I’d Never Rowed Before… 4 Years Later I Won Olympic Gold | Helen Glover

0:00We'd gone in as underdogs, really, and in the build-up to London, I remember us sitting down and going, let's keep it that way. We didn't really do interviews, we didn't, no, our faces weren't out there. We're just like, we could only win quietly once, and if we're going to do it, and if we're going to take the pressure off, it's going to be now. I'm Spencer Matthews, and you're listening to Untapped, where elite athletes and inspirational people show us how we can all unlock our true potential. This week, we're joined by Helen Glover, one of Britain's most decorated rowers and a true symbol of perseverance.

0:30Helen made history as a double Olympic gold medalist and world champion, dominating a sport she only discovered in her 20s. But after stepping away to start a family, she made an extraordinary comeback, returning to compete at the Tokyo Olympics as a mother of three, defying every expectation about age, balance and what's possible. Let's get Untapped with Helen Glover. Helen, thanks so much for joining me on Untapped. Thanks for having me. It's a great pleasure. should we start with possibly potentially the most important question I'm going to ask you whilst you're here oh does Steve really give you a back massage every night do you know what so many people messaged me when they saw that headline they were like what uh no so when I when I was in full training I would actually since having the kids and being in full training I couldn't get to physio so often I'd be like Steve I've got a sore elbow I've got a sore knee and he'd be like, fine, stick my elbow in there.

1:30It was exaggerated that he gives me a back massage every night. But no, to be fair, he's very good and very understanding. Can you take me back to how you got into rowing? Because it was sort of unprecedented, wasn't it? You started and then a couple of years later you were in the Olympics. Pretty much. That is a very simplified version of it and it makes it sound much easier than it was. But yeah, I didn't, rowing wasn't in my life till I was 21 years old. And for a sport where, you know, it takes years and years of training, I got into it a lot later in life. And it was only because London got the bid for the Olympic Games.

2:12And they launched this talent ID called Sporting Giants. They're looking for tall people who could be good at rowing, volleyball or handball, three sports that height is helpful for. and I turned up, was tested and I was asked to start rowing. And I just started my job as a PE teacher and I was trying to pay off my student debt. And it seemed like this ridiculous thing that four years before London, I was thinking about trying to get there in a completely new sport for me. But it was like my whole life I've been really, really sporty. I love sport and I'd got to a reasonable level at different sports and I had never, I looked at it when I was 21, given this opportunity and I thought, I've never actually just given my all to anything.

2:56I feel like I've always done something with something holding me back. I've never thrown myself into something. I thought this is my last chance to just throw everything at something and that was rowing. It must have felt like such an interesting opportunity at the time. Did you know that of the three sports where they were looking for women such as yourself that rowing would be the one? or did you think there could be a chance that you could be a professional handball player? I was convinced I was going to be volleyball handball because I was fairly coordinated and I'd done a lot of hockey and things and so and I was really small for a rower so I didn't even make the height criteria I thought I did I applied online and then I got there and I was like I'm a foot shorter than everyone here I wasn't the right shape wasn't the right height but we had these physical tests and years later I asked my coach why did you choose me I didn't even fit what science had said was going to be the criteria for this and he said um he saw me on the fitness tests and he was like you were a mongrel you were not the perfect pedigree dog we were looking for but you pushed yourself harder than anyone in the room and that's why I wanted to work with you

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6:38If you're enjoying this conversation, please do me a favor. Hit subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. It only takes a few seconds, but it really helps the show. And it means that we can keep bringing you incredible guests. Now, back to the show. That's incredible that, you know, your athleticism essentially without fitting the boat brought you to where you are today. You've won two Olympic gold medals and a silver, took a break to become a mother, came back to the sport. It's, what was it about rowing that you eventually came to love? Or did you love it straight away? I hated it to begin with.

