Racing

I'm racing on Saturday. 7km head race (time trial).

I can't quite reconcile this with having been not entirely at my best over the last couple of months.

About four weeks ago I sat in the bar at the club attempting to have a chat with the coach. Being a high-transmit sort of person and giving the impression of lacking a 'receive' button, I was limited to interjecting the odd word into his soliloquy, but nevertheless managed to convey the assertion that I would indeed be fit to race 7 km four weeks later, despite at that point having lost 4 kg in weight almost exclusively from my thighs. Obviously, it was a complete lie, and there was absolutely no way I thought I'd be in race shape a month later, but figured it was worth keeping open the option of racing, and doing so required telling the odd porky.

Remarkably, four weeks on I'm actually in excellent shape. I might have had a few small issues with producing solid sh*ts, but it doesn't seem to be impacting my cardio-vascular fitness nor having sufficient impact on my strength to be noticeable over mid/long distances. Even after being ill and coming back with a light training load, I'm outperforming the rest of the club in the gym. (At least, I'm outperforming the portion of the club who turn up to the gym.) I'm fit to race... but I'm not up for racing.

Bugger.

This bothers me. Four weeks ago, I figured that by now I'd be well up for the fight, but be let down my lack of physical fitness and wellness. I never imagined I'd be in good shape physically and (at best) indifferent mentally. Gee-ing myself up for a competition is not something I've ever struggled with before. True, before I took a few weeks off, I'd been finding it difficult to motivate myself to do the training, and wondered whether I was actually enjoying rowing and, if not, whether I ought to find something more enjoyable to do. Having later admitted defeat to illness, I took some time off and figured that my lack of motivation was actually due to being ill. Now I pretty much feel fine, but still am not enjoying the training.

Enough navel-gazing. I'm getting too close to the obvious conclusion that actually I'm just not enjoying rowing as much as I need to in order to justify the time commitment, and I ought to find something else to do. (I'm still holding out some hope that my lack of enjoyment is a hangover from being ill and everything will be fine once I've been fixed, or at least once I've caught up on sleep.)

I'm rather hoping that something miraculous will happen between now and the start of the race which will see me adopt my usual 'wannabe killer' attitude. It'd better happen, otherwise it's going to be a painful experience in all the wrong senses.

New Toy!

I've bought a new toy. I was feeling both the need and justification to treat myself after a trip to the Lakes got called off and I had my appraisal last week. Having found myself in London for the weekend, I went shopping, online. My new toy's actually an old toy which has been around for a couple of years (old technology, that is), and which I've been coveting from a distance until I had an excuse to get myself a present and was doing enough activity to warrant the purchase. I have as yet no idea whether a pay-rise will be in the offing following the appraisal, but on the off-chance that one is, I thought I'd spend the extra cash in next month's pay packet on a new heart rate monitor.

I do already have a heart rate monitor which I love very much. It tells me my heart rate. What it doesn't do is store the information so I can check it out at my leisure when I've finished my workout. It also won't give me my time-resolved location via GPS and tell me how far I've rowed/run, and at what speeds, and what my heart was doing at any particular moment. It doesn't make coffee, either.

My new toy does all* of these things.

It's the Garmin Forerunner 305. There's a spec-ed up model, the 405, which has better battery life and looks, but the reviews I've read haven't convinced me that the additional £100 would be money well spent, and I have a watch which I wear all day anyway, and it looks a damned sight better than the 405...

Here's some of the output on SportTracks (a very nice bit of free kit). Click images for the full geeky glory...:



And here's my first attempt at landing on the flood tide:



Perhaps that should have read "first, second, third and fourth attempts at landing".

It's going to be a useful little gadget, but I'm a bit concerned that I may be unable to stave off the need to play with the toy for long enough to recover between sessions. (It even makes running fun... I wonder whether it can work the same magic for circuit training?) I suppose I'll find out soon enough - training kicks off in earnest this weekend, leaving just three more days to enjoy pies, pizza, beer and chocolate.

Is that the time?? Must dash - the chippy will be open...

*I lied. It doesn't actually make coffee

Oops...

Since Peterborough regatta a couple of weeks ago, I have been officially 'resting'. As far as I can make out, resting seems to consist not only of not doing any weights and ergs, but also spending inordinate amounts of time on the sofa watching the Olympics, and over-consuming chocolate and alcohol.

I have tried to rest. I think I've mostly been successful. I have eaten quite a large amount of utter rubbish. I have watched bits of the Olympics. I've spent more time than usual sitting on the sofa, and far less time than usual in the gym or on the water.

I was going to do another half marathon erg over summer for a bit of fun. I haven't done a half marathon erg. I haven't even done half an hour. In fact, I haven't erged. I have gone a bit stir-crazy.

I haven't run further than five miles. I haven't even run up the stairs at work. I have run up a huge bill on my credit card through being forced to re-discover the concept of a social life, instead of spending evenings on the river or doing land training.

I haven't been completely successful at resting. See, by the time the afternoon comes around, and I haven't done much exercise for a few days, and am fidgety, and bad tempered, and the weather looks good, and I'm sitting in the office, on the 20th floor, with a view of the river... well, it's not surprising that heading out in a small boat is a pretty enticing prospect. It wouldn't have to be hard work, it'd be enough to go out for a paddle in the early evening sunshine...

I confess I have been out on the water a few times.

We took a couple of singles out last week. When my sculling buddy challenged me to a race, I succumbed. As we raced over only about 300m and, in particular, as I lost, I don't think it really counted as exercise.

We've also taken out the pair a few times. This is less like resting. For one thing, I can't really take it easy on the water if my partner isn't working equally lightly.(As we only have one blade each, we'd go round in circles if we didn't row with the same pressure). Also, as we're not yet absolutely completely fantastic, we're not doing much technical work and instead are putting in the miles until we've got the simple things right. Things like steering, getting into the boat, getting out of the boat, pushing off from the pontoon, landing back at the pontoon, spinning without capsizing, and lastly, rowing. We've quite a lot of work to do...

