Rower sets a new world record in 24-hour challenge
EXHAUSTED but elated was Simon Johns’ reaction as he broke a world record for a 24-hour indoor rowing challenge at the weekend.
Huge cheers and a party atmosphere took over at the Indoor Sports Centre at the Hougue du Pommier at noon yesterday after he smashed the previous record.
Mr Johns started on noon on Saturday and rowed through the night, and after 24 hours his distance completed was 302 kilometres.
The previous world record in the men’s 40-49 category stood at just over 280,000m, and he surpassed that distance at 9.53am yesterday.
Afterwards he was tired but still running on adrenaline.
‘Firstly, the fundraiser has gone really well I believe, I’ve been offline for 24 hours, and raising money was principally why I did this.
‘But the rowing obviously means a lot to me and I’ve been training for it for so long and I executed it better than I thought I would, so I’m elated.
‘I had an amazing bunch of support rowers who rowed alongside me and people to verify and witness it.
‘I’m probably going to fall asleep in the car on the way home, I won’t be driving.
‘Mechanically, the joints and the bones feel OK, but there isn’t really anywhere that doesn’t hurt and I’ve never experienced such tight quads.’
All extreme challenges require a strategy and Mr Johns’ strategy involved breaking the 24 hours into three, eight-hour sized chunks.
The plan was to ‘frontload’ the first eight hours, going out hard, then to grind it out for the second eight hours, before 'seeing what happened' on the final stretch.
The lowest moment was actually early on during Saturday.
‘When I reached hour four it wasn’t the worst I felt physically but psychologically I thought “oh no, this isn’t going to happen” and I was starting to spiral and I still had 20 hours to go.
‘I was on-schedule but I was feeling terrible. I’d done four hours in training a lot quicker and felt as fresh as a daisy, so I was quite concerned.
‘But I changed my fuelling and that turned it around.’
Over the last year Mr Johns estimates that he has rowed over 5 million metres, or 5,000 kilometres, and he usually eats about 5,000 calories per day.
Nikki Johns rowed alongside her husband at the very end and said she could not have been prouder.
‘It’s an unbelievable achievement,' she said.
'It’s been about two years in the making and he’s been talking about this for such a long time, so to actually see it come to fruition is amazing, there will be lots of wounds to tend to in the next few days.’
Last night the challenge had raised more than £16,000 on giving.gg for two charities – the Priaulx Premature Baby Foundation and gynaecological cancer charity Bright Tights.
