My alarm call was set for 6.45am, but for the second day in a row I woke up at 5. Try as I might I couldn't get back to sleep. And to make things worse I appeared to be suffering from a bit of a hangover. Yesterday, any hungover feelings I might or might not have had disappeared after about ten minutes on the water, so I wasn't too worried, but I did feel a lot more tired than I had on other mornings.
This lunch-time we had an unofficial race to compete in. We were to be taking on a crew of 14 year old boys from a local school. We didn't underestimate them - we knew they were 14 year old boys who were excellent rowers - but after the improvements of yesterday we were quietly confident about defeating them.
I wished I wasn't feeling so lousy and my depression was added to at breakfast when Helen "Pippin" Atkinson Wood told me that she had had a dream in the night in which I had been floating face down in the water (apparently I was doing this as a kind of joke). This unsettled me a bit as I have become increasingly anxious about falling into the water as the week has progressed, having already narrowly missed being smacked very hard in the head with my own oar.
We had a brief outing as soon as we got to the boat-house. I was feeling lousy and sick and rowed as badly as I had at the beginning of the week. I wasn't too worried: things would surely sort themselves out before the race.
Before we went progressed to our encounter with the teenage boys, an ex-Blue and three times Boat Race winner called Matt gave us a little talk about the race. He illustrated this with videos of the races that he had taken part in. Again I realised just how difficult and frightening this undertaking is going to be. Toby metaphorically put his oar in where it was not wanted by constantly asking about what the cox was supposed to do in certain situations. The faces of the rest of the crew clearly demonstrated that they felt that this was Jonathan's concern. Toby was gently heckled. There was an ominous feeling in the room: the laughter and light-heartedness was gone. Everyone seemed to have come to the same worrying conclusion that the race was going to be terrifying. You couldn't smell the fear, but it was all around us.
My throbbing head and aching limbs and feeling of impending face-down-in-the-water doom did not help matters. I just wanted to get out on the water so that my hangover would disappear.
But I was beginning to suspect that this might not happen. My suspicions were not unfounded.
When we were on the river my tiredness really hit me; I was finding it hard to concentrate and the coaches's comments clearly demonstrated that I was failing to reach the standards I had set myself yesterday. I had only had ten hours sleep in the last two nights and by this point had had three very long and arduous days of training, but I was constantly aware that if I had not been so stupid as to get drunk last night then none of this would be anywhere near as bad.
I tried to focus and "stay in the boat" (both literally and mentally), but I was feeling nauseous and actually hoping that I might vomit. Perhaps that would make the nastiness go away.
Racing is painful enough even when you are rested and sober, but as we tried a few test starts I found myself in a physical and mental Hell. I have never known discomfort like it, and my frustration was compounded by the knowledge that this agony was at least partially self-inflicted. Worst of all I felt I had let down the team mates that I had become so close to. I really, really wanted to cry.
Our test starts were very poor and remembering Martin's claim from yesterday that I was going to win or lose this race I completely blamed myself.
We did the race in three stages, taking two stabs at the hardest part which is setting off. The pain just got worse and worse and I felt grumpy and miserable and did not want to try. Occasionally I would manage to convince myself that I was being stupid and that as this was my own fault that I must concentrate, but my attention soon wandered and I was just willing the experience to be over. The boys were creaming us every time. Even when they gave us a start they would catch us and overtake us. The humiliation seemed worse because I was totally blaming myself.
Finally on the last leg of the race we suddenly managed to find some form and I overcame the pain and confusion to put in some proper rowing strokes (though at the end it all fell apart again). This time they only beat us by a canvas (just the end bit of the boat with no people in it). I was annoyed that I hadn't kept the burst of form going. This was all my fault.
We got back to the boat house and the despondancy of the crew and the coaches was more than clear. After we'd put away our boat and thanked the tiny young men who had so easily despatched us, we headed to our recreation room for a debriefing and an almost certain bollocking.
As it turned out pretty much everyone felt that they had performed really badly. Martin asked for our feelings and there was a large degree of apology and self-loathing. I felt tears welling up again as I