Living in an abusive marriage was painful enough that I chose to drown my depression in wine. For 10 years, I literally sat on the couch, watched cooking shows and drank wine. I gained a LOT of weight over the years. A friend, Rachel, talked me into buying custom made shirts from her. She came to my office with her tape measure and to my surprise, my waist was over 50 inches! I should not have been surprised, because at a recent physical, my doc said, “Neil, you are in perfect shape! round!” Anyway, when she left, my office manager, Beth, came in, and we chatted about my status. She was very concerned about me, so she offered to take my BP (she took her own daily). Sure enough, it was way too high for a man of my age. I had a way to measure blood sugar too, which I did, finding that I was pre-diabetic. So, I sat there in my office looking at nothing, thinking to myself, “Well, I know exactly what I should do, and if I am not willing to do what I tell others to do, then I have no right being in practice.” With that, I walked out into the gym, and got on the treadmill. A long time patient was riding the stationary bike next to me. She was very sweet, and said, “Hey Neil, great to see you on the treadmill, how far are you going to walk?” I smiled at her and said, “Monica, fat as I am, I think I need to walk to San Diego!” We had a good chuckle, but I thought about what I had said, and right there, made a decision to do just that. I was walking up a 10% grade at 3 mph (I had to walk rather than run because my right knee was very arthritic.) I did a quick calculation and realized that if I “walked” (virtually) to San Diego, I would also, walking up a 3% grade, climb Mt Everest, twice! It occured to me that a walk of that distance and a climb like that would be good for my health.
So began a journey for me. I logged my distance each day on a map and literally walked the fat off me.
As time passed I added bike riding, ERG rowing and outdoor walking. I was also lucky to have an Alter G in my office…
So I eventually got to run at a lighter weight (that my knee tolerated) as well. In the end I lost about 60# and took several inches off my waist before I closed my office. The weight loss helped my knee quite a lot and I felt better than I had in years. What was weird about this was that Melissa, my then wife did not believe I was working out to get in shape, or she might have, but she said she did not. It’s not like she paid much attention to me in any event. We were pretty well estranged by then anyway. It wasn’t much time after that that we got divorced. Before I closed my office, I purchased an Eliptigo that I got to test ride when my friend Mike brought one to the office for me to try. I loved it. Once I was able, started riding around Mercer Island on it every day. I could get around the island in about 40 minutes by the time I moved off the island.
Anyway, that whole experience took a couple of years of daily exercise to bear fruit. I finally got to 200 lbs and was in decent enough shape to keep it off with routine exercise. That is how things went for the next few years. Between 2014 when Melissa and I split up and 2018 I rode around the island just about every day. It was a good ride with some hill climbing and some flats. I got a lot of cheers from passing cyclists (its not as fast as a bicycle) and friends who waved me on. Occasionally a car would slow down and the driver or passenger would ask me about it.
In 2016 when I moved into an apartment on the island, I got a indoor trainer for it so I could continue to ride after I had my knee surgery. The total knee replacement stopped my riding for a time. Walking my dog got me out of the apartment and onto my feet. In 2018 when I met Heather, most of my exercise at that point was related to walking my dog Kiva, which I did for about 7 miles a day, and riding around the island when I could.
Who wouldn’t want to walk a dog like Kiva? He pretty much saved my life first when I got seperated, and then when I got divorced, and after my total knee replacement, he really did get me out walking every day!
Anyway, the next 7 years, Heather and I spent as much time as we could together, only doing intermittent exercise other than walking, and by 2025, the net net of that behavior was that I was back up to 220, and my left arthritic knees was very painful. I should add that our garage locker was broken into, and they stole all of our bikes including my eliptigo. That was too bad.
Earlier last year, I began to have pretty severe knee pain. So much so that I was considering another total knee replacement. Ugh. I tried ice and rest and strengthening, but nothing seemed to break the cycle. Lucky for me, I had a rowing machine in storage. We live in a really small place so it never came home with us, But, I had left it in a fairly accessible location and without too much trouble, was able to retrieve it, bring it home, and put it to use. We figured out where we could keep it so it was easily accessible to the living room (where the TV is) , and now, I put it out each evening and take it apart once we are done with it before Heather gets home from work. She rows before work and I row after she leaves..
I started at the end of May (2025), and was immediately reminded how hard rowing can be! To give me motivation, I created a virtual journey. I plan to row to Hawaii. It’s about a 4,000 km journey. I found a great website, MyVirtualMission.com and created the journey. You can track it here.
This was my first post at the end of June.
As you can see, I rowed up through the Sound and into the Straights of Juan de Fuca on my way out to the ocean. The tag NC is my location, while the red tear drop is my anticipated position based on the time I allocated to the row.
I gave myself 1,095 days to complete the voyage of 4, 414.7 km.
