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Local Girls Break Rowing Record

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Two local girls have broken a world record, and boy, are their arms tired!

At 6:39 p.m., Sydney Jean Gottfried and Maddy Pollock officially broke the world record for a 24-hour tandem row in their weight and age classes.

The two teens decided to spend part of their spring break attempting the record after going to spring training in North Carolina.

They have it down to a science.

In order to break the record, the rowing wheel couldn't stop moving ever.

So, they came up with a way to change positions on the rowing machine without stopping the machine.

Each girl took 30-minute shifts, but there were some bumps along the way.

"Actually, we started off on another machine and we got 12 minutes in and that machine broke, so we're lucky that that happened that early in and not 20-hours in," said Pollack, a junior at Shadyside Academy. "We actually started over three times due to machine failure, but we switched machines and got it under control."

"Exhaustion sort of set in in the middle of the night," said Gottfried, a junior at Ellis School. "We started last night to try to get the night portion done first, but when the sun rose, energy sort of flowed in. We've been eating a lot of sugar."

The girls say they do have a few more days on spring break to recover from all that rowing.

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