In the interests of getting a bit more practice at the simple things, we headed out this morning for a light paddle. It was all going absolutely to plan when we found ourselves upstream of Chiswick bridge, with a wide, flat and empty river ahead of us. The original plan for the return trip (paddling back with a few bursts of firm pressure in an otherwise light trip) got scotched as we succumbed to the urge to row the course for the Pairs Head (a time trial for doubles and pairs held in October), and test out whether I could still steer when moving with a bit of speed. We did a timed piece over the 4km course, instead of sticking with the original plan of paddling back with a few bursts of firm pressure in an otherwise light trip.

We had a lot more fun...

We rowed under Chiswick Bridge to the start of the course, reaching the dizzy heights of all of, ooh, about 26 strokes a minute. Quarter of an hour and probably the longest continuous stint of rowing we've done since March later (including a brief stoppage to avoid a double who'd put themselves in the middle of the river and on collision course with us), we'd passed under somewhere near the second lamppost on Hammersmith Bridge and finished the course. We were pretty pleased. I'd managed to steer an almost reasonable line. We'd done some decent rowing (mostly when I wasn't concentrating on not hitting other boats, occasional buoys or the ever-present banks), and we'd moved the boat at a reasonable speed. For our sixth outing as a pair, it felt like a good result, even if (as I realised about three kilometres in when various bits of body started complaining at the effort) it may not entirely have fulfilled the requirements of 'resting'...

Oh well.

It was fun...

Relief

It has been a good week.

Mr Why? Senior has taken his first steps with his latest hip, with all the signs filtering down to the Big Smoke being extremely encouraging so far. I'm hoping to head north in the not-too-distant future to see his new-found mobility for myself.

Speaking of mobility, the programme I've been working on for the last year or so has been officially mobilised/launched/rebranded/reorganised/re-christened/baptised/etc. This required an away day at a conference centre playing buzzword bingo during listening to the morning's presentations before stepping in as a late replacement facilitator for the afternoon workshop sessions. I hate facilitating these things - it's always awkward to find oneself trying to limit the input of important people who like to talk a lot and encourage people a few rungs further down the organisational ladder to share their thoughts. Fortunately, the group I had was rather good in this respect, with it's most senior member doing a surprisingly good job of facilitating the session himself, leaving me the relatively politically safe task of writing neatly on the flipcharts. Another relief...

What else? Oh yes, I remember - training appears to be paying off. This is a relief otherwise I'd be taking a leaf out of other people's books and jacking in the notion that training improves performance. I reset my maximum weights midweek and managed to crank another 10% onto most of the weights. The next weights session will leave me in Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) agony for about 72 hours, if previous experience is anything to go by (but it's several weeks until we race again, so that's OK). This time, however, I will ensure that I move anything frequently used downstairs so that I don't find myself in the tricky situation of having to weigh the pros and cons of the pain involved in descending the stairs to get myself to the loo against the slow torture of an increasingly full bladder. (Life is full of such difficult choices...)

The last source of relief for the week is that I have now been out in a pair twice and not died/required the services of the lovely people at the RNLI. A couple of us had been toying for a while with the possibility of taking out a pair. We regularly find ourselves in the gym in the evenings when the water is beautifully calm and the skies clear and sunny, and figured learning to pair successfully would enable us to get off the ergs and onto the water a bit more often. When a suitably robust pair returned from repair, we seized the opportunity to take it out.

Somehow, I've managed to acquire the job of steering.

I now have renewed sympathy for the various coxless boats which have managed to crash into us or cause a near miss over the last few months. Steering ain't easy. It's a bit like having to learn to drive again, but without the luxury of having an instructor with dual controls. There aren't any quiet side roads, either, and instead you're forced straight onto, say, the A6. Also, boats don't have L-plates (though they perhaps should, particularly the way I've managed to steer these last couple of days...). Oh, and the other tricky things about this steering malarkey are that you're travelling backwards, and at the mercy of your crewmates to row at an even pressure. Handily, the river is fairly quiet at the moment, as my steering is not yet perfect. Far from it, in fact.

Nevertheless, hope springs eternal and after two reasonably uneventful outings in a pair, we've decided that it's a realistic ambition to win at whatever status we end up racing at the Pairs Head (a 4km time trial in October). We've therefore got just under three months for me to learn to steer (it's always handy to be able to steer when racing on the Tideway). This might prove a little ambitious, but it's great fun and also rather exciting to have a new project to work on, and something to keep me busy over the remainder of summer.

Summer solstice silliness

Yesterday was the summer solstice here. To mark the occasion, some bright spark on the other side of the erging pond thought they'd come up with a challenge for the longest day: a 21km erg race. I'd put the date in my diary a few months ago when it was sufficiently far into the future as to seem like a good idea.

After Saturday morning's arm-beasting outing and a session in the gym squatting some reasonably heavy weights, we repaired to a local cafe for 'breakfast'. It was by then about midday. I was declared mad by the rest of the crew for contemplating returning to the club for what was likely to be more than an hour and a half of constant erging.

I wasn't too concerned by the distance, though I supposed my butt might be a bit sore by the end, and that I'd need to be diligent about rehydrating during the session and for the rest of the day (no more tea or coffee). 21km is just under twice the distance I've been rowing regularly in training, so I figured I could managed that without too much trauma, with maybe a few drinks breaks along the way to get some carbs and fluid in.

At about half three in the afternoon I started erging.

I finished shortly after 5pm, having got through a litre and half of carbohydrate drink, acquired a blister on my right heel, sweat rather a lot, and developed (as I had suspected) rather sore buttocks. Having said that, all things considered it was rather less strenuous than I thought it would be.

I didn't feel too bad this morning - I had a little soreness in my quads, but it was no worse than I would have anticipated following the squats from yesterday. If anything, I suspected I was rather less sore for having followed up with a long erg and a satisfying session of stretching afterwards. I'd also been relatively good at making sure I refuelled with plenty carbs and protein (thanks in no small part to a double outing the following morning and Tuesday's 2km test erg being at the back of my mind).

This morning's outings were hard. The water was frenzied, and we were rowing into a silly-stiff headwind at times. Having recently changed sides, rowing on stroke side is proving mentally exhausting per se in the absence of testing conditions. With the wind trying to rip my blade from my fatigued grip with every stroke, and yesterday's half-marathon efforts making themselves felt in my thighs, I don't think I could have been concentrating harder on my technique if my life depended on it.

And I rowed pretty well.