7:18Really? I've always loved every sport, and it looks like it was this journey that was from getting into a boat to four years later being an Olympic champion. But actually it was from when I was tiny. It was like that was building my engine. I was running, I was playing tennis, I was swimming. My engine was built there, and over four years I honed it into rowing. That's what I always think when people say, oh, you only did it in four years. I go, no, no, I trained my whole life, and it just so happened to be that rowing was the thing I found the right people in the right time and place for. But yeah, it was definitely built up over a long period of time.

7:56And you say that you were coordinated, so you thought you would end up in the handball or the volleyball session, not that rowers are not coordinated, but what was it about that kind of brutish nature to the sport where, you know, the more, the higher your power output, almost the more valuable a member of the team you are. When did you begin to realize that you had a competitive edge in that space where, you know, when you were put on an ergo next to somebody else that you had the kind of determination to pull harder than them? So that took a really long time, actually. So for the first couple of years when I was training, I almost quit so many times I probably cried almost every night and thinking what am I doing it was so hard I was working as a PE teacher to fund my training trying to train when I could in the day to beat girls who were on a full time training programme in a sport where everyone was a foot taller than me it really seemed impossible two years out from the Games if anyone had said to me here's a ticket to a seat in any boat you're going to come last but you're going to go to an Olympics I would have snatched it out of their hands.

9:09I just, it felt like it was totally out of my reach. And I get on the rowing machine and I would be the worst by so much. And I think partly it's, you know, experience and fitness and partly it was that I was a lot smaller. So my power per kilo was quite good, but my actual score wasn't great. And then I remember just going like enough is enough. Like pity party's over, stop questioning this decision. if you're never I can't change my height and I can't change do much about my weight like I'm going to be if I'm going to be shorter than you I'm going to be stronger than you and if I'm going to be shorter than you I'm going to row technically better than you so actually it took a really long it took years to get my what some of my scores up to everybody else but I just honestly put in hours on technique on lifting and I was then quite quickly became the strongest person there and then therefore more power per stroke and then all the tiny tiny things I was doing on my technique started to show and I started to beat people on the water and I mean having said that when I got onto the rowing team to race my first world championships I was like the bottom last choice, last chance, you know, very much the, like, extra add-on of the team when we first came on, me and Heather, two years before the Games.

10:34And so, but yeah, it was through, I think I reached a point where I actually, for the first time in my life, was like, okay, I'll prove you wrong then. And I just put my head down and worked. Where do you think the desire to not give up came from? So when it was as hard as you say it was, when you were crying every night. What was it about the sport or that particular situation that made you want to prove people wrong or prove the team wrong? I think there are so many things. I don't think it was the sport. I wasn't like, I love rowing, this is my thing. I found the love of my sporting life. Rowing for me at that point was a vehicle that could take me to the Olympics and I had been told that that could happen and so I was going to apply myself to rowing.

11:19It took me definitely finding Heather as a teammate and finding the right situation for me to start to love the sport. But there were a couple of things that made me think it's worth it. One was having a coach that really believed in me and who threw everything through when I was really rubbish and not doing very well. He still said, I still think you can do this. And so having Paul, my first coach, say those words to me was like, okay, that is the thing I'm going to hold on to. I think the second thing was that a bit of maturity. I think if I had gone through that in my teens, which is probably what I had experienced with other sports, I always held a little bit back because I just thought, if people don't think I can or if, you know, why should it be me?

12:02I always felt like Olympians were people who were nothing like me. Like, I just, I'd never met an Olympian, never held an Olympic medal, didn't happen to people like me. I just think I so had that in my belief that I just never fully gave it everything. and then I think the maturity of going no I don't think I'm going to do this but I really really don't want to look back and think I didn't try so what's the what's the order then of of how you came to be Olympic champion because I'm that I mean that is surely the the high like you know is that the highest of highs that it's that's possible as an athlete you know winning in London what were the steps and how did you get to that moment and was that the greatest moment of your sporting career?

