We've had a touching letter in from Michael Longley.

In 1998 I joined Keith Atkinson of the Nottingham Boat Club undertaking 1 million metres on the rowing machine; 1 million became 5 million and so on.

I then decided to set myself a challenge of rowing the equivalent distance around the earth’s circumference in 20 years. On the 23rd of July 2008 I reached my first 10 years, but not without extreme heartache and sadness! My eldest daughter Lisa died on the 10th November 2007 from heart failure, this was totally unexpected. After Lisa passed away I found myself having extreme difficulty going on the rowing machine and had to force myself to carry on. Lisa kept me going on as I know she would not want me to give up as she had always been very supportive of me.

Just a few meters a day tuned into daily rows of 18/19 thousand metres just to help ease the pain. I have now settled back to sensible distances and am well on target to reach my goal with Lisas help.
In my first 10 years I have rowed 26,139,776 meters (an average of 7155 meters or 4.44 miles per day)

I would not have achieved this without Lisas help so I would like to dedicate my 1st 10 years to her memory and wonderful life.