I've always liked a challenge, but until today I hadn't realised how much easier I find it to switch on and concentrate when I perceive things to be tough. Properly tough, such as having four bow-siders in the same four with two rowing on their disfavoured side, in rubbish water, with a silly headwind, and with my hands shredded from yesterday's stroke-side exploits. I can concentrate pretty well under those conditions.

It was hard work, though.

It's 7pm now, and there's no way I can write off the stiffness that has lodged itself firmly in my thighs as being wholly due to the squats I did yesterday. The erg and some tough outings have caught up with me, and brought with them much pain. It hurts a lot. Climbing stairs is tough. Descending them is nigh-on impossible.

It's two days until the next test erg, and I hope I'm recovered in time. If not, it's going to be tough. Mind you, perhaps (given today's realisation) that would be for the best...

Singling

I got up before 6 this morning to race in a four. We lost.

F*ck.

Nothing more to say there, then.

Finding myself at a loss at around 10 am on a Saturday being a rarity, I had a cup of tea with an equally angry and disappointed crewmate, then we took single sculls out onto the water.

I haven't been out in a single for nearly two years, and I wasn't expecting miracles. Singles are incredibly unstable, and my aim for the outing was to get away from the raft and back to it without capsizing. Any strokes I managed to take inbetween pushing off and landing counted as a bonus. The only river I've singled on previously is the Wey in Guildford, an 800m stretch with banks within touching distance at all points, no tides to contend with, and no cruisers creating monster-sized wash. I've also sculled on Edgbaston Reservoir, an overgrown muddy puddle in the middle of Birmingham. Conditions there tended to be flat, with the only real hazards being the occasional angler who would practice their aim by attempting to stone passing scullers, and the prevailing wind which would whip the water against the vertical wall at the far end of the reservoir, creating massive waves (massive when viewed from a scull).

Sculling in Guildford - barely room to swing a scull...

I don't know the Thames well. True, I've rowed up and down it quite a bit now, and run along various bits of it, but for most of the time, I'm thinking about my stroke relative to the water, and not having to worry about things like what the stream is doing and whether the boat is correctly positioned in/out of it, or whether the boat is orientated to travel along the river or towards the bank. What with banks being irregularly shaped and rivers having bends, and scullers travelling in the opposite direction to that in which they are facing, getting a scull up and down a river without ending up heading either for the bank or for another boat is not as easy as it might at first seem.

Sculling on The Thames - you could pilot a cargo ship down that...

Thankfully I wasn't going out alone, I would have a crewmate sculling nearby to keep me out of too much trouble and tell me where to cross the river. One thing she couldn't do for me, though, was to sit the boat.

Translation of boatie jargon for non-rowers: “Sitting the boat” means getting/keeping the boat balanced such that both right and left sides of the boat are level above the water. If this is not the case, the boat is described as being “down on bow/stroke side”, depending on which way it is tilting. In the picture below, the rower is looking away from you:

The only time I have capsized a scull was during a short outing at Guildford. My outing lasted approximately half a second - I pushed off with the bank on my stroke side, and immediately flipped the boat over my bowside. I landed in about four foot of water, and hauled myself onto the bank, very wet and rather angry with myself. I didn't fancy doing the same thing on the Thames, so I got a bit (read: lot) of help to get me out onto the water, where I discovered that singling really is like riding a bike – if you haven't done it for a while, it's best to avoid ever doing it again, or failing that to put stabilisers on.

My scull didn't come with the scull version of stabilisers. Just me and my sculls (sculling blades/oars), with my crewmate disappearing across the river. I was trying to remember how to avoid capsizing, whilst moving the scull backwards without capsizing, and making an attempt at steering also without capsizing.

Ten minutes after getting on the water, I'd managed to get about a hundred metres, crossing the stream from the incoming tide to the other side of the river. Without capsizing.

Incoming tide? We didn't have to deal with things like that in Guildford. Nor did we have to deal with the possibility of there being other crews on the water which didn't know that someone had gone out in a single for the first time in a while and therefore probably best to give them a wide berth.

But I hadn't capsized. So far, so good.

Just as I was remembering what sculling felt like, the next reminder that I wasn't in Guildford any more cropped up. This time, it was the wash from a coaching launch, which hurled me up and down for a while whilst pushing me rather closer towards the bank than I would have liked. The bank also looked rather less soft than the corresponding Guildford feature, being made of concrete rather than mud and tree roots and grass and things, which I imagine are rather more forgiving to crash into than concrete. I sat it out whilst pondering the thought that perhaps heading out in a single after a race without having had much sleep recently nor much food that morning may not have been the best plan I'd ever hatched.

Still, I hadn't capsized. I'd more or less managed to deal with one more unfamiliar Thames challenge, and I was remarkably dry. I'd even managed to take a few strokes in succession with the boat reasonably nicely sat, and picking up some speed. Enough to keep me within sight of my crewmate, just in case... I was just getting comfortable when Hammersmith Bridge loomed large. Fortunately, there was plenty width under the Surrey side of the central span for me to aim through.

A few hundred metres of uneventful sculling further on, the next challenge was spinning to head back. Whilst in Guildford I'd been pretty nifty with my spinning (through necessity – there wasn't much spare room to move the boat forwards or backwards without colliding with one bank or another), I now had maybe eighty metres of river in which to get my boat turned round. Granted, about thirty of those metres were a bit close to sewage outlets and therefore preferable not to get involved with, but I had more than ample space to turn round in. The problem was, I didn't really want ample space, I wanted to spin my scull on the spot, as I felt sure I'd capsize just pulling it round using only my bow side blade and end up in the sewage (another thing I didn't have to contend with in Guildford), probably catching yet another gastro unpleasantness.

But I didn't. I'd got halfway, spun, and still not capsized.

Halfway - I was reminded at this point that most fatalities in mountaineering happen after the summit has been reached. I didn't want the way back to prove my undoing, particularly as I felt I was beginning to rediscover some familiarity with the sculling movement and getting to be able to predict the movement of the boat in the water.

Heading back, we kept close to the middle of the river, making the most of the stream. Being in a small boat in the middle of a big river was less unnerving than I had anticipated. The bigger problem was getting away from my attachment to planning my course based on the curves of the bank, and instead looking much further down the river, pointing more or less down the centre.

