Sarahs’ record row

Dublin Fire Brigade’s Sarah Good and rower Sarah Doyle have set and smashed a world record for tandem rowing this year.

On St. Patrick’s Day 2017, while most of the country was celebrating our national holiday with a pint and a parade, one of Dublin Fire Brigade’s personnel was down in Passage West Rowing Club, Co Cork. Taking turns over the course of the day, Sarah Good (a nine-year veteran working on A watch No 8) and Sarah Doyle (a friend of Sarah’s from outside the world of DFB) managed to set and break an Irish and world record respectively for the 100km tandem row, finishing in an impressive time of 7 hours 29 minutes and 22 seconds. “Another in a long string of ridiculous ideas!” Sarah Good explains with a laugh.

Though it’s quite the achievement, the two Sarahs’ record-breaking effort wasn’t simply a matter of personal pride. As firefighters tend to do, they were raising funds for a very worthy cause (which undoubtedly provided some motivation) – children’s hospice and palliative care provider LauraLynn. As Sarah explains, her fiancé Doug’s nephew passed away several years ago, having received a lot of love and care from the team at LauraLynn. “Obviously the family feel very strongly about the organisation and try to give back as much as possible,” she says. “I try to row in when I can, try and do a bit of fundraising whenever I can. It’s an unbelievable organisation – it’s one of those charities that you don’t have to work very hard fundraising for, because people want to give to it. It’s just extraordinary.”

Training day

Although Sarah is no stranger to rowing machines, her friend Sarah Doyle is the rower, and regularly competes in events around the country. However, despite completing a number of half marathons and marathons, she had never competed in a 100km distance event before. Given that Sarah Good was in the same age group and weight class – and willing to give it a go – team LauraLynn was formed.

“There was about four months of prep,” says Sarah. “I do a lot of other training for other disciplines and sports, and with that your fitness and strength stands to you. It was just about incorporating rowing into my training programme. We have a rower in the station thank God, so I was able to get miles in while I was at work.”

Facing a 100km row might seem like a daunting task (and there’s no doubt that it is), but the key to overcoming the hurdle is by breaking it into small chunks. Both rowers worked in 2km intervals, swapping over roughly every eight minutes while trying not to lose any momentum. “The structure of the event was different than anything I had done before, because we were working as a tandem team. She was going, then I was going – it was a really long event where half of it you were active, and half recovering. It was unusual. The transitions were a bit chaotic, but it was great,” says Sarah. “We had in our head [to finish in] eight hours. I knew fairly soon into it that we would be able to get seven and a half hours, and we really just got that in our head then.”

The team’s efforts paid off – as the odometer clicked past 100km they had set an Irish and world record in their category, raising almost €1,000 for LauraLynn. “We named the team for the day LauraLynn, so the record will go into LauraLynn’s name – something nice for them to hang on the wall. It was brilliant, really cool,” Sarah explains, while noting they weren’t alone down in Cork. Both of their respective other halves provided support from start to finish. “They were there for the entire time – Doug drove me down, drove me back up from Cork to go to work straight after it, gave us physio on the day and more. The two of them were just brilliant, they were great. It really is a team of four for a two-person event,” Sarah adds.

Now that she’s had a taste of success with oars in hand, does Sarah see herself taking up rowing on top of her other sporting interests? “I would have an interest in doing the odd thing for sure,” she says. “It would be something you’d tip in and out of, try another event, especially as Sarah is involved in it and likes to compete in events as well. It’s something different, it’s good.”

Care and support LauraLynn provides palliative care and support for children with life-limiting conditions and their families, allowing parents to act as parents rather than full-time carers. Supporting children from birth to age 18 for free, LauraLynn is also piloting a home care programme in Dublin North-East and Dublin Mid Leinster, providing hospice care for children in the comfort of their own homes. To learn more about LauraLynn or to donate/fundraise, phone 01 289 3151, email info@ lauralynn.ie or visit lauralynn.ie.