SuABC Sponsored Ergothon
One Club, 24 Hours, 10 Ergs, One Goal, Our Future
7pm Friday 2nd October 2015 – 7pm Saturday 3rd October 2015
The fantastic folk at SUABC managed 1,327,644 meters with 4 teams of 8 going right through the 24 hrs and a couple of Junior teams for a few hours on the Saturday. That’s a tad under 825 miles or 31.5 marathons.
Organised by Ben Twiney and Gaby Walker who both did their 3 hour stints as well, through the night, and their reward was to sneak off at Saturday lunchtime to Twickenham – ahem… Massive thanks to them for doing all this on top of their day jobs, I hope they feel a great sense of pride and satisfaction – really well done!
There were some magnificent Club teamsters who volunteered to row straight through the wee small hours: James Reeder, Jen Carey, Tom Doherty, Tom Coles who all did straight 2 or 3 hours at very unsociable hours in the dark as the fog was descending…Also there were some Helpers that stayed on to supervise, especial note here for Trevor Tiller who managed to help out for all but a few of the 24 hours, and also supplied some very tasty cakes.
Weather was really good, with an absence of rain throughout which meant we could keep the ergo set-up outside the clubhouse, the temperature was perfect once you got erging although it did get a tad chilly at 4am, especially as the fog descended around 2am and stayed until around 7am.
The Senior Men’s team were mostly keeping sub-2minute splits, for hours, and rowed considerably more distance than any of the other teams.
There were a number of people who managed to do personal marathons (42,195 meters) in their three hours, which requires split time of less than 2min7.9seconds.Tom Doherty had the unique distinction of doing his marathon over a single 3 hour sitting, with 1 min 20secs to spare. Defies belief…
The Google Doc booking system threw up some anomalies with spaces where there should have been people, and so a number of folk volunteered to row to fill the gaps, e.g. thanks to Ruth Winter and Will Macleod who stepped in to ensure we kept the four teams rowing for the full 24hours. Their reward was to set off rather late for Twickenham – ahem…Personally, stepping in to cover gaps meant I ended up rowing for 5hrs 20mins in total and covered 72,617 meters which is just over 45 miles or 1.72 marathons…but everyone has their personal stories and achievements.
Although there were no Junior teams rowing for the 24hours a good number rowed during the day on Saturday, including their coaches and some parents. This helped boost our overall distance and hopefully we have recruited some willing volunteers for the next Ergothon. A number of the Juniors and their incredibly helpful parents also went onto the Tramway Bridge to rattle collection buckets, and such was the interest of the public in what we were doing – they could hardly ignore the great music supplied by Lucy Weston for one thing – that these impromptu fund raising activities netted over £300!!! Literally thousands went passed, voicing their support, we certainly got ourselves noticed.
A number of club members came down to show their support throughout the Saturday and this was very much appreciated by the rowers.
General view of all those taking part was that it was just brilliant fun, very challenging but very enjoyable too and great to be a part of.
We are now collating sponsorship results and hope this has really pushed our Pavilion Fund skywards.
BIG BIG Thanks to all who took part, organisers, rowers, helpers, supporters. It was a great new thing for our Club to do and although I don’t want to see another ergo for some time, I feel sure we will be doing that again some time in the future.
Stephen Haighton
Chairman