12:55Yeah, so I met Heather, we started training together when we trialled to get onto the team together like I say, we were the bottom barrelled extras added on like the spare boat basically if they needed anybody else to jump in we were the ones that were taking your place if you had a cold but we then got enough funding from the National Lottery to just quit our jobs and just to live off that. And then suddenly, not having to work and being able to train, suddenly our performance was going up and up and up. And about three months after we joined the team, we raced our first world championships together.

13:31And we got a silver medal and it was just so unexpected, I think, for the rest of the world. But then I think that just changed something. It really changed something in both me and Heather. and the expectation is that you look for the top performing boat on the team and you train every year to try to get into that top performing boat against your teammates. And Heather and I just looked at each other and we were like, let's do this together, let's stay together and let's try and win an Olympic gold. So was that your decision? Because I was about to ask if, were you ever nearly broken up to be paired with somebody more obvious?

14:12Yeah, like every year they would retest and check that it's the right combination. I think we had a unique thing where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. So when we were together, we were definitely, no question, the fastest combination there was there. Yet we each had our strengths and weaknesses and, you know, individually could have done well with other people. But together, it just left no question. Winning gold at your first Olympics. it must have felt, you know, I'm just suddenly thinking about certain moments in my life that are kind of almost hard to believe that you're so proud of yourself, but it can't be anything like what you've experienced.

14:51So I'm just wondering if you can surmise how that felt. I think total disbelief. I feel like it's a bit of a disappointing answer because everyone expects you to go, it was amazing. And I had this adrenaline rush and I punched the air and I'm Like, no, I crossed the line and I felt relief. I felt, even though we'd gone in, we'd gone in as underdogs, really, because any, even though we were favourites for the event, but only if you were a bit of a rowing geek, you might know that. You know, we hadn't won anything significant. We hadn't, we weren't known names in any way. And in the build-up to London, I remember us sitting down and going, let's keep it that way.

15:26We didn't really do interviews. We didn't, no, our faces weren't out there. We're just like, we could only win quietly once. and if we're going to do it, and if we're going to take the pressure off, it's going to be now. And so... Whose decision was that, sorry, to kind of... That's such an interesting approach to that, I feel. That, you know, you knew you had a chance of winning, but you didn't want to... You didn't want people to know that almost. Yeah. Because it would add pressure to the situation. That's exactly it. That's so funny. I think it's very much the nature of both Robin, our coach, and Heather.

15:59They're two of the most understated people you've ever met. And I think at the time we were so invested in our world existed around this race. And to say we didn't care about the press, we didn't care about the fanfare, we didn't care about any of that is just, we didn't. We just, I think we had this paranoia that if we step into that world, it could all start to go wrong. Who are we? Who are we to start doing interviews? And who are we to start talking about the fact that we might become Olympic champions? We're like, I still was barely calling myself a rower at this time. I was still coming to terms with the fact that I was going to be an Olympian.

16:35It felt like a way above my station to be talking like that. So I thought, just stay in your bubble and keep doing what you're doing. Did you have to win events before the final or was it just a straight race? Yeah, so we raced the heat and our heat went really well. We got like an Olympic record in the heat and that was the moment where things started to change because it was the first race of the first day of the whole of the Olympic Games. And it was like we'd won the Olympics. The noise, the press, the reporters, everything was electric. It was just a level that I'd never experienced before and would never experience again.

17:19You know, this interest and excitement from the whole nation. and we raced on day five of the Olympic Games and although until that point we'd had lots of great medals, we hadn't won the gold. I remember going to bed the night before our Olympics and I went to physio before I went to bed and they put on the one show and they had a psychologist talking about why our Team GB athletes with this home advantage, why they weren't bringing back the gold and why all our athletes are struggling to bring the gold. And I was like, it could be us. It could be us tomorrow. And when we went down to race, you walk in through crowds of people all cheering you in and cheering you to your boat and they're all kind of shouting, you could win our first gold.

