02/11/2025
🏆 Australian Indoor Rowing Championships 2025 – Mission Accomplished (Mostly!) 🚣♀️
Back on 1st January 2025, I wrote down three goals:
1️⃣ Make lightweight (61.5kg) to race at the Australian Indoor Rowing Championships (AIRC) – I was 76kg at the time.
2️⃣ Win a medal in the 2000m race.
3️⃣ Beat the Australian record for Lightweight Women 55–59 (7:51.5, Sally Galbraith, 2007).
Fast forward to this weekend, and what a ride it’s been!
This year’s AIRC had a unique format – all virtual. Competitors from around the world could connect their rowing machines online and race four distances: 1-minute, 500m, 1000m, and 2000m. Results were then adjusted for age, gender, and weight to create an “Adjusted Work Points” leaderboard – meaning I could see how I stacked up against anyone, anywhere.
As of lunchtime Sunday (with 11 hours still to go and the UK yet to wake up!), here’s how it’s looking:
💥 The Good News:
✅ I hit all my goals.
✅ I beat the Australian 2000m Lightweight Women 55–59 record by 1.2 seconds – 7:50.3! (It doesn’t count officially yet, as I’m not quite an Aussie citizen… but my ceremony is on 3rd December 👀).
✅ I also beat the Australian 1000m record by 5.6 seconds – 3:43.6. Totally unexpected, as I hadn’t even trained for that event!
✅ I’m currently leading the lightweight women in the 500m (1:45.4).
✅ And sitting third in the 1-minute race.
✅ I’m currently ranked 3rd overall on the Adjusted Work Points leaderboard – out of hundreds of athletes worldwide! (That will almost certainly shift as more results come in, but I’ll take the moment!)
This adds to my gold medal performance at the Australian Masters Games on 21st October, where I rowed 7:52.3 for 2000m – my first big milestone towards these records and a huge confidence boost ahead of the Championships. 🥇
So yes – endurance is my strength. But rowing is a power-endurance sport, and my next focus will be power, power, power! ⚡️
💬 The Plot Twist:
A late entrant from the UK, Justine Reston – who holds multiple World Records – has posted some incredible results in the last 24 hours. She’s just edged me out in the 2000m (by quite a margin!) and the 1-minute race. I suspect she’ll also take on the 500m and 1000m today, so my final results will probably be a clean sweep of silver medals across all four events. And honestly? I’ll take that with pride.
It’s been an extraordinary 10-month journey of discipline, discovery, and a whole lot of sweat. I’ve learnt so much and tried many different strategies – if anyone’s keen, I’d love to write a blog post sharing what worked, what didn’t, and how I managed the weight and training process (warning: I can be an utter rowing nerd 🫣). Comment below if you’d like me to share it!
For now, I’m taking a couple of weeks off – yoga with Lotta, Power Pump with Annie, and maybe some swimming. Definitely no rowing machines for a while!
Next stop: World Indoor Rowing Championships, February 2026.
New format, new goals: 5km, 1km, and 1-minute races.
Stay tuned – and thank you all for your encouragement and support along the way 💙
