With less than a week to go we’re closing things down as we prepare to leave for six months travelling in the van. For me one long standing item that I’ve been looking forward to is the Vesta Vets Head of the River race – it’s a fast 6.8K as we ride the outbound ebb tide towards Putney. Conditions can vary greatly from wet, scrawly and rough to what we had yesterday – sunny mostly calm with the odd bit of chop.
A bit like running the London Marathon it’s one of those events that you have the opportunity as an amateur to mix it up with the best of the best. You also get a first hand experience of what the University Boat race athletes do and how good they are. I don’t have our race time – but we will have rowed in something like 20/21 minutes whereas the university crews will row in 16/17 minutes – we are not that far behind, but it’s still a big difference when you are on the water.
Yesterday was a really exciting race. At times we were 3 or 4 boats abreast all rowing as hard as we could, blade to blade.
For me this was all part of saying goodbye to my rowing family. In an 8 we all look out for each other, we turn up in sunshine, rain, ice and snow. Sometimes it’s deeply unpleasant. Yesterday was payback. Beautiful sunshine on an afternoon that was just right for a row.
As we travel east one of my goals will be to row in as many places as I can. I’d love to row some of Europes great rivers – the Rhine, The Danube and who knows. It would also be great to have a go in various seas – The Black Sea, The Caspian and The Aegean. Let’s see where I get to!
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