18:09I'm like, I don't want to be told that. I want this to be a normal day. I want this to be just another race. But it's not another race because, you know, my gran who was in her 90s she could it was a home game so she made it you know she made it there she was sat under the flags as they were raised at the end of the race you know it's like all these things which the uniqueness of it being a home games made the experience just so special it's almost like you can't imagine that so you knew your gran was there you know that there's this pressure from the public but it's almost it's almost like magic magical pressure right because it's not real pressure because no one's actually expecting it maybe, but there is this feeling in the air that you could win.

18:56At what stage of the race did you know you had won? Heather and I have got different versions of this. For me, after the first stroke, this is very unlike me. I'm like Mrs. Paranoid. I always think we're going to lose. But we just jumped out of the start and we had won all our races that year really well. And if we have a good start, but we knew there wasn't much of a chance that anyone could catch us up. And we jumped out and I was like, this is a dream. And Heather afterwards admitted that she thought the finish line was marked. She got a bit confused with where the markers were. And so she thought we had reached halfway and we were only like a minute into the race.

19:36So she admitted afterwards, she was like, yeah, I was absolutely hanging on for the last bit, whereas I was like loving it. but yeah it is a I crossed the line and I just still I still couldn't comprehend it I didn't I was enjoying the moment with Heather and I was trying to force myself to take it all in I was trying to force myself to have a moment where I could remember this day and be present but it was like an out of body experience Is the reason that you can't have that full moment just because you're so spent in the sporting moments and those next Olympics then in Rio when you won gold again, was that a completely different experience in terms of the pressure that was felt?

20:20Because obviously now you're returning, you know, to defend your title essentially as opposed to being, you know, the underdog or you say the favorite, but, you know, you'd need to be a rowing nerd to know that. You know, you're now probably the favorites even if you're not, right? Oh, for sure. For England, who perhaps are not rowing nerds still, they might expect you to win again. Was that lining up on the start line any different? Or was the fact that you were Olympic champions just cemented in you at this stage? And did you expect to win Rio as well? Or how did that pan out? Yeah, it was so different.

21:05And I think that, so we, from London to Rio, we were unbeaten. so it was like 55 races we had done and I remember so you mustn't you must kind of know that you're going into this but that's the that is the like the line from the press is like it's almost like headlines written before we'd even raced and for me I'm sat there going anything can happen and I've never been more quiet more kind of low actually around a around a racing situation than than we were that year going into Rio. We just, it's like the only possible outcome is you achieve what's expected. Anything else other than that is a disaster.

21:47Whereas, you know, in London, we kind of could have done anything and everyone would have been like, woo, they're Olympians. But you can only win quietly once. And so we had done that. We'd done that in London. And so going into Rio, we both really felt the weight of it. Didn't enjoy the weight of it. But we just kept coming back to it's just us. And like I say, Robin, our coach, his job was being a perfectionist about the rowing stroke. And he always said to us, I don't care how you do. I care how you row. And if you row like I think you can row, you'll win. And I just think we held on to that because that's the controllable factor.

22:25I can control how I go out and row. And we know we've done the training to get the result if we do that. But it's easier said than done when your expectations suddenly change. Obviously in Rio, circumstances are different. You're a returning champion. There's kind of more weight on your shoulders potentially, even though there's probably more confidence maybe. When did you realize that you'd won that race? Obviously it was in the first stroke before in London. So was it any different in Rio? It was so different. My paranoia was so through the roof that I didn't believe we'd won it till I heard there's a beep when you cross the line.

23:05and I was to that beep thinking we're going to lose. Was the second row really close? It wasn't even that close. People watching wouldn't have felt that same panic I had. It was a couple of seconds in it, which in rowing is fairly comfortable. But I just had such a sense of doom, impending doom, if this goes wrong, that until it went right and until we had crossed the line, I just wouldn't believe it. But then we crossed the line and all those things that I couldn't feel in London, I felt, you know, I did punch the air and I did feel that rush of adrenaline and the excitement and I could straight away say, I've just won the Olympics.

