Superman: The Continental Conqueror
Posted by Sport.co.uk on: 27 March 2009 - 11:03
Author: Ben Moss
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Take a bow Charlie Pitcher, the nearest we get to Superman on planet Earth. The married father of four is currently in Morocco preparing himself for this weekend’s Marathon De Sable before turning his attentions to the Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race, which sees the East Coast born Pitcher row solo across an ocean that covers 22% of the World’s surface.
The Marathon De Sable is the hardest footrace on the planet, where only 60% of participants finish and some have lost their lives. Carrying all your own belongings including daily water intake and food for the duration, The Mds (Marathon De Sable) is a brutal endurance race across the Sahara Desert’s mountainous dunes in Morocco. With running temperatures regularly exceeding 120 degrees yet plummeting below zero at night, runners from around the globe will face gangrene, fever, diarrhorrea and desert spiders all culminating in physical and mental exhaustion.
As a stand alone feat it is a monumental achievement, yet following the gruelling 151 mile run, or five and half marathons in six days, Charlie Pitcher will begin preparations for one of mankind’s greatest ever challenges by rowing solo across the Atlantic in December.
The Woodvale Atlantic Rowing Race sees participants row over 2,500 nautical miles from La Gomera in Canaries Islands to Antigua in individually designed boats. Sea-sickness, fainting, dehydration, shark attacks, dramatic weight-loss and the mother of all chaffing sores, the race is one of the planet’s toughest survival events.
First of all Charlie, why is a family man about to run across the Sahara Desert then row solo across the Atlantic?
“Well I’m doing all of this for my best friend Shaun McLeod-Jones who tragically died on 31st May 2003. After a 13 year fight with Kidney failure, and over 70 operations at Addenbrookes Hospital he passed away surrounded by his loved ones. Shaun was my inspiration and my best friend; I needed to do something to honour his memory and if he were here today he would be doing it with me.”
Your family must be concerned about the obvious perils you face?
“My wife and mother were not happy about it, saying I had the family to deal with but I said to them, well I have been bringing up the family for eighteen years and given my sailing background (Charlie raced in 1983 America’s Cup, and finished fifth in the 1995 British Olympic sailing trials) and knowledge of the sea, having been in storms and risked my life before I will obviously be coming back!”
“You only live once right? I told them this is something I want to do for myself and for Shaun. It’s not as if I’m a fulltime Ranulph Fiennes or Shackleton. Ultimately I won my mother over by naming the boat after her!”
Were you always going to do Marathon De Sable?
“The Mds is something I wanted to do ten years ago; the rowing was a bit of an accident if I’m honest! I’m a runner and have always enjoyed the outdoors, so it seemed the natural event for me.”
“At Christmas my wife gave me Ben Fogul and James Cracknell’s account of their Atlantic crossing, and having read it, I felt they were ill-prepared for the race. I went through the book, taking it to bits technically. I thought if they can do it, I want to do it.”
“I was supposed to do the Marathon De Sable last year, but my entry was cocked up, so by default I am doing both events in one year, which has never been done before.”
How does preparation for the Mds differ from the Woodvale race, surely it’s not the best training for an Atlantic Crossing?
“It’s actually really good training. Physically it’s a very different challenge and a completely different task because I’m skin and bones at the moment but speaking to dietarians and doctors they think six days of pushing your physical being to the limit is a good thing. All the cardio work is there, whereas the row is much less cardio based and far more mental. I’ve obviously got to mix the two and alter my training schedule.”
How does the training vary, how have you juggled the two different disciplines?
“Over the last six months I have been doing a lot of running. I started off doing a lot of rowing but over the last year, I have hardly been doing any rowing and concentrating solely on building up the running mileage. An average weekend over the last three months has seen me run 40 miles.”
“I’m a bit of a whippet shall we say, well as far as a 46 year old can be. As soon as I complete the run, I will lessen the cardio work and concentrate on muscle groups. I need more protein and less carbs so to build up my body strength, then just before the rowing I will start up cardio work again.”