Back under Hammersmith bridge and having avoided moored boats (without capsizing), the sight of several hundred sailing boats (well, at least ten...) moving apparently at random was not welcome. I figured I'd sit in plenty of space and wait for my crewmate to do something sensible, and attempt to copy it. Five minutes later, I'd rowed past the club raft, spun, paddled back and drawn my scull up to the raft, been pulled in, was back on a solid surface, and all without capsizing. Success...

I went out in a single on the Thames and didn't capsize. It almost, almost, made up for losing.

--
Photo credits:
Top from Nicholos Masse's flickr photostream.
Bottom from Tony Spencer's flickr photostream.

Faster than a speeding octogenarian

I did another 2k test erg earlier this week. It went well. I was looking for 7:40, which I suspected may have proved to be a little ambitious, but happily (for my time, at least) I arrived at the boathouse to find men on the scene.

"Is that your 2k? Do you need someone to shout for you?"

Translation for non-rowers: "Are you doing that horrendously painful, stuff-of-nightmares workout? Can you beast yourself sufficiently or would you like some encouragement to inflict ever more pain on yourself?"

"Err..." I replied, my mind racing to come up with a plausible excuse for why I needed to be left alone to kill myself at my leisure in the corner, rather than with a bunch of chaps urging me onto greater and more painful efforts. Unfortunately, excuses have never been my strongest subject and I somehow ended up with what seemed like an inordinate number of people encouraging me to hurt myself a lot and then with 10% extra pain thrown in for free. This went on until I'd finished the 2k in less time than I'd initially thought was ambitious. Bloody men... :)

So, the upshot of that little escapade was that I pulled 7:38.8. Courtesy of some research undertaken at the Concept 2 records, I can report that this means that I:

• Have done a 2k faster than every octogenarian on the planet of which the kind folk at Concept 2 know;
  
• Am faster than every woman of 65 years or over;
  
• Am still slower than some women more than twice my age and who are older than my mother (but I will fix this by losing another eight seconds from my time);
  
• Would make a roughly world-class 60-year-old (with a UK record to boot);
  
• Am still being beaten over 2k by 12 year old girls (This Hurts A Lot, and will be fixed by dropping another 8.5 seconds from my time).

Having managed to roundly beat the times of a bunch of (admittedly rather special) pensioners, I spent the evening coughing feebly to myself (something that seems to happen after strenuous exercise, and which seems related to the chest infection I picked up following rather stupidly deciding to inhale the Zambezi river - this is daft for two reasons: a) The volume of the Zambezi is far greater than that of my lungs, and b) the Zambezi contains all sorts of bacteria that my lungs evidently weren't designed to cope with).

With the erg safely out of the way, I could focus on task 2 for the week: The Stairs.

As a postgrad student working on the 6th floor of a chemistry block, I used to race my colleagues back upstairs after Friday pub lunches. I took the stairs, carrying a couple of pints, a steak and a heavy stomach. They took the lift. I would usually win, and feel rather smug if a little out of breath and possibly regretting that second steak or extra pint of beer...

A few years on, and many months into working on the 20th floor of a tallish building, I suggested racing the stairs to a colleague. (This would have to effectively be a time trial rather than racing the lift as my guess of 10 seconds a flight would give a projected time for the stairs of 3 minutes 30 seconds*, and even on a bad day, the express lift doesn't usually take longer than a minute and a half including arrival time and stopping at every possible floor). He responded to my suggestion by arriving back on the floor several minutes later, having run the stairs in 3 minutes and 10 seconds. Damn him. I wanted to get the first marker down, and head up the leaderboard, if only by virtue of having gone first.

Another colleague took up the challenge and posted a 3:27 time. Nothing new to worry about there, then. But it seemed that the race was firmly on.

I mentioned this little competition which I'd accidentally established to the chap who sits behind me, who is a sporty, outdoorsy kind of guy. It evidently pressed all the right buttons with him, as he spent the next hour fidgeting. It then took only my consulting buddy arriving breathless on the scene having done the stairs in 2:52 for the chap behind me to remove his tie and extraneous pocket-junk and make his way to the bottom of the building. He made it up in 3:14, looking and sounding rather the worse for wear. I had the small matter of a test erg to get out of the way before posting my effort to join them on the leaderboard.

I was looking for a sub 2:50 time, aiming at 8 seconds a flight to bring me in at 2:48. (Being a rower, pain is one of the things I do best, as is expecting all of the major problems in life to be solved by working out a split time and then sticking to it.) I took the lift down to the ground floor, then made my way to the bottom of the main stairwell. The air was warm, still, stifling. I took an unsatisfactory deep breath and started what should have been a rhythmic trot up twenty-one flights of stairs.

By the seventh floor, I wasn't having much fun, but was still on for 8 seconds a flight, but probably not for much longer. I could see my pre-attempt confidence that I would be running up twenty flights without needing to walk rapidly evaporating. In addition to the gloomy realisation that I probably wouldn't be shooting to the top of the leaderboard, it was hot and sticky in the stairwell. I would smell for the rest of the day. It was only 8am...

By the tenth floor, I was using the handrail to help haul myself up. I was also getting a bit dizzy from the long, clockwise spiral. I suppose it could have been the exertion, but I blame the spiralling, myself...

By the fourteenth floor, my thighs were sorely regretting my ever having suggested this challenge. I could see I would be having another attempt at this if I wanted to beat my colleague's 2:52, but I was determined to beat his first effort (and the then second fastest time) of 3:10. That was definitely possible. Come to think of it, three minutes was possible. Good, something to aim for.

By the time I'd got to the top I could have sworn I'd done enough work to justify a steak dinner. My thighs felt leaden and my chest was heaving. I emerged onto the floorplate and rounded the corner to the wing in which I work to be met by gales of laughter at my inability to breathe coming from those who think that all us stair runners are stark raving bonkers. I'd stopped my watch at the twentieth floor at 3 minutes and one second. I was seething at myself. Damn that extra second. Still, it's the best first attempt at the stairs, and I'm quite certain that a few weeks of taking the stairs instead of the lift twice a day will haul me up to top spot.

I had earlier calculated that hauling my twelve-ish stone body weight up twenty one flights of stairs with a rise in the region of 4 metres per flight would require approximately 63 kJ, or about 15 (food) Calories. That's about a seventh of an average apple. All that work for only a thin sliver of an unexciting fruit? It makes me wonder what I would have to do to work off the banana I ate yesterday...