23:46So it was almost like all those feelings that I wanted to feel and didn't come in London were just there. And I think it made all that paranoia and stress and worry about not winning. It definitely made it probably sweeter. Where are your two gold medals now? I honestly have no idea. in a drawer. I lose them all the time. If you ever go to a school talk or something, It's as bad as Jared Leto losing his Oscar. No, once they nearly got thrown out, I keep them in socks so they don't jangle together. And I left them overnight in the changing rooms and the cleaners nearly threw them out. But yeah, I've got to keep them more secure.

24:24I think that's where we're different. If I was a double Olympic gold medalist, they'd be framed in the bathroom, I think. See, this is where I, every other part of my life is chaos. And then you get to rowing and I'm like, everything has to be perfect. Did you think that when you settled down and decided to become a mother that you would ever come back to the sport? No way. No way. So we had raced in London and won. We raced in Rio and won. And I think that I was just done, you know, that there was nothing else to prove, nothing else to do. So Steve and I were getting married like three weeks after Rio and Heather was retired.

25:04Like everything was pointing to retirement and largely because I knew I wanted to start a family. And once you do that, I think in the sport that I was in, no one ever asks you if you're going to row again because the two don't really go hand in hand. No one had ever gone to the Olympics from GB after becoming a mum. And so as soon as I had my first child in 2018, that was just nailing the coffin done. No, I didn't row from, I think, our Rio final till, you know, for another four years. I didn't go on the row, I hate the row machine, didn't go on the row machine. That's crazy. Didn't really get in a boat, I was just done.

25:40So you didn't row at all in the interim? No, I mean, I did like, I run a marathon, I did a half Ironman, and I kind of went back to my roots, really, which was just really loving sport and loving exercise. But rowing, I just was, that was my, that was my life in rowing, done, yeah. I find that amazing. How did the opportunity come back around to get back in a boat? So it was COVID and I just had twins in the end of January. And then when lockdown came, they were about six weeks old. And the only thing we had in the house was a rowing machine. And so we were literally in lockdown. When the twins had a nap, I would get on the rowing machine and the sound of the fan would send them to sleep.

26:22And so nap time, the best way of getting them to sleep sitting in their own machine a little while and the more lockdown extended the more I was getting some fitness back and training and I and then the Olympics was moved and was postponed for a year and by that time I was like I'm getting quite fit and my scores were so close to what they were when I was a full-time athlete and I just remember thinking I don't know what it is in me that's thinking this is even possible but I really want to just go out and and see to see if I could get on the plane to Tokyo, like show my little girl what's possible.

26:59Or I don't know. At that time, I definitely didn't think I had unfinished business in rowing. But I think I probably had unfinished business in the fact that when I left the sport to start a family, there was never a route back in for me. And that didn't feel right. It didn't feel great. What did Steve think? I think he saw it coming when he saw me on the rowing machine. And he was like, oh god here we go he is nothing but supportive and I think that he just saw it as an opportunity it was only ever it was less than a year you know it was I think we all made crazy decisions in that period and look back and go how did I get down that road when I think I guess people experience lockdown and COVID so differently and for me it made me do something that I never could have imagined putting myself out there to do.

27:49And challenging a system in a way that had never been, I had always been like, toe the line, listen to the coach, do what you're told, turn up at that time. Don't challenge a system, even if you see problems in it. And here I was sticking my hand up and saying, I think I can do it a different way. And that was very unlike me. In terms of post-pregnancy and post-childbirth, I was pretty fortunate in the way my body recovered. and when I look back now I just think I was not educated enough in how to do it there wasn't really the information for me especially being I didn't even go to doctor's appointments and things like that post getting on the rowing machine so I was just trying to research as much as I could I was just working out how my body felt and in some ways I think that helped because I've been on for a couple of Olympic cycles I've been on a training program written fairly generically for every single member of the team.

