Lifeguarding, racing and trying to stay awake.....

Phew. I am sitting down, finally, and not doing the things I should be doing!! It’s been far too long since my last missive, and lots has happened, not least today’s excitement involving a veteran men’s 2x capsizing on the river this morning and yours truly fishing them out. I am honestly beginning to wonder if I am somehow causing these mishaps indirectly....this is the second (but infinitely far less life-threatening) incident I have been involved in, in as many months!!! Anyway, no harm done, just two very soggy chaps and perhaps a couple of bruised egos (and knees).

We are nearing the end of the third block of training and I can honestly say that this is the first time in my life that I have managed to stay illness and injury free. Admittedly, I have had to take the odd day where, to coin JPM’s phrase, I felt a bit “hot in the throat” and I have backed right off the training, choosing to either sleep (I know) or go on one of my epic walks which sometimes end in me losing my bearing completely and being rescued by Barbour jacketed ladies on the way home from collecting Labrador supplies (or whatever). However, it really is an eye-opener to find that I am able to rest, then push, then rest, then push...up until now it’s been pure survival from one day to the next and just getting through the session has been the goal, not necessarily moving on. I am not saying that I am all of a sudden going to produce performances that will set the world alight, but small successes, however many or few, are coming my way and I count my blessings for the opportunities I have.

Racing has started again, and the weekend before last I toddled over to Wallingford to race the Long Distance Sculls. I’d chatted about how to approach the race and was advised to “keep the powder dry”, and tap over the course at a long yet lively 29 – 30 spm, which I duly did. However the lively bit didn’t really happen in the first division, where due to logistics I was only able to race for time in the Women’s Elite Single, and although I gained the fastest time of the whole day, there were moments where I thought I’d shot my bolt, even at that relatively low rate! Sadly no acknowledgement or prize for that, but such is life! I then went out again for the second division, where there was at least the possibility of a pot in the Women’s Masters A Single, and got up to the start all prepared with warm kit as I know that I get so cold while waiting in the marshalling zone. However that plan was well and truly scuppered not once, but twice, by an over-enthusiastic safety launch swamping me completely, soaking my back and legs, dumping a load of water into my footwell and, yes, rendering my lovely warm kit, so lovingly prepared, absolutely sodden and weighing a ton! I spent a lot of time wringing and baling, and rapidly getting colder and colder, which meant that after more than an hour of waiting, my hands had lost all feeling and circulation and my lips were turning blue. I am not cut out for cold weather, and it’s not even winter yet! Anyway, the sculling, once we got started, was much more zippy than earlier in the day, still going over at a relatively low rate, when I came unstuck just outside the Brookes boathouse. I do not know what happened, but I was overtaking two girls, one on each side of me, and as we started to come level they sort of attacked in a watery pincer move, with all three of us ending up completely stationary and my stroke side blade jammed under one boat and no way of getting it free without the other sculler backing down. Eventually we extricated ourselves but the damage was done, no fastest time for me there (but a pot nonetheless).

The next day, Ze German, the boy, the sibling, the little miss and I, accompanied by Dave Duncan, Dani and Jacqui, headed to Marlow for the Rowers’ Revenge Triathlon. Jules had put together a team to race to raise awareness for her “M.E. – not the end of me” campaign, comprising of her on the row, Richard on the bike leg and Dave bringing it home on the run. I’d signed up to do the race on my own, as I wanted to support Jules too and I started the morning wondering how the hell we were going to manage in the pouring rain! I started earlier than Team Reichel, and started the 4k row conservatively, tapping it along at about 1:57 – 1:58 splits, figuring I could always take it up if necessary. I came off the erg just behind the previous year’s winner from Imperial, and hobbled to my bike. I tried to get my gloves and shoes on faster than her, and ended up struggling to get the gloves over my sweaty palms. I gave it up as a bad job as I saw Imperial Girl (IG) grab her bike before me, and gave chase. I wasn’t sure how or why at the time, but she seemed to gradually pull away from me during the course of the bike leg, and I got more and more frustrated, in particular as another girl came up behind my just before the turn in Henley. As I looked at her, I realised that I was not in anything like an aerodynamic position, as I’d completely forgotten to go down on the drops (I didn’t have tri bars as an option)! I have never ever done any sort of cycling time trial before so it didn’t really occur to me – I just worked and slogged and hoped for the best like I normally do on club rides! I managed to shake off the challenge of this new girl after a few little tussles and as I came back into Higginson Park where the race HQ was situated, IG was just putting her trainers on for the run. Excellent. You’re bigger than me, but I can have you. I chipped and chipped away during the run and overtook her in the 4^th kilometre, eventually coming in over 40 seconds ahead of her.