In general, my strategy was to row 10,000 m a day. I began and made good progress, but found that my daily efforts were taking a real toll. Given I was rowing every day, I felt that I needed some technology to better understand my recovery, which would allow me to set up my rowing intensity appropriately. I figured that if I did that, I could keep up the daily routine. To that end, I found the Whoop. It has been a godsend.
When I use Woop during my workout, it establishes the upper limit of my intensity based on my recovery. It also allows one to rack one’s effort precisely, including visual representations of strain and active HR. It’s pretty great. Anyway, in May I rowed only 17,000 m during the last week of the month, but in June, I rowed 155,623 m. I felt encouraged. I renewed my relationship with the Concept 2 site and also the Nonathlon site, and armed with tech, a way to log my virtual journey, and a way to monitor my output and fitness progress, the next thing was to find a proper body composition scale.
I did my research and found the Oxline scale (a top rated medical scale) on sale! Perfect. It tracks so much stuff.
- BMI
- Muscle Mass lbs
- Bone mass lbs
- Weight lbs
- Body Fat %
- Fat mass lbs
- lean body mass lbs
- Muscle rate %
- SubQ fat %
- Body water %
- Water weight lbs
- Ideal body weight lbs
- Visceral fat
- Skeletal muscle %
- Protein %
- Protein mass lbs
- BMR
- Body age
- WHR
- Obesity
I created a daily routine. Each day, I row based on the way I feel and the Whoop data. when I am done and have cooled down, I take a shower then weigh in. I record everything and graph out the data on an Excel sheet including on my rest days. I love seeing the trends in the data over time. In the meantime, I rowed 214,025 meters in July!
That put me out in the Pacific ocean and well on my way, and well ahead of schedule. I was making excellent progress. My body fat percentage was beginning to fall and my muscle mass was beginning to grow, but mostly, I noticed that my left arthritic knee was feeling better! #Winning I pressed on noticing that my waist was getting smaller (I had to punch two more holes in my belt! Being down 20# got Heather’s attention. She was very encouraging.
During August, we traveled some, so my total rowing output was 175,980 meters. Not bad at all, and, like before, the main benefit was that the strength I was gaining had really reduced my knee pain a lot.
BY the time I got into September, I was feeling good and really started to feel the strength gains through my whole body. My September output was pretty good 202,500 meters and I even rowed a half marathon! I was clearly starting to feel the impact of 3 months of almost daily activity. WIth rowing a 10K each time, the rowing was getting easier to manage and I began to play with intensity by building sprint intervals with active recovery into my rows. The highlight of my monthly weigh in was that my visceral fat had really begun to visibly reduce, or as Heather says, “You’ve got ribs! “
How I manage to stay motivated to row 10K every day is by rowing with the Tour de France. I started out with the 2024 Tour, rowing every mile with them on every stage. It’s so great having access to the Tour, those athletes are fantastic and I am really a huge Tadej Pogacar fan. Massive respect. I will say that since I row an hour or so each day, I have watched TDF for about 130 hours, which means I am getting to be a massive fan of pro cycling, getting to know the athletes the teams, and the strategies makes the viewing awesome. I have always been a Tour fan, even making time go to a start and finish in Carcassonne in France in 2018. Here I am at the walled city. I loved the celebratory experience of the Tour going through various towns like this.
Anyway, I am having my own reaction to the US commentators, who I can barely tolerate, as I row. If it were up to me, I would much rather watch the International feed. But, I don’t make that decision it turns out.
October was a massive month. I was very disciplined and managed to row 256,597 meters. Sadly I picked up a severe achilles injury when I turned my ankle out walking the dog. Funny thing is that I used to tell my kids not to “get their foot stuck in a hole” when they were little kids on their way to school. What goes around!
Because of the achilles injury I had to tape every day and ice it too, which made sprinting hard on the Erg. Even so, by the end of October my scale data showed I had reduced my visceral fat by 40%, I was under 200# and had to switch to my sweat pants since none of my jeans stay up even on the last notch that I added to my belt. My body fat generally fell to under 30% for the first time in forever too!
I started eating oatmeal for breakfast and that seems to have increased my burn. I also started using chocolate milk on Heather’s suggestion, to replenish me on days my sprint efforts leave me too depleted. I usually eat fruit after I row to help with the glycogen replenishment.
Because of the injury, I backed off on the load by only rowing 160,000 meters during the month of November. Part of it was that my sleep was disturbed and therefore my recovery was low, so I took an extra day off a week, which made a big difference.
I am still well ahead of schedule and still managing at least 5 rows a week even though I make every effort to do to 6 days a week. I feel well and healthy and the energy I have each day is better. I also find that my knee is feeling so much better than it did when I started back in May. I am about a quarter of the way to Hawaii. My knee feels good. My fitness is definitely increasing. My weight is steadily under 200# and improving and I am only a quarter of the way to my goal!
December was hard. Lots of days off. Too many days eating and partying between Thanksgiving and year end. Even so, I still managed to cover 220,000 meters. That took me over 2,000,000 meters lifetime with over 1,400,000 meters rowed during 2025. I set a goal for 2026 of 2,000,000 during the year, but having crossed that 2 million meter mark, I got me a T-shirt!