28:43And suddenly I was able to wake up and go, what do I feel like doing this morning? My natural tendency is probably to do too much. So there was a bit of kind of reining myself in, but that happened kind of naturally because I had three kids under two years old to look after. So I was like, what can I do around them?

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31:57Do you remember what you pulled the day that you realised that you could probably still compete in the Olympics? I remember, yeah, I do actually. Steve reminded me of it. So I said to him, right, if I'm going to do this, if I'm going to make it, the coaches didn't even know I was doing this. It was just under the cover of lockdown. So if I'm going to make the call to the coaches to say I think I can get in a boat and not embarrass myself, I need to do a two-kilometre test on the rowing machine. That's like the standard test that you do. And so I was like, right, take the kids out for a walk across the fields.

32:30I'm going to, in the living room, do a 2K test. And I did a test that was just a couple of seconds off my PB. And I, to say I was on the floor, you know, puking on the road, like doing all of that, I mean, I absolutely gave everything. But Steve said he remembered me walking down the road towards him. He's got the pram, he's got the twins in the pram. our toddler beside him and he sees me walking towards him he's like the way you were even though you were staggering because you just done a two kilometer test the way you were walking and knew it went well and I did just I felt really empowered actually and I thought you know what on my own I've managed to get myself to a place that is really close to what I was before when I was on a full-time training program and I don't think that's superhuman I don't think it's super special.

33:22I think it's just that I had so much built up over all those years, probably a bit of mum strength thrown in, and then definitely a bit of sticking my middle finger up to the people who thought I couldn't do it. You know, there's, as soon as I made that phone call to say that I'm going to try to come back, the answer was, no, thank you. It's okay. Really? And at that time, they, you know, the team didn't have piles and piles of people queuing up who had Olympic medals, you know, to go to Tokyo. And I just... So different people then than who was... The team had changed a lot and the management had changed a lot.

33:59And I phoned up. When I made the phone call, it was very much like testing the ground, seeing what the opportunities would be, just a kind of friendly call to say, look, I'm thinking about doing this. And I hung up the call and I was like, I'm doing it. Because if you tell me, I can't. So hang on. So you pull this, no doubt, extraordinary 2K, which, by the way, can you remember what your PB is? It wasn't extraordinary. It was like a 6.42, I think, I did when I was in lockdown. Okay. Which, considering my training, I was like, great, that's fine. And your PB was 6.40? Yeah, around about 6.40, yeah.

34:37And you decided to make the call to the new team. Were you familiar with who they were? Roughly. I didn't know them. I hadn't worked with them. so yeah I didn't expect the red carpet to be rolled out but I expected a bit of like respect yeah or just like interest that we could make this work and that's interesting I wonder how we can kind of combine you with the team I think that the extra issue is there's a team that's trying to work around COVID as well so it's not only me saying oh I've got three kids and I'm thinking about coming onto the team which is new is also a team who are so tightly bubbled that someone with three kids putting their hand into the mix.

35:18When the Olympics has been moved for a year, there's so much, so many moving parts. So imagine getting a call from me and going, I think I can get in a boat. I think I'd find that really exciting if I was one of the England coaches. I thought that maybe there would be a little bit of that, but yeah, it was the initial conversation motivation led me to believe that there wasn't going to be open doors for me but I was going to just have to push them open by going in being good enough and beating people and so that's what I managed to do and got myself into a boat with Polly Swan who is she's an amazing woman she actually through COVID she's a doctor and she went back into the wards and was working as a doctor through COVID so we'd both had these really unique experiences during COVID she was kind of one of the ones that was ready to go out to Tokyo in 2020.

36:08And she had to wait for a year in 2021. So we went out together and getting on that plane and getting on the plane with Polly to go and race, leaving the kids behind to go and do that was one of the proudest moments. Because every other time and every other Olympics, it hadn't definitely hadn't been handed to me. But the pathway had been laid for me, I was told you could be you could be a good rower. I was told, here's your coach. I was told here's your boat. Here's your training program. And this time I did it from a living room with people telling me I couldn't. And it just felt very different.