With those thoughts in mind, perhaps it's as well that I'm laid up in bed with no appetite. After all the exertion of ergs and stairs, maybe it's not surprizing that I've succumbed to something. I think it's a virus - swollen glands and fever on Wednesday, diarrhoea yesterday and today, still not really managing to absorb fluids... It seems to be resolving, but it has at least persuaded me that, six months after moving, the time has come to register with a GP. (It should be noted that this is something of a record for me, it having taken 14 months and 8 months after my previous two moves for me to get around to registering with my local medics. The reason for this is that mostly they're not open when I'm able to get to them (GPs not being noted for opening their surgeries at times amenable to people working something like a 9 to 5), and therefore I don't get around to registering until I need their services (my logic being that if I have to take time off work to see them, I might as well ensure I get some benefit from it by being ill at the time of registering).)

I would normally think about feeling sorry for myself at this point (the point at which I could rightly feel miserable for finding getting out of bed a challenging concept (not a good thing to have with diarrhoea...) and a small flight of stairs representing a towering obstacle), but with my dad's health record and current right leg woes, I'm reminded that having a-bit-of-a-non-descript-virus-thing really isn't very much to be dealing with.

Plus, I can console myself with the knowledge that I am extremely unlikely to come across an 80 year old who I can't beat over 2k.

*For those of you who spotted the apparent inconsistency, it's a double height ground floor...

Black coffee

I am drinking black coffee. This is never a good sign, and usually indicates one of two undesirable things:

1. I have a looming deadline and need to sustain wakefulness for longer than is strictly good for me;
   
2. I have run out of milk.

Today, it's the second reason which applies.

I spent two hours after leaving the boathouse this morning having lunch and coffee with a pair of sisters with whom I used to play in a youth orchestra in Sheffield. I have recently re-established contact with the elder of the two, who has taken to working in the chemistry department in which I did my PhD, and consequently we now have a number of mutual chemist friends, and the younger of the pair rows at one of the more serious Hammersmith clubs. Other than catching the odd glimpse of her hanging over the balcony of her club following what I presume by her general appearance and demeanour to be have been a mammoth erg, or passing by her crew on the river, I haven't seen her for perhaps ten years.

She is rather more robust-looking than she was a decade ago. I imagine I am, also.

Time passed quickly and easily, catching up over toasted sandwiches and cappuchinos at a nearby cafe, touching on old haunts, old friends, places we've lived in or visited since our youth orchestra days. It was when the elder sister was describing to me the location of the Sheffield pub she'd recently bought a pint in for £1.60 that I started to realise how much time had passed. The conversation when something like this:

"It's The Harley - you go along Glossop Road, past Loch Fyne"
"What Loch Fyne on Glossop Road? Come to think of it, what Loch Fyne in Sheffield?"
"Oh, used to be Hanrahan's - on the right as you go into town."
"Oh, right, gotcha."
"Well, it's on that corner where the tram comes up, opposite Pizza Volante - The pizza parlour formerly known as The Flying Pizza, before there was a gun-related incident in the car park, or something like that..."
"Next to the Midland bank?"
"Yeah, well, it's HSBC now"
"Yeah, course..."
"Well, there - it was £1.60 a pint. That's what I used to pay when I was a teenager and drinking in Sheffield. It's the same price now - like going back in time..."

It was at this point in the conversation that I went into shock at the realisation that I was participating in one of those conversations which my parents used to have with their friends about How Places Have Changed And How Things Aren't Like How They Used To Be. I was horrified.

I was also horrified earlier this week to spy the clump of grey hairs sprouting around my hairline. They are rapidly multiplying. This is serious. No longer can I pretend to be young. I really am an adult. People who used to be far too young for me to be seen socialising with are now my contemporaries and fully-fledged adults in their own right. They show all the signs of being adults, such as working for a living in responsible jobs, drinking alcohol in moderation and only on weekends, and no doubt eating their green veg without being bribed. They probably like the tastes of olives, celery, and Stilton and finish meals with an espresso rather than an ice-cream sundae. I am ageing beyond the point at which I feel a part of the Spring.

In another sign of ageing, I am becoming scatty. Whilst I was aware I needed to pick up milk on my way home (and had ear-marked as the place to do this the newsagent next to the cafe in which quite by chance I found myself having lunch), in my haste to run home through the hail and flee the evidence of ageing, I completely forgot to buy milk.

I am drinking black coffee. It is never a good sign.

P.S. I cannot believe the number of typos I have had to correct in this post. I hesitate to add a P.S. as I assume I will introduce yet more of the accursed things.

WEHoRR

In yesterday's rowing time trial on the River Thames, 237 women's eights (rowing boats) competed in The Womens' Eights Head of the River Race (WEHoRR) from Mortlake to Putney Bridge, a distance of 4 1/4 miles. Our boat finished 102 places higher than it did last year. Winter training has evidently been paying off.

(pictures courtesy of RachelC)

Lining up for the start

Lining up isn't as easy as it sounds - the river is flowing quickly, with the current pushing the boat into the banks. All the while, coxes are trying to keep their boats away from the banks, and away from the boats ahead and behind them, whilst not being able to see straight ahead with their view blocked by their crew. This led to a number of coxes finding themselves with no alternative but to disembark (illegally) to prevent their expensive boats (~£15k when new) from running aground. Our cox tried this and misjudged the depth of the water. He spent the next half an hour with bits of river sloshing around in his wellies.

The first hundred boats line up before the start line, fifty on either side of the river, and spin into the stream when told to do so by a marshall. They set off in order, speeding up under Chiswick bridge such that when they reach the start, they are already at their race pace. Once one set of fifty eights has gone, the next fifty eights on that side paddle down to the start and so on. Once all the boats have got themselves into order, it's fairly straightforward. It's getting 237 boats into numerical order in a fast-flowing stream which is the hard and chaotic part.

Moving out to overtake a slower crew

In head races (time trials), there is always the prospect of overtaking. Whilst motivating for the faster crew, it can also be a detraction, having to move out of the fastest water to get past the crew ahead, who have no obligation to let you pass. It is fantastically motivating to move past other crews early on in the race, and I'd much rather pass crews than have no opposition to push off from during the course, but having to overtake many boats is not the most efficient method of getting from the start to the finish.