It was great seeing Jules so happy with her row, and I was so proud of her for so many reasons....however I was a little concerned when they asked where Richard was as he was due back to hand the belt to David. He was more than five minutes later than we had anticipated and when there was talk of a road crash and two ambulances in attendance we all gulped. Happily, he came in a few minutes later, and it turns out that he had punctured within the first kilometre! However he valiantly soldiered on and David ran a blistering 5.5km to bring the team home. We looked at the results and it became clear that I had won the women’s section outright, but we were so wet and cold that we’d gone for tea and missed the prize-giving! Doh! However I did get my trophy and a £50 gift voucher for Saddle Safari, along with a goodie bag so I was rather pleased with the day’s work!

Next up is the Silver Skiff in Turin, an 11km head race, which I am really looking forward to doing. November will be a pretty hectic month, with the Henley Long Distance Sculls in the first weekend, the Silver Skiff the next, The British Indoor Rowing Championships in the third and lastly the Scullers’ Head of the River on 27^th November. The last three will be raced at “winter lightweight” (61.5kg) which isn’t a problem as I normally sit between 59kg and 60kg throughout the whole year. The new training programme has changed my body composition again and I appear to have beaten the amenorrhea I have had for the past 6 years. Inconvenient as it is, it is heartening to know I can be light, train hard and “still be a woman”!! I’m not sure what has happened but I have reached a new stage mentally, primarily with Jules’ help with NLP, along with Alex Howard, the owner of a clinic called the Optimum Health Clinic. I have completely changed my outlook to training, racing and my own body and I am reaping the rewards of being much more in tune with myself.

More in the next instalment on some of the breakthroughs I have experienced - smashing ones in fact – along with some really really exciting news which I am itching to talk about! Once it all goes live I will be able to give more detail, but it’s an opportunity of a lifetime and between that and the All Africa Games, 2011 is going to be a ripping year!

The come down

Well, the dust has settled, the race forgotten and the training continues....in fact, to be truthful, the training never really stopped for Henley Women's Regatta. We decided not to wind down for it as it fell in the middle of a training block, and so it was back on the river on Monday morning almost as if nothing had happened. But it had. I felt that there was more reason to hold my head up high, more reason to justify the hours I spend on the water, and more validity to my dreams, which have been fermenting for years.


It feels like the beginning of something new and special this week. Everything I have experienced up to now, the heartbreak, the pain, the tears, the loneliness, all of this goes into every stroke I take now, and each stroke takes me closer to the dream.

I was asked two questions at Metropolitan Regatta a couple of weeks ago:

"How come you're back in the rowing world?"

and

"Why are you still doing it to yourself?"

I think that I answered those questions pretty comprehensively with my very close second place in the final of the Elite Lightweight Single Sculls, and I have now gone one better and won the same event at Henley Women's Regatta. The people who were friendly to me at weigh in at 6.45 in the morning at the Met were all of a sudden not talking to me by the semi final that afternoon....and by the end of the day I seemed to be persona non grata. It seems that two weeks later at HWR they hadn't forgotten and I may as well have been invisible.

I know that I have been written off as a has been. I know that I have not yet achieved the things that I want to in rowing. I know that I have been under the radar essentially since I raced at the 2006 World Championships at Dorney Lake (Eton). What nobody knows - apart from the special and close people in my life of course - are the events that have shaped where I am coming from and where I am heading.

This time last year I was crying on a bike, unable to get out of the car normally, unable to row, unable to get my trousers on without weird contortionism due to a back injury. I sat on the Upper Thames veranda and watched everyone preparing for summer racing, holding on to the hope that I would compete - somewhere, anywhere - in 2009. Three months ago I could barely walk up a small hill, I was so tired - I was diagnosed with adrenal fatigue - and now here I am, able to train at full volume again, race over 2k and do it over and over again in the same day.


I thank my lucky stars every day for the people in my life who have believed in me, who support me day in day out, mentally, emotionally, physically...and I appreciate my health so much more. The emotion I felt as I crossed the line first on Sunday on my home stretch, in front of my home club was huge. But weirdly, I felt just as much when I completed one 2k race at Wallingford Regatta this May. Three weeks before that I couldn't do 2k at rate 24. Just getting over the course, at "race pace" (it was in fact just survival rowing, the conditions in my lane in the horrendous crosswind were so dreadful) felt like I'd won it.

In fact, in many ways I had won. I've emerged from two years of personal hell.....bereavement, marital breakdown, debilitating injury and illness resulting in indescribable tiredness. The death of our beautiful cousin has taught me to seize the day, live in the moment and appreciate the tiny things in life....a kiss from someone you love, an impromptu picnic, your favourite song on the radio, or a dragonfly landing on the stern of my boat, sitting on the inspirational quote taped there by my sister before racing on Sunday.

Each day I adopt the "attitude of gratitude". To quote a certain fat bear:

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, that’s why it's called the present" A.A. Milne.