compared to running.For a short time I rowed on the Ouse at York, but for the past 2 years I've been training on the rowing machine, three or four times a week consistently. My favourite training routines are ones where I sweat a lot but don't kill myself! Aerobic threshold efforts like 4 x 2,500 m. at a good pace, with 5 minute rests, for example. I don't enjoy the 'eye-balls out' sprint repetitions you have to do for 2000 metre training! After I sorted the problems of blistered hands and cramp in the backside, I got to quite enjoy the Marathon training sessions set out in the Training Guide.I rarely get bored on the rowing machine, probably because I set myself demanding performance objectives, but also because of the variety of feedback you can get from the monitor. My advice is to take time to familiarise yourself with the monitor's versatility and how it can be used to structure your training sessions.Another tip is to use the 'Watts' display, rather than the 'pace per 500 metre' display, if you are trying to split seconds to make small improvements in performance. The watts display has more increments on its scale, so the measure is more accurate. I find a detectable improvement, however small, is a welcome crumb of encouragement.Talking of such 'crumbs', I found the Banyoles camp an enjoyable and encouraging experience. It's a big boost to spend time with others who share your interests and appetite for suffering! It certainly helped me to keep on training at a time of year when I tend to lose motivation. I managed to get below 7 minutes for 2000 metres soon after the 'holiday'! I bought a machine at Reading this year, so I'm set up to attack Jack Heiden's 6:50.9 60-69 Lwt record!