36:41It's a pretty remarkable story, to be honest. The comeback is amazing. Was Steve really proud? Yeah. When you got into the Tokyo team and was there a moment with the team where it was kind of like, okay, yeah, like you're coming to Tokyo? Yeah, there was. I remember the day I came home and I said it's official that we're going. And I remember that being probably a moment where we kind of stopped in time and took it all in. But other than that, he was really proud. But both of us were just trying to keep our heads above water, to be honest. He works freelance and travels all over the world for his work.

37:22So his whole year, two years had been thrown up in the air. he was suddenly trying to do so much childcare and juggling everything with twin babies and a tiny toddler as I'm trying to juggle that with training. It was just so far from where we expected life to be that I think celebrating it in the moment was really hard because I think we probably didn't realize how much we were as a family in survival mode to make it happen for me actually and I think that I guess some of that single-mindedness of being an athlete um I think to prevent that ever going too far I made three rules as soon as I started I made three rules I said the family has to keep coming first um I have to be good enough not just kidding myself and yeah the children never have to suffer for me doing it or feel anything but a benefit from me doing it and I would say when I'm training for something I'm a better mum I can't if I train I come back energized I feel purpose I feel focused I would say in so many areas I'm the best version of myself it doesn't have to be training for Olympics I think that's so interesting by the way like that's something that I can really relate to myself just that that those feelings of even if it's small steps feelings of pride feelings of getting something done nice and early in your day it's kind of, it's completely changed my life, even just like lifting weights in the morning at seven in the morning.

38:52Your day is just better for it and you're a better father and you show up better and, you know, there's pride. Yeah. Even for just little things. Like it doesn't have to be anything big or exciting. Then, of course, you know, things can compound and goals can get bigger and, you know, the achievements can feel like more. but it all starts with just those decisions to look after yourself I think that's a really good word is pride because if you can be just proud of something that you've done I think there's just that internal ability to actually probably be kinder to people to smile at people to be, to I just feel like the positivity that you get from doing something that you're proud of for me anyway I feel like I'm a nicer person to be around I feel like probably a nice person to be around all the time Oh, well, don't ask Steve that.

39:45I won't. But it's kind of, it is interesting that I think, you know, when people are kind enough to ask me questions sometimes, just even on Instagram or online or whatever, just kind of how do I get out of this funk that I'm in? Just, you know, any kind of exercise is just so important. Like I think if, in theory, you were to lock me away for three, four days, and remove my ability to kind of get out there and move or get out there and lift weights or roll jiu-jitsu or go running or whatever. Like it would be like a really serious problem, I think. And the crazy thing is, I think, even though we know all this and we know the theory of it and we know how much it affects our lives and how better we feel, it's so easy not to a lot of the time.

40:32I think that as soon as the training program and the center of excellence and the team around me was taken away, I was really looking forward to that. I was looking forward to freedom and to kind of not having to be there at 6.30 in the morning, not having to do anything. And then as soon as I didn't have that, I found it hard to self-motivate. And when people say, you know, I want to start running or I want to start training, I think you're actually probably in the hardest bit because getting started, it's not easy. And keeping up motivation and keeping up that kind of that daily grind is not easy.

41:08Did you ever have any feelings around why there may have been some resistance to you coming back? I feel like, number one, I think the sport moves on. And I think when you've competed in Olympics and left the sport, there's a whole host of really talented, amazing athletes ready to go for the next Games. And so there is this sense of actually, it's a very different landscape that's moved on from when you were there. But I think probably more importantly, it was the fact that I now had kids and this is a program not designed for children to be a part of the equation and for any flexibility actually in the training.