The other thing about finishing up the year, was that I finished my last row of the year during the final stage of the 2024 Tour. Wow! Pogacar is an astonishing athlete! I feel really good about my progress in every respect. I feel stronger, more virile, healthier, less tender and I am clearly leaner and healthier than I have been in years. 6 months of rowing 10K a day (with rests here and there) does that to a person.
At year end, I had gained muscle mass, bone mass and water weight. I had more lean mass than my “ideal body weight” LOL. I had less fat mass and body fat generally than I had when I started out, and my clothes either don’t fit any longer, or fit better than they did, depending. I made it quite far in my virtual journey too. According to the tracking data, I have made it 31% of the way to Hawaii in 17% of the predicted time. Pretty good!
- May 2025 17,000
- June 2025 155,623
- July 2025 214,025
- August 2025 175,980
- September 2025 202,500
- October 2025 256,597
- November 2025 160,000
- December 2025 220,000
It’s pretty impressive really, and it explains why my body fat % went from 34% in May to 28% in December. My goal for 2026 is to get it under 25%
To put the journey in perspective, here is the whole image of the planned journey, along with my progress as of January 1, 2026 ….
Using Whoop I can track my HR during different workouts too. This one is an interval sprint workout where I do a 300 m sprint on every 1,000 starting with the 8,000 m mark, and I sprint the last 300 of the row.
As compared to this one, where I start out slowly and gradually increase my pace from 25 strokes a minute to over 50 strokes a minute over the 10K
Two very different workouts, but both are very effective!
January has been a little bit of a slow start. We celebrated the new year a little bit hard! But I still anticipate getting to around 200,000 meters this month. Having started the 2025 Tour, my row today, (the 13th) took me to the finish of Stage 1. Wow! These guys are really amazing cyclists.
After two pretty hard days in a row, the Whoop coach suggested I take it easy for a day in order to recharge. The metric they use to determine if your body is recovered is the HRV number along with your resting HR number. In any event, those hard days meant my body had not fully recovered, so I put in an easy workout.
This was my easy row, notice that my HR peaked out at 130b/m vs 160b/m when I am pushing hard. The impact of that was that in the morning, I showed a really solid recovery!
You can see how much my HRV and resting HR improved from the day before by looking at the little numbers under each one. That tells the previous measurement. The green arrow means it moved in a positive direction since the last measurement.
This was my workout on the day with the advice to do a steady state sub-max effort. It was a very solid row. Anyway, that row took me over 1.5 million meters since July. My final workout of the week, always on a Friday because I take Saturday as a firm rest day, was a “moderate effort”. The Whoop coach suggested I reach the mid-point of my strain ratio, or a 10 on the meter. In order to achieve that, I set out with a steady state row for the first 4,500m, then starting with 5,500 to go, I would sprint 500m every thousand. How that plays out is I got hard for 500m, then recover for 500m and repeat till I am finished with the 10,000. Because I always sprint the last meters, I ended up with 6 sprints.
That brings my total for January up to 110,000 meters rowed by January 16th, which, I don’t mind saying, is pretty
solid. In the end I managed to log 200,000 m in January. It was hard with my achilles being so sore. In addition, I think I blew out a thoracic disc in January. The pain is similar to my experience last year when i ruptured T6, but not quite as severe. That was awful. even though I ended strong, my outputs were not great (intensity) due to the achilles. I think I am going to try get though february with an extra day off here and there.
February has been difficult. My achilles tear, confirmed with Ultrasound, is giving me fits. My upper back disc bulge is active and painful. My right side arthritic AC joint is complaining, my repairing left biceps tendon/muscle is sore and my right arthritic knee is complaining. That has slowed me down quite a bit more in terms of intensity of my rows rather than stopping me from rowing. Is the 18th of February as I write this, by which time I have accumulated 90,000 meters so far. Happily, I have been enjoying watching the Winter Olympics events, esp Biathlon which is my favorite Olympic sport along with Speed Skating. Bobsled is also pretty cool along with the other sliding sports. Anyway, I am pushing along and feel good about my journey so far, even if I hurt. I think my aches and pains are more weather related, other than the torn achilles tendon. To treat it I tape and ice it every day, and try not to row to aggressively which just keeps it irritated. Onward!
By the end of February I had rowed 160,000 m. Not terrible, but clearly reflective of protecting my injured bits. Making the decision to row every other day has given my achilles a real chance to recover. I was able to walk about 3 miles yesterday (the 5th) for the first time in along time. That is excellent. I have also noticed that my output is much higher, which is to say that I can now row at a significantly higher output. For example, mny strain, as measured by Whoop is getting up into the 14.2 range, vs the 7 range it was when I was rowing every day.
So in March, I am going to take every other day off. My mileage will drop, but no matter. I am in it for the long haul!
My Life: A Memoir 