Nurture the pain...

My ability to sense of the passage of time disappears completely during races. Once in a race, it is as if there is only a single moment, the cycle of a stroke, which is endlessly repeated, the start being an incomprehensibly long time ago and the promise of the end being an agonisingly incomprehensible long time into the future.

We overtook five crews on the way down to Putney. Our first victims tried to steer into us at one point (this is not very sporting and nor is it very bright). Fortunately our cox had words with his counterpart, and they moved across with roasting ears. The second crew we overtook seemed to be having steering issues, too, but these seemed beyond their control. Judging by the way they were apparently moving at random around the river (including clashing blades with us a couple of times) they'd probably lost their rudder and weren't able to steer.

Our crew were collectively a little wound up by this point, having lost valuable seconds through being impeded. It was therefore a welcome sight to pass under Hammersmith Bridge, a noteworthy landmark in any case, and to read the banner that one spectator had unfurled which declared "Pain is weakness leaving the body". It re-focused my mind wonderfully on what I was supposed to be doing. Judging by the way the boatspeed had picked up, the rest of the crew had read it too.

The next two crews in our sights were better mannered, and moved out to let us through. One of them must be heartily sick of the sight of us by now, as we have roundly beaten them in every race we've rowed this season. They're getting better, though, sufficiently so that we might have our work cut out over summer to keep them in our wake.

Coming up to the finish, we had a sixth potential scalp, overlapping them coming down the finish. They evidently hadn't been working hard enough out on the rest of the course, as they had plenty left in the tank to hold us off until the finish. Drat...

It is a very peculiar pleasure to get to the end of a hard race, with nothing left to give from your pain-racked sleep-deprived body, certain that it has been worthwhile because you have beaten some other people who were similarly inclined to race. Agony and ecstasy reside together on the winner's side of the rower's coin, an exquisite confirmation of the dominance of the will over the body. The flip side of the coin is agony and disappointment, performing poorly and knowing more could have been given, a pain which doesn't dissipate after the finish line has been crossed.

Nuff respect

At risk of this becoming a rowing blog...

I did a 2km test erg on Tuesday - my first one of the year, pulling a reasonable 7min52s. This is some way off my best (set as a student with all the luxury of being able to train twice a day, have the college kitchen cook my food for me and deal with things like washing up, and feed me subsidised steak, leaving me plenty time to get extra bonus sleep and recover properly between sessions). I got a text message from our captain the next day. It read: Thanks for doing your 2k. Saw your time in the book. Good work! So far so good, but I'm not content with the score and am unshakeably confident that I can knock twenty to thirty seconds off that over the next twelve months with a bit more training, a few fewer post-work-stress beers, and a bit more adrenalin. (This does pre-suppose that I do not find myself commuting to the other side of the country on a daily basis.)

In a fit of benchmarking and seeking a second opinion, I checked out world records by age group for men and women, both heavyweights (open to all weights) and lightweights (that's 75kg (11st 11lb) or less for men, and 61.5kg (9st 9lb) or less for women). I've plotted the records as near as I have the data. My recent erg time is around the red line...

Thus, I would currently lose an indoor race to a couple of twelve year olds, a 60 year old lightweight woman and a 75 year old man, and only narrowly beat a 65 year old woman, and an 80 year old lightweight man. Whilst I have absolutely huge, massive, uber-amounts of respect for any pensioners who erg, and can barely fathom just how rock hard these world-beating erging pensioners are, I'd still like to be able to beat comfortably every octagenarian I might ever encounter, and (ideally) every twelve year old kid. Is that too much to ask of myself?

If that doesn't spur me into shifting those extra thirty seconds, what will?

Race-day psychosis

You would never have guessed I'd missed a week of training and half a week of food - pacing around the changing rooms and club room before boating for yesterday's race, I felt exactly the same as before every race.

Yesterday was a head race, a 4km time trial with the tide, from Chiswick to Hammersmith. Head races are notoriously painful affairs, being far longer than most regatta courses and, without a crew side-by-side to race down the course, far harder to maintain the necessary gee-ed-up-ness to work through the pain. When I woke yesterday, it was with the fear - the queasy disquiet at the thought of the looming, entirely self-inflicted pain - already firmly lodged in my core.

The hour before boating is the worst. Fear of the pain, uncertainty in my fitness, ability, technique. But as we go to get the boat out, a switch is flicked. All of a sudden, my usual calm demeanour slips away, replaced by that of a single-minded, rowing thug. I pace around, I focus inwards, I'm not about to get out anyone's way, and one look at my eyes will tell you that. I transform into a sado-masochist. One of the symptoms of this transformation is that the sorts of words and phrases which appeal to me change from things which I like the sound of, such as:

• lascivious;
  
• kumquat;
  
• delectable;
  
• gesticulate;
  
• onomatopoeia;
  
• oleaginous;

to things which raise my stress levels, blood pressure and presumably my ability to perform, things like:

• kill;
  
• death;
  
• rip;
  
• kill;
  
• explode;
  
• power;
  
• kick-ass;
  
• "I'm-gonna-stuff-my-presence-on-the-water-down-the-throat-of-any-passing-norovirus"; and did I mention my favourite psyching-up word...
  
• kill.

I'm sure you get the idea - anything aggressive pretty much does the trick.

I get properly psyched up. From the moment I'm in the boat, I'm switched on and hyper-sensitive to every sound, sensation and presence. I sit up taller, set my jaw to super-psyched rower position (very similar to aggressive thug position, but with marginally more gorm...) and block out any other crews on the water. They are not there, and on the off-chance that they are there and intend racing, they will lose. I'm not into making conversation with the opposition. Some people do - they go in for a bit of chit chat with their opposite number whilst waiting for the start, but I'd rather kill my opposite number. But before I stuff it to them out on the course, whilst we're paddling down to the start or waiting for the off, I'll use every inch of my height and reach, and every reserve of technique and composure to intimidate the opposition.

