The Oxford dwarves with their giant cox (I said cox... oh you read it perfectly well) are, on paper at least, the underdogs in the fake scarcely-celebrity boat race. Cambridge have more men, their men are of a proper size and their cox (if the rumours of the replacement for unfit Tony Slattery are true) is tiny and lightweight.
We do have three proper rowers in our boat, and a tall older man as our leader, and it strikes me that we resemble nothing more than the Company of the Ring from the Lord of the Rings, four Hobbits (Herring, Kennedy, Botting and Atkinson Wood), one dwarf (Young), a couple of Kings of Men (proper giant rowers, Roger and Ian - but which one is Sean Bean and which one's Aragon), an elf (Jo, our other proper rower) and a grey wizard who appeared to have been destroyed, but has come back whiter than white (Aitken). And all that lot beat unsurmountable odds in their fight for victory, so maybe we have a chance. Hopefully by winning we will also destroy evil, but I'll be happy just to get a medal or something.
But just in case magic isn't enough to get us through, today we have been given a secret weapon. When I heard about this I was hoping it might be a bazooka attached to the front of our boat, so that we could blow up the Cambridge crew the minute they got in front of us, but instead our secret weapon is three times Olympic champion rower Matthew Pinsent. Who is in some ways better than a bazooka. And he's so big that if it comes down to having to fire him at the Cambridge crew he will probably do a fair amount of damage.
Matthew won't be rowing with us (which might have been handy) but he is going to give us some extra coaching, which might prove to be just as effective.
Of course for him to work as a secret weapon, it is important that no-one finds out about him, so keep it under your hats folks. A secret weapon that everyone knows about is after all just a weapon. There's a lot riding on this race (whichever team loses will have its Universtiy destroyed) and if the evil Cambridge orcs find out that he's helping us, they will probably imprison him at the top of a very tall tower. So much more effective than a secure dungeon.
Me and Emma "Bubs" Kennedy went out to Henley today to meet Matthew and visit the exclusive and posh Leander rowing club. We were keen to get out on the water again, but apparently conditions were too dangerous, so instead Matthew gave us some coaching on the ergo. I tried to pschye him out by telling him I'd done a sub-8 minute 2K test, but he didn't seem too impressed. He holds the UK record of (I think) 5 minutes 42 seconds. It's nice to have something to aim for.
It seemed faintly ridiculous and certainly unjust that two tiny novice rowers should be getting this specialist training, when there must be hundreds of actual rowers who would bite off their feet to get such an opportunity. But it is amazing to meet these champions and even with my limited exposure to their sport I can begin to understand how much they all must have gone through to get to the level they are at. These guys are awesome.
Matthew initially seemed a bit suspicious of us, but he is a charming man with a good sense of humour (most rowers are so dedicated to their sport that humorous comments can go over their heads) and he gave us very good advice and encouragement.
At the end of the session Martin suggested we do a 2K test and Matthew was shocked. "You can't spring that on them," he said. But Martin, knowing we know nothing about rowing knew that he could. We'd made some progress with our ergo times and we semi-reluctantly agreed to give it a go. We knew enough to know that the 2K ergo test is very painful and unpleasant. The Olympic atheletes wanted to see us take time off our personal bests and so me and Emma found ourselves in the surreal position of being on rowing machines next to each other, rowing as hard as we could, whilst being cheered on by two of the most successful rowers in the country. This had to be wrong. I never dreamt that this would happen when I met Emma.
We are both very determined to do our best in this endeavour and we both beat our records. I found myself swearing like a Johnny Rotten after about three minutes and I nearly fainted when the test was over, but I knocked off another twenty seconds for a 7.38 finish (only two more minutes and I'm a record breaker).
Emma and me had both surprised ourselves with how powerful our strokes had now become (our 500m split times suddenly dropping to levels we could never have dreamt of before). It was incredibly difficult, but I feel that whilst Matthew may have started the day thinking we were poncy comedians who hadn't even ever been successful enough to nbe cateogorised as has-beens, by the end of the day he had some kind of respect for us. If only because we had gone for the 2K thing without making too much of a fuss.
To paraphrase one of the less offensive things that Johnny Rotten has said on TV in the last few days, we are already winners for just having taken part in this. I have already achieved more than I could ever have imagined and though I know there is still a long way to go, I think taking part will be more than enough of a triumph for me.
And failing that I have a bazooka on order on the internet, so we're laughing.
