Despite all my sleep I was still tired today. We had an outing in the morning and it felt almost as painful as rowing with a hangover. I was equally unfocused. I think all of us were. Hopefully this will follow the pattern of last week and mean we row fantastically tomorrow.
I find it interesting that it's almost as if there are two mes rowing. One is a whinger who feels sorry for himself when he is in physical discomfort and is unable to concentrate and the other is focused and brave and prepared to sacrifice his life for the good of the crew. I hope it's the latter me that is rowing tomorrow. It's certainly his turn. And as I write this I feel that the hero me will be waking up in my bed at 6.45 tomorrow morning, leaving the wimpy me snoozing on til mid afternoon. Now I've considered that scenario I wonder if the hero me and the wimpy me will be having some hot sex before we go to sleep. If so I am fairly sure who will be the blade and who'll be the rigger.
Unfortunately I may be unable to make love to myself in whatever incarnation I am imagining as whenever I try to make a fist with my right hand it really hurts. I am finding it difficult to grasp on to anything. So me and me might be sleeping with our backs to each other tonight, with a bit of an atmosphere in the bed and both of us wondering why we don't fool around like we used to.
I went to the physio this afternoon to have my hand checked out. I didn't mention to him that I was unable to masturbate, I just said I was having trouble drinking (I also actually cut myself trying to slice some bread this morning, so clumsy are my tiny rower's hands). He wasn't overly concerned that my finger-tips have started to go numb, but said he would have been worried if my neck and back hurt and if I had spasms down my arm and couldn't feel my legs. I would have been concerned about that too. I wouldn't need a physio to tell me. He pronounced me match fit, so there is no way out now. I explained how we were the weaker team on paper, but how we seemed to be taking it more seriously. "May the best team lose," he said to me as I left. "I think they will," he added. It would be a marvellous underdog triumph if he is right.
I am filled with anticipation and terror. I was playing Risk in Balham this evening, but got a taxi home early. Unusually the cab driver chose to go via Putney. As we drove over Putney bride I looked down at the river, where I will be tomorrow afternoon. My only hope is that I row as well as I possibly can. Essentially we are rowing against ourselves. What happens with Cambridge is almost an irrelevance. If we do our best and lose then we will know that there was no way we could have won this lop-sided contest. If we win it will still be more about defeating our inner fears of failure and disaster.
Whilst in the taxi, Jonathan Aitken rang me to check I was getting an early night and to wish me luck for tomorrow. He made the point that we had shared an amazing journey and that winning or losing was not really the important thing to take away from the experience.
All I could think was how surreal it was to be getting a phone call from Jonathan Aitken checking that I was going to bed. Had I said no to this project two months ago this strange thing would never have happened.
Which sort of proved his point.
I still hope we thrash the stinking Tabs tomorrow. Unfortunately I am not allowed to reveal the result until after the show goes to air and I would be grateful if any spectators also keep the secret. I will still write an account of the day, but with some censorship. The full account will be revealed once the show has been transmitted next month.
Tomorrow is going to be a very interesting day.
