Some rowing that! A Tipperary rowing club covered a staggering 3,979 km in January

Yet again another rowing competition fell victim to the weather with the St Michael’s Head Of River (HOR) cancelled last week due to high water levels. If truth be told, we were all glad to train away on the ergs in the clubhouse at the Island while it was lashing rain outside.

Our adult rowers are making full use of the club’s 20 ergometers. The people that make the Concept 2 ergometer organise the January Challenge so that clubs can record the total amount of kilometres clocked up over the month. Clonmel Rowing Club came third in the world for kilometres clocked up in January with a whopping 3,979,045 metres. Andy Ryan alone clocked up 618,563 metres and is now a well-established figure in the million metres club.

All forms of cardiovascular training benefit your heart, but the benefits don’t just stop there. Joint health, bone health, brain health, blood pressure, muscle strength and muscle tone all improve with regular training on the ergometer.

Rowers have the highest oxygen uptake of all athletes across the entire sporting spectrum and the highest intakes of air at up to 300 l/minute. Having had on occasion to fill the tractor with a couple of 20 litre drums of diesel, putting 300 litres of air through the lungs every minute really is some pumping.

These statistics are all well and good, but will we as rowers live longer? A study was carried out on French Olympic rowers from 1912 to 2012 in comparison to the general population. It concluded that mortality due to cardiovascular disease was significantly reduced, adding approximately five more years onto their lifespan.

So, hopefully with fingers crossed, it looks like our adult rowers are going to be with us for some time to come.

CORK HEAD OF RIVER

Weather permitting our next event will be on the River Lee when we will compete in the Cork HOR on Saturday, March 2.