Mike Collin was injured in February this year, whilst running 40 miles a week to train for the London Marathon he incurred a stress fracture of the femur. Understandably he was very disappointed that he wouldn't be able to continue his training & run in the marathon. His next step though was to focus in on other areas of his body which were still in full working order.

Mike contacted us to tell us about a record breaking challenge that he was organising with his fire-fighter colleagues - The Blue Light Rowers.

"We smashed the record by over 81 minutes, which was unimaginable a few weeks ago. 64 hours, 30 minutes & 53 seconds. In the training leading up to this event, I lost approximately half of my original volunteers, either through injury or lack of time to train. We had a 30 hour training session a month before at the same venue, which gave people a really good idea of the misery ahead. Then a few days before the main event, with the aim of a British record in our sights, I had the unfortunate task of having to replace one of our rowers, who only had a Dutch passport. Within the rules, there is a requirement that all members of the team must be British and we couldn't leave that aspect to chance. We were indeed very lucky to come up with a replacement at such short notice.

The plan throughout the row was for each rower to row for 45 minutes, which gave each rower initially 6.5 hours rest between sessions. However that rest never materialised as we experienced our first casualty after the first session, when Mark Gibb's son Matthew went down with stomach spasms, not helped by a severe overdose of mars bars. In spite of Matthew having to take a much needed rest, the team dug in and every 250,000 metres were gaining on average 5000 metres on the record. As the number of sessions increased, rowers paired up to do their 45 minute stints in two stages; usually 30 minutes followed by a 15 minute session. Our chief physio, John Wiley was vital in repairing some broken bodies. Without his involvement, some rowers would have struggled to finish.

The nights were particularly difficult for the rowers and without the crowds to help with the motivation, a certain mindset was required to keep the focus on the pace. Nutrition was also very critical as the rowers were burning up so many calories. It was extremely important that immediately after each session, the priority was on refuelling and not succumbing to sleep. The problems in the early hours of the morning is that the body doesn't always enjoy eating, but without sufficient calories on board, performances would start to suffer. Amazingly, everyone managed to maintain their effort, buoyed by the prospect that the record was there for the taking. No one in the team wanted to let anyone down and that determined attitude was evident right to the very end, when crowds cheered each rower on their final sessions. As organiser of the event I was given the privilege of rowing the last 5000 metres. When the final distance of 1,000,000 metres had been reached, I was overcome with just immense relief. The pain was over. As with any challenge, there is a direct correlation between the pain and the feeling of satisfaction afterwards. I haven't felt more proud of a team's performance than this one.

We knew it would be tough; please check out our website & the picture gallery showing photos taken on the day to see some of our lows & then highs... http://www.rowamillion.com/

So far we have raised £4,900 but our aim is £5000 http://www.justgiving.com/rowamillion/ "