Any other day, I'd be convinced that all this is rubbish, and I'm intimidating no-one. I'm sure it is rubbish, and any other day, I wouldn't want to be intimidating anyone, but on race-day it's a vital part of the storyline forming the parallel reality that needs to run through my head to get me through the race. Yesterday, on top of the normal level of self-delusion required, I had to work extra hard to counter any concept that my preparation for the race may have been less than ideal. In addition to usual pre-race fear of pain, I was deeply worried that I would let rip only to find the tank very empty (thanks to Mr Norovirus and three days without food or adequate fluid intake), that perhaps a couple of minutes into the race I would find I had nothing left to give. But you couldn't have told me that on the start, oh no. By the time we'd got to the start, in my parallel reality I Was In The Shape Of My Life. I Have Been Fit As A Fiddle All Year. (I certainly hadn't spent most of it in close proximity to my toilet...)

The start of a head race always feels good - the built-up nervous energy and adrenalin carries us through our start, into our stride, and the first couple of minutes disappear in a display of real, sexy rowing - controlled power, smooth technique. Eight working as one. It feels fantastic. We're closing on the crew ahead, and the crew behind is disappearing into the distance. We're going to power down this course, and blow the other crews out of the water. The landmarks along the Thames pass by quickly. The pain creeps up more slowly, and more sinisterly.

Five minutes in, we're still moving well, but now my legs feel heavy. My body feels heavy. The rating seems unbelievably high and I have no idea how I'm going to continue to do this for the rest of the race, I just know that I am. I will. Norovirus can go hang. Every stroke I take tightens the noose on the virus. I can feel it. My pain is killing it. Every stroke. Every stroke. More pain. More Pain. Love the Pain. Love the Power. Kill. KILL.

My lungs are bursting for air, my abs are screaming for a rest, my legs feel like lead, my forearms are full of acid. Holding the technique is hard work, but I'm concentrating on the music of the boat, the strength at the finish, the smooth (increasingly ragged) glide up the slide, water trickling off the blades, the splash of the catch, the deep growl of the drive. I'm loving the visual symmetry, seeing the synchronised blades in the periphery of my vision. Forwards and back. Describing symmetric arcs (with a bit of translation and reflection). Nurture the Symmetry. Keeping it Tidy. Holding the Beauty. Loving my Blade. Loving the Crew. Loving the Music. Nurture the Pain. Nurture the Pain. Nurture the Pain. NURTURE THE PAIN.

There's a cheer. We're a minute from the end. The rest of the club is standing on the raft and cheering for us - this really is time to block out the pain and row sexily for the cameras. We're powering through. The finish. We're there.

The adrenalin drains away. We're shattered. We can't speak. It's bizarre how disabling losing the need to compete can be. We can barely move, yet seconds earlier we were firing on all cylinders, tired, but coordinated, and moving pretty quickly. Immediately past the finish, we might as well have been haggis for all the speed we could give the boat. The pain had vanished, but the energy was gone.

There were an awful lot of boats at the finish. It's striking - I had barely been aware of them at the start, and only aware of one during the race (did I not mention there was a bunch of schoolkids chasing us down the course?) They look as wrecked as we feel - no doubt we all look pretty rough. I know I'm a bit broken. Gone are my pre-race delusions of being in the shape of my life, my parallel reality sank at the finish. I don't need it anymore. It has done its job. It got me through...

The transition from wannabe killing-machine to knackered rower is extreme and exhausting. The adrenalin has gone. The competition has passed. I'm not interested in aggression. I no longer want to kill anything. I'm satisfied - it was a good row. As we paddle back to the boathouse, food, water, and sleep resume their customary positions at the forefront of my mind. My race-day persona is put away, shut back in its box, not to be seen again. That is, until the next race. And even as I file away my personal race-day sado-masochist, I can hear her declaring: Bring it on...

Post-Norovirus

12:30am Monday 21/1/8. But Why is asleep. She will get up early for work as she has some pressing stuff to get finished by 9:30am. She is dreaming. In the dream, she has a very sore abdomen, which makes sense, as she has been training so hard she has broken not one but two rowing machines.

12:31am I was dragged from my dreams by my conscious and subconscious self having a disagreement. My body occupied that space between sleep and wakefulness, alternately paying attention to the opposing forces, waiting to see who would win.

Subconsciousness: Psst, Wake up!
Consciousness: Hrrrrugh?? What time is it?? [Looks at clock.] 12:30am? I know I'm having an early start, but 12:30am early wasn't quite what I meant. And I don't care how many sadly mistaken blackbirds are singing, this is completely inappropriate wakefulness. Now shut up and sleep.
SubC: Erm, hello? Stomach pain...?!
C: Yes, yes, yes... It was a dream, remember? Now shut up yer moaning and let me sleep. [Conscious self shuffles to a more comfortable position and tries to sleep.]
SubC: Look, dude, I've tried to break this to you gently, but you leave me with no choice...
[Conscious self is surprised to find that she is hurtling across the landing with the rapidly clarifying aim of being in close proximity to the toilet in time for the commencement of 12 hours of projectile vomiting and explosive diarrhoea.]

And a very grim twelve hours they were, too.

Now, I know that vomiting is unpleasant. I have vomited previously. It has, without exception, been unpleasant. It may have provided some relief, yet I am fully aware that vomiting per se is not something which I eagerly anticipate. Despite this, every time I vomit, I am for some reason caught off-guard by the sheer unpleasantness of it all: beforehand, the stomach gripes, the excess saliva production, the adoption of the pre-puke, toilet-hugging posture, the retching, the sight, the sensation, the sounds, the smell...

The first session was unpleasant enough. The monotony of the puke/wait-to-puke/puke/wait-to-puke/repeat-as-necessary cycle was only slightly relieved by the intermittent requirement for urgent emission of diarrhoea.

I was getting rather bored of the unceasing necessity to puke and crap. Eventually, when I seemed all puked- and crapped-out, I toddled back to bed and tried to replace some of those fluids.

Big mistake.

A couple of minutes later I was back at the toilet, rejecting all the water I'd taken on and any other fluids kicking around for good measure. And this time, the lemon-fresh smell normally associated with the toilet was conspicuous by its absence, replaced with that special scent of sickness - the one that lingers around hospitals - a special blend of cleaning products and the products of diseased bodies. The first session was unpleasant enough, and it would only get worse as the night wore on...

Another abortive trip back to bed, a couple of sips of water and a few moments of feverish sleep later, the cycle repeated itself.

And so on...

And so on...