41:44I think that's probably the most fundamental part of the rowing program I experienced previously was the rigidity of it. You turn up at a certain time, you leave at a certain time, everyone's on the same program. And there's this amazing camaraderie in that. You're all going through the same thing together. And as soon as someone puts their hand up and says they're going to do it slightly differently, so whether it's to kind of do some work around it or to have a family around it that's just not really the way it's done and I think there's probably an internal worry of as soon as one person does something slightly differently other people want to jump on the bandwagon so there's probably a load of different things but the unknown is probably the main thing which is we know we have a formula that works really well in rowing and it's to do this training program to veer off that and to be flexible enough for someone to have a family alongside it.

42:33But it was for me, I was thinking, well, the guys have done it. There've been lots of men who have had families and carried on for years and years. I know it's not the same as going through pregnancy and childbirth and breastfeeding. But when I first started, I didn't think I'd get to Tokyo. But I wanted to try and I wanted to find out the issues and lay down the paving stone for the next woman who wanted to come have children and get back on the team. So it was as much fact finding, pushing the boundaries and asking the questions as it was trying to get to the games. I have one more one more question about just what a kind of general training week would look like.

43:11So at the height of your career, I know you achieved a very similar thing when you were training from home. But just for argument's sake, when you had no other job, and when you were being supported, and you had a team around you and people training you, what did a typical week of training look like? And let's chuck in food as well, what would you be consuming on a daily basis to fuel this expenditure of energy? It would be like six days a week, sometimes seven days a week, we'd get a Sunday off every few weeks. So it'd be six days a week, usually, starting with a two hour row, just steady state on the water.

43:52What? Two hours. Yeah. Every day? Well, hour and a half some days, like 90 minutes to two hours. I wasn't expecting that at all. But that's like your bread and butter session. It's first session. And I think that you have two options there. You can just get it done or you can, what Heather and I did, which was just, you know, make it, try and make it as technically brilliant as possible. So you're just trying to keep going for as long as you can. It was about 20, 24 kilometers first session. Second session would be... That's insane, by the way. Genuinely, I was expecting you to say, like, 2K on the ergo, breakfast, weight session, like, quick blast in the boat.

44:28So this is winter, building block, big fitness, the longest mileage will do. By the way, it's no wonder your aerobic capacity is wild. That's just hours and hours and hours of kind of just aerobic training. It's just steady state. Yeah, steady state training for that first session. Like a zone two kind of just for two, three hours type thing. Yeah. And then second session would be 12 to 16 kilometers and that would probably be where we add in some work. So it would be some steady state, warming up, and then something like three times two kilometres or longer pieces of work. And then that's maybe an hour to an hour and a half that session.

45:12And then third session, if we have weights that day, would be lifting at about four or five o 'clock. That's an unbelievable training load. That makes me feel really unprepared for what I'm about to do. No, no, no. I liken it to, I think swimming, cycling and rowing all have the same thing of it being low impact and big endurance base. So I think swimming, cycling and rowing all have that thing of just hours, hours in. So yeah, that'd be a typical day. And in terms of, if I was on training camp, I'd aim for about 6 ,000 calories a day. For me, it was always kind of trying to keep my weight up because when you're rowing, actually, you're not, you're carrying your body weight, but actually you're hanging it off the handle of the oar.

45:58So actually you can, if you're rowing well, you can hang your body weight and it helps produce more watts. Yeah, I was literally about to say the wattage would be higher if you're heavier. Yeah, so there's a bit of, you've got to carry it in the boat so you don't want to be really heavy because it slows the boat down. But there's this middle ground where if I ever got too light, you would kind of feel that that power just isn't on the end of the blade. so it's kind of getting it in a good balance. So moral of the story is if you absolutely love food, just be a rower. And I love chocolate and I love cake.

46:31A cake, oh my God. So as soon as we started rowing and they were like, muffins for breakfast? You know, we went to training camp and I thought I found my sport. This is perfect. How would you best advise our listeners can untap more of their potential? I think as we were saying, it's that belief. Never thinking it shouldn't be you. There's no reason it shouldn't. Helen, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Please do follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening. It only takes a moment, but it makes a huge difference to us. We have truly incredible guests every single week, and you wouldn't want to miss an episode.

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