It’s 2017.
One 59 year-old, high-risk class III (morbidly) obese, man with a bad back and a dodgy knee.
Three years.
1096 days
9.6 million+ metres (that’s 9,614,721)!
Average of 8773 metres per day – EVERY DAY!
One rowing machine.
One Journey – from Woolton Hill in Hampshire, UK to the Olympic Stadium, Tokyo, Japan.
That’s Obese Man Rowing’s TOKYROW 2020
Well it was.
Until 2020, a few months to go and then came Covid-19
and the Olympics were postponed for a year.
SO what to do?
Quit; the dream is over?
Never going to happen. I may fail but I’m never going to quit.
Carry on as normal and finish on July 24th 2020?
This does not have the “in time for the Olympics” element. Also the last few months before Tokyo were supposed to be spent raising money and the profiles for the four charities at events, public appearances etc. Lockdown ended that.
Go with the new date?
My first thought on this was no – it makes it easier.
So I did then consider doing some extra distance (a third extra).
This however would have lost the “door to door” from Woolton Hill to Tokyo element and I had thought of rowing “via” somewhere virtually but this seemed “messy”. The original goal was also to row to Tokyo, not “Tokyo and a bit”.
Although going with the new date does seemingly make the challenge easier on a daily basis, during lockdown things have been tough and it had already become very difficult to maintain the motivation to simply get on the erg. I lost about seven or eight months momentum or “mojo”.
Rowing for the extra year was actually going to be tougher for me than covering any extra distance.
Even with the extra time the original TokyRow distance of 9.6 million is still a major task for me – although now it may be more of a mental rather than physical challenge but in a way, given that MIND is one of the charities, that seems somehow appropriate!
It does also hopefully mean that all the charities could still get the profile in the months leading up to the opening of the Games.
So there it is.
It was supposed to be over three years. Now it is four.
Sorted. That’s it. TokyRow continues. We KEEP ON KEEPING ON.
