True grit: what it takes to row across the Atlan­tic Oce­an in 74 days

Gabi Schen­kel was only the^4th woman in the world that finis­hed the Talis­ker Atlan­tic Chall­enge solo. She star­ted rowing on Decem­ber 12 2019 in La Gome­ra and arri­ved on Febru­ary 25 2020 in Anti­gua. That’s 5282kms in 74 days. I wan­ted to find out what it takes to finish such a chall­enge and of cour­se how Gabi plan­ned and exe­cu­ted her performance.

Ath­le­tes often check out a race cour­se on Goog­le maps. When Gabi Schen­kel does that to get a glim­pse of the Talis­ker Atlan­tic Chall­enge, she keeps zoo­ming out so long that the map swit­ches from 2D to 3D… I guess one can tell, she’s in for the long run.

Actual­ly, the long run is some­thing the cha­ris­ma­tic osteo­path from Wädens­wil (Zurich) knows all too well. She’s been run­ning ultra-mara­thons and trail runs for many years and under­stands how to push her body and her mind bey­ond what seems possible.

It strikes me how unpre­ten­tious and rela­xed Gabi approa­ches an unfa­thomable task like the Atlan­tic Chall­enge. She first deci­ded to do this race and then only star­ted with rowing in sum­mer 2018. This makes this achie­ve­ment even more mind-blowing.

After count­less hours on the lake of Zurich to learn pro­per rowing skills, she also prac­ti­sed a lot with the Dutch manu­fac­tu­rer of her boat. Her ves­sel for crossing the Atlan­tic has not much in com­mon with the regu­lar skiff and resem­bles more a James Bond submarine.

The boat com­pri­ses a nar­row cabin to sleep, solar panels to power various track­ing devices, tele­com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on, a litt­le desa­li­na­ti­on machi­ne and of cour­se a coo­ker to prepa­re warm meals from dried expe­di­ti­on food.

To me, nutri­tion was of par­ti­cu­lar inte­rest. The race rules requi­re 60 kcal per kg body weight/​day, in her case 3600kcal/​day. Gabi told remem­bers that this did­n’t help much. First she got sea­sick and then fell real­ly ill and had to take anti­bio­tics for a few days. She was­n’t able to stick to her race plan and was coas­ting along for seve­ral days, slee­ping 10 hours a day, try­ing to recover.

Her Ultra-expe­ri­ence lets her deal with cur­ve­balls like the­se in a much con­trol­led way. «Trust your body and lis­ten careful­ly, what he tells you,» she says, «and then of cour­se set­backs like this force you to face your per­so­nal truth. Do I quit the very moment I missed my actu­al goal or do I keep going becau­se I know, I do my very best every day and that’s what counts all along?» Com­pe­ting in Ultras always comes down to a spi­ri­tu­al side if things. It seems like the­re are no boun­da­ries to what a human body can achie­ve, when you are in tune with your mind. This might be the reason why so many ath­le­tes turn to the­se mas­si­ve races – to bet­ter con­nect with oneself.

For Gabi the big­gest reason to go to the extre­mes is to be as clo­se to natu­re as you can be. Every time she toes the line, she does­n’t real­ly know what to expect, but it always comes down to an exhi­la­ra­ting jour­ney to natu­re – inclu­ding her own nature.

She remi­nis­ces of spe­cial encoun­ters out on the sea with a wha­le coming past her litt­le boat, with birds and dol­phins. «There’s a cer­tain con­nec­tion with nature’s crea­tures – almost like you need to dis­con­nect from the fren­zy of the modern world to build new con­nec­tions to our roots.»

Gabi knows, Ultra is not for ever­yo­ne. She gets dis­mis­si­ve comm­ents from stran­gers about her endea­vours often but igno­res doub­ters. «If I can inspi­re and encou­ra­ge only a few to get acti­ve and beco­me more accoun­ta­ble for their own actions, I’m very hap­py.» The­se values are a red thread through Gabi’s life. She dedi­ca­ted her per­for­mance to Oce­an Care, an orga­niza­ti­on com­mit­ted to mari­ne wild­life pro­tec­tion as well as Pla­s­tic Pat­rol, a UK based orga­niza­ti­on com­mit­ted to redu­cing the amount of pla­s­tic in water­ways. Her pas­si­on next to being all out­door­sy is osteo­pa­thy and hel­ping others over­co­me their issues. And after the long break she took to row across the Atlan­tic, she will reopen her practice.

After over­co­ming her initi­al health issues in the race, she could exe­cu­te the race to a T. One major suc­cess fac­tor for her was reco­very: she slept a mini­mum of 6 – 8 hours every night and spent a lot of time self-care, mas­sa­ging her arms and hands dai­ly and taking extra care of irri­ta­ted skin from her boat’s seat or the oars. Coo­king a meal every day with desa­li­na­ted water and eating of it throug­hout the day nou­ris­hed her and to top it off she used a cus­to­mi­zed micro­nu­tri­ent sup­ple­ment from LOEWI. They must have figu­red out the «secre­te sau­ce» for Gabi: 74 days wit­hout any cramps, no excess fati­gue and never a day of DOMS while cove­ring 50 – 70km’s per day in 12 – 14 hours speaks for itself.

She finis­hed the race after two and a half months and lost a mere 5.4kg of body weight. This is asto­nis­hing, even more so, sin­ce she had big­ger los­ses mid­way, after being sick and then reco­ver­ed along the way.

«I’m over­whel­med with the cur­rent media atten­ti­on I get. I’m not used to this and espe­ci­al­ly after spen­ding such a long time on my own, it will take some time, until I arri­ve back in socie­ty and it all sinks in bet­ter», Gabi says. «I don’t think I am spe­cial, nor have I done any­thing impos­si­ble. I think bar­riers exist only in our heads.» It must be this unbe­lie­va­ble spi­rit or the humi­li­ty of her that is so cat­ching, mean­while she has an eye on her com­pu­ter, eager­ly wai­ting to find out if she made it on the com­pe­ti­tor list of a 246km ultra-mara­thon in Greece.