“I also need to build up some fat, as I could potentially lose up to two stone. I have gone from 83kg to a 78kg starting weight. I will come back from the marathon at probably 75kg tops, and then I will have to bulk up from anything up to 90kg before the start of the Atlantic race. Basically after the Mds it will be protein, protein, protein, followed by some heavy weights.”
How long has the design of the boat been in production?
“Well my entry was confirmed just over two years ago, and we started designing the boat last July. The building of it started late in October as the specialist designer had been working on Ollie Hick’s Virgin boat, which is currently sailing around the Antarctic. We had to wait for Ollie’s boat to be out of the shed before he could do ours.”
“If nothing else, the boat is an absolute work of art. It’s an amazing bit of kit that doesn’t actually look like a boat, more of a sea monster. There is nothing like it out there.”
How long will the Atlantic race take you?
“The average is 70 days, but as soon as I get back from the Mds, we are going to put the boat into the water at Exmouth and test it.”
“Rowing in a race like this, whatever weather you are thrown into, you have to face it. If there is a bad weather system, it might add ten days to your journey, or with good weather we might even break the record. Either way, I’m looking to win the race.”
How will you cope with the isolation of rowing solo?
“I have always operated in a team environment so this is very different. That said I’m very happy with my own company and I’m very normal. I think there are a lot of things to be busy with, and ultimately with a target in mind I don’t think I will have many issues with being lonely.”
You mention shark attacks, are you afraid?
“I have three fears. One is being hit by a ship in the night as we are tiny and they are huge, basically they can’t even see you and are often unmanned.”
“Being attacked by a shark is another, but I’m working on that as my sister has done a lot of diving and she says all you have to do is punch it on the nose! But like many people I have that irrational fear of what is beneath me. I will have to get into the sea a lot in order to clean the bottom of the boat. Your boat picks up fish who follow you which eventually serves as bate for the bigger fish like sharks and whales. So when I jump in to cool down or do some running repairs, you have to keep you wits about you because there could be a Great White waiting for his lunch.”
“And finally, like all men I will be out at sea for a very long time and we all have our needs right? To be without my wife for 70 days, I’ve got to think of something to do instead and I think we all guess what that is and it’s totally natural!”
What happens after the Atlantic race, what is the next great horizon for you?
“My wife has said that is all I can do! But I can tell you now, it wont be the end of it, we have other things planned, some really serious stuff. I’m one of those people who always needs to better the last great trip, and I certainly intend on doing that!”
Is one event more daunting than the other?
“Without any shadow of a doubt, the row is causing me a few sleepless nights. I just don’t know whether it’s going to be an amazing adventure or if I will be crying my eyes out wishing I was with my family.”
“With the marathon you are running with other participants and seeing people all the time. The Atlantic race is just me on my own against the elements. It is the fear of the unknown.”
How many calories do you have to consume in order to maintain a healthy balance during racing?
“It’s about 6,000 a day minimum. I will be taking a lot of pot noodle with me because they cram lots calories into a very light pack. I know they are a big student food, but for me they will fuel me across the Atlantic.”
“I also have a hydraulic water maker on board which will be my life saver. I intend to keep very clean as it wards off both disease and the inevitable sores that you get from rowing for that amount of time.”
Are you mentally ready for the challenges that await you?
“I really can’t wait for this now, it can’t come soon enough. Business in London is what it is, dull and monotonous. Although I work as hard as I can at what I do, I can’t wait to get away from this and get going into a world I always dreamed about, and a world I used to inhabit when I was in professional sailing. It’s like going back in time and I can’t wait for the challenge.”
If you want to sponsor Charlie click here
http://www.justgiving.com/charliepitcher/
You can also follow Charlie’s epic journey on Twitter here
http://twitter.com/charliepitcher/