One of the things that has absolutely blown me away over the last 6 months, is the incredible response that we’ve had from family, friends and people we’ve never met from all across the globe. We’ve had so many highs and lows in our campaign so far, and I can honestly say that we get the biggest highs are when we hear stories of how we’ve inspired you- it genuinely is the thing that keeps me going and reaffirms that we have absolutely made the right choice taking on this challenge.
The truth is, we need to raise a significant amount of money, without which, our row across the Atlantic won’t happen. But what I hadn’t fully appreciated until now, is the huge impact that we’re making even before we step foot on our (yet to be purchased) ocean rowing boat.
Friends whilst on holiday in Bali have messaged me to share images of the shocking state of plastic in the sea and on the beaches over there. My own family whilst on holiday in Malaysia spent the mornings out kayaking to remove floating plastic - they did such an incredible job that by the time they went to take some pictures to share, they’d cleared the area! A family very dear to me recently had a family outing to the beach where they joined the MCS for a beach clean, inspired by Status Row. The Goffin’s (members of our 100 club) have made the switch to reusable coffee cups and refillable coffee machine capsules. The Heatley’s are doing everything they can to cut down on their single-use plastic consumption at home. My incredible and inspiring group of girlfriends from high school are on a mission to equip the lot of us with reusable coffee cups. I could go on with the list but I’ll save that for the Instagram stories.
I really can’t explain how life-changing it feels to know that we’re actually making a difference. Even this morning a colleague told me how much I’m inspiring the people around me. My heart just melted when he said this.
Please, please, please keep sending in your stories of how you’re making changes to your everyday habits. We absolutely LOVE to hear about it.
Now onto the campaign…. We want you guys to be as involved in our campaign as possible and have been doing a lot more Instagram stories to share with you what we’re up to. Let us know what you think and what things you’d like to see more of! You can follow us here.
Fundraising
For me, the last two months have been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. Fundraising is really hard - I can’t stress this enough. Before we embarked on this we knew it was going to be tough, but I don’t think we were prepared for just how tough it was going to be. Rejection emails are difficult to swallow and unfortunately, we had a big let down just before Christmas that was hard to swallow. We’ve had some good successes with product suppliers which is fantastic as it’s helping to bring down our overall costs, but we still have a large amount of financial sponsorship we need to raise for this dream to become a reality. We have more leads into some incredible organisations and we’re still sure that we’ll find those much needed financial backers. If you have any connections that you think could help us in any way, we would be very grateful for an introduction - who knows where it might lead.
We’ve also made some revisions to our sponsorship opportunities - we realised that we had been pricing out the very companies we started this mission to support - small businesses that are making changes and taking steps to help make a positive difference in the world. We now offer businesses the change to get their logo on for the boat for £250. Head over to our support page to see the new packages.
Training
5 days a week is TOUGH!! But I’m really enjoying it. I’ve never been shy about eating a lot of food and am finding that I’m consuming a considerable amount more of it now! One of the challenges we have is to build strength and muscle but to not lose weight before the start line. Whilst we’re out at sea we could lose over a stone in weight! To prevent losing too much, the goal is to bulk up a bit before we start the race so we have something extra to lose! Hello doughnuts ;)
The row is unsupported which means that we’ll need to take all our supplies on board with us from the start. One of the challenges we face is to work out how much food each of us is going to need to consume whilst we’re out there to keep us going. Each of us will be rowing for 12 hours a day - that’s a lot of exercise! To this point, it’s been a challenge for us to work out what that means in terms of calories burnt. Thankfully, the brilliant team at FitBit have stepped in to help. With the assistance of a beautiful new Ionic watches, we’re able to work out how many calories we’re burning during our training sessions. Rowing machines give us a general idea of calories burnt but it’s in no way specific to me - it would give the same estimate to a 7-foot tall rugby player whereas in reality, the calories burnt would be very different. This is why having calorie information that’s specific to me is invaluable!
An average woman needs to eat around 2,000 calories to maintain their weight. I hopped on the rowing machine for 2 hours last weekend and burnt off 900 calories. Within a 24 hour period, I will be doing 6 x 2-hour shifts; that’s 5,400 kcal + 2,000 = 7,400 kcal PER DAY just for me.
On that note, I’m off to eat another doughnut! Until next month xx