The Coxless Crew visit the GSK HPL

In December, the crew visited the GSK HPL for body composition, strength and rowing tests. We spent some time chatting to the team to find out a bit more about their challenge and what the day’s testing would involve.

Of course first, we were interested to know what motivated the team to take on such an extreme challenge. We asked Laura Penhaul, the Coxless Crew team lead, to explain to us how this challenge came about. 

It started about 3 years ago with a friend of mine, it came from a shared passion of wanting to push the boundaries and most importantly for us, support women in overcoming adversity - we’ve drawn inspiration from these types of women who have gone on to achieve and we’ll be raising money for our chosen charities. We want to test and find our own abilities, even though we haven’t faced any big issues ourselves.’ Laura said. 

Laura has recruited her team over a period of time, looking at specific rowing and sailing teams as well as the military, searching for crew members with a certain type of mental and physical strength. Natalia Cohen, team member, told us why she applied to be a part of this challenge.

‘For me I’ve been moving and living in different countries for the past 15 years so I’m used to being out of my comfort zone – I’ve always had a love of the ocean and being in and around water. 

I saw the recruitment advertised and I thought... what a ridiculous thing to do! But something really drew me to it so I applied, and 5 months later, here I am, completely immersed in this incredible project’.

‘It started about 3 years ago with a friend of mine, it came from a shared passion of wanting to push the boundaries and most importantly for us, support women in overcoming adversity - we’ve drawn inspiration from these types of women who have gone on to achieve and we’ll be raising money for our chosen charities. We want to test and find our own abilities, even though we haven’t faced any big issues ourselves.’ Laura said. 

Laura has recruited her team over a period of time, looking at specific rowing and sailing teams as well as the military, searching for crew members with a certain type of mental and physical strength. Natalia Cohen, team member, told us why she applied to be a part of this challenge.

‘For me I’ve been moving and living in different countries for the past 15 years so I’m used to being out of my comfort zone – I’ve always had a love of the ocean and being in and around water. I saw the recruitment advertised and I thought... what a ridiculous thing to do! But something really drew me to it so I applied, and 5 months later, here I am, completely immersed in this incredible project’.

The GSK HPL will be helping the team plan and prepare for their extreme expedition from a scientific aspect. Their journey will mean that the women are spending five to six months at sea where they will likely suffer from dehydration, calorie deficiency, sleep deprivation and hormone imbalance. The GSK HPL will support the team’s cognitive, psychometric and physiological approach.

Laura said ‘there are all sorts of things that we can look at to help us prepare, it’s really interesting.  Actually, friends of mine were here doing testing in the heat chamber for the Marathon Des Sables. We thought, we are going to be working in 40C across the equator and it’ll be really good to see if we can practice in that heat and get an awareness of how we best respond to it’.  

Consequently, the main focus of the team’s training session at the GSK HPL is to undergo two hours of rowing tests, one hour of which will be inside the Heat Chamber set at 40C and 40% humidity to see how their bodies will respond to it. The GSK HPL team will assess this by measuring their core temperature, assessing their cognitive awareness and analysing what their physiological response is. The results will be fundamental in informing the team how to best prepare for being inside the boat.

The team also stress how important the cognitive side of the testing is. ‘We know that 90% of this is going to be a psychological challenge. We optimise the other 10% by doing physiological kinds of things but the 90% is working with a sports psychologist. Barry (GSK HPL Cognition Lead) is getting us cognitively prepared for when we’re getting on the oars. How we can mix up our routines but still keep structured – little things like that will play quite a huge part’. Laura said.  

Natalia added ‘It’s going to be interesting to have the tests done today and we’ll have them again before we go. It’ll help us in the run up to preparing.  We’ll know where we are now and where we need to get to. That’ll be really useful as well’. 

We were interested to find out what a nutrition strategy looks like to a team that are spending five to six months at sea. The team informed us that their main meals are dehydrated ration packs, which contain around 800 calories each. The crew will eat about four of those a day, snacking on nuts, dried fruit and chocolate in between. They will also be taking protein shakes.

In terms of recovery, the team will need to work around the fact that their rowing method is going to be ‘two hours on, two hours off’.  

Laura said ‘We’ll try to get food in straight away and get out of wet clothes quickly. We have a very small space in the cabin but we can get into certain positions to stretch out quads, hips etc. Another thing I’m looking at is whether we take a muscle stimulator to help just once a week. We also have other things like acupuncture, pieces that we can take with us, so worst case scenario if we get injured then we can try and treat ourselves, not just using painkillers and anti-inflammatories’. 

Finally, we asked the team what they thought the toughest part of the challenge would be. Their answers ranged from the boredom of looking at the same surroundings day in and day out to the first episode of really bad weather that they endure. Of course, the team were in agreement that the first time the boat capsizes will be hugely challenging for them.

Natalia said ‘A huge bit about the challenge is that so much of it is unknown. We can prepare as much as we can for any kind of scenario that could occur but you could prepare for a million scenarios and it could be the million and one scenario that happens that we’re not prepared for. Every day will be different, which is what we need to get used to as well. In this structured routine that we need to have, everything around us will be constantly changing’. 

The crew will set sail from San Francisco on March 31st 2015, and will be back at the GSK HPL for further testing before hand. We are excited to see how they progress!