Some of these were vomit-only excursions, others required a delicate judgement of the direction and timing of emissions, and an unfeasible chunk of coordination and reflexes to avoid carpet disasters. I could rather have done with a handy bucket to provide for both eventualities, however, the bucket was up a flight of stairs and, on Sunday night, climbing those stairs constituted an insurmountable feat of athleticism, and, more pressingly, would have placed me worryingly remote from a toilet.

Two loo-rolls later, I admitted defeat on the dehydration front. I'd had enough of the routine, gave up on trying to drown the pesky norovirus, and collapsed into bed for a couple of days.

I guess it's what comes from rowing on the cleanest Metropolitan sewer river in Europe...

Bear with me...

...and I will try to explain.

I will try to explain why it is that on Friday night, I am heading to bed with a bottle of water, a tube of Deep Heat, and a bottle of Surgical Spirits for company.

I will try to explain why it is that every piece of me aches.

And then, I will try to explain why it is all so fun.

Last week, I was feeling pretty chipper. Positive developments were threatening to materialise at work, training was going well, I had fun plans for the weekend, and I was generally on top of everything: health, life and work-wise. I was remembering just how absolutely good it felt when I was a student - very little stress, excellent health, busy social life, plenty sleep. Nothing looming on the horizon.

I spent five or six hours on the river last weekend - a long outing Saturday morning, and another on Sunday. Saturday's was great. Sunday's wasn't so good. Not only had I had less than five hours' sleep, but ten minutes after getting on the water, I felt sick. Properly sick. Like a fool, I assumed it was some combination of the previous night's lack of sleep, perhaps one beer more than was prudent, and the goat curry. So, feeling properly sick and rowing like a sack of spuds whilst our coach barked increasingly impossible commands at me, I spent the rest of the outing attempting to coax my ailing body towards the unreasonable feats which formed The Plan For The Outing. I muttered many expletives under my breath. In fairness to the coach, it should be pointed out that, as I assumed I was entirely responsible for my sickness, I didn't actually complain that I felt two strokes short of death for most of the outing. I was hoping to get though in one piece without anyone noticing I was a bit worse for wear. That's part of the mentality - mustn't show weakness...

Walking home after the outing, I felt well and truly spent, I assumed from the morning's exertions. I retired home via the supermarket, and picked up kind, gentle foodstuffs to recover at home with. Or so I thought. I went to bed in my post-prandial lull, about 3pm. I stayed there until Monday morning, leaving only to dash to the loo for bouts of the sort of violent explosive diarrhoea that make you wonder just what pressure the gut can withstand.... I have no idea how I went from feeling so well to feeling so rubbish in the space of a few hours, but somehow, I managed it. And my, did I feel rubbish.

To top it all off, as I lay in bed on Monday morning composing my email to my line manager, a few people I was going to be meeting later in the day, and my rowing buddies, to explain why I wouldn't be at work/training, it occurred to me that I didn't feel quite as appalling as I felt an hour ago. And actually, I could probably make it into work. Training might be a step too far, but work... Well, I thought I could manage eight hours sitting at a desk within running distance to the loo.

I didn't train again until Wednesday - a six mile jog along the river. It was slow, and it was unduly hard work, but it felt good to be working my body again, for it to be working for me and doing my bidding instead of declaring war on my ambitions, even though my bidding was something as truely pointless as running to Chiswick bridge and back again. As I suffered no ill effects from this on Thursday, I took the gamble of going to circuit training.

I should explain why this was a gamble:

1. I hadn't eaten in the afternoon and had resorted to gobbling an emergency maltloaf whilst jogging to circuits;
   
2. Circuits are my most hated form of exercise ever. It's hard to get motivated to do the jumping around bit, and the only thing which keeps me going is the thought that everyone else is and not going is letting the crew down;
   
3. The coach is a well-meaning sadist. It was entirely likely that there would be a new and excruciating exercise or ten added to the plan;
   
4. Once I had shown my face at circuits, there is no giving up, no pulling out with a sicknote from the doctor, no explaining that perhaps it's better for me not to push it too hard right now... That mentality doesn't fit.

Circuits consists of twelve stations, one minute per station. That's 48 minutes of high-intensity exercise straight off. Add on a couple of miles' jog there and back, and a hundred or so extra bonus squatjumps just to ratchet up the lactic acid in the thighs, and my quite ridiculous pride and stubbornness, and you have the makings of a very painful outcome.

And so it is that a day later it's Friday evening and I'm lying in bed covered in deep heat. And for good measure and olefactory delight, I have given my palms and soles a good surgical spiriting. I smell like I've had a bad accident with a cleaning cupboard (and I'm not convinced that the skin around my shoulders where I've just applied some more deep heat wasn't grazed. Ooooooh, that stings!) Tomorrow morning I have two outings - 7:45 am at the boathouse. On one level, I wish I could turn my alarm clock off and stay in bed all day. On another level, I love it.

It's that other level that I need to explain, but right now, it's bedtime (bedtime for rowers, at any rate), and because I love rowing, I'm going to sleep now and will blog that bit some other time.

Getting wet

Two rivers, two minutes from two very different homes. I have found myself unexpectedly submerged in both, but that's about all they have in common.

The Wey

This stretch of the Wey is about 800m long, and two minutes from yesterday's home. There's not that much in the way of river traffic, the odd passing duck perhaps, and the occasional swan. In summer, there are usually a few narrowboats moored along the length we ironically call "the straight", but at the time of the day inhabited by rowers, they're usually stationary and emitting wonderful, promising smells of bacon and eggs. There are only a couple of places wide enough to spin the boat in, but seeing as there's only 800 rowable metres of river, spinning happens every few minutes, anyway. It is rather picturesque, but not much cop for rowing. Not that I was doing much of that, having chosen to spend my leisure time sitting on my posterior on cramped trains. Reading. Getting lardy. Commuting. Not making an awful lot of use of having a river two minutes from home.


Today, I'm living two minutes from here:

The Thames

Miles of river, and (being now located twenty minutes' walk from work) pots of leisure time to row (or, at a pinch, read) in. It's not quite as pretty as the Wey, and smells less inviting, and has greater risk of colliding with misplaced and confused whales, but I'm rather excited about the combination of having proper water to row on and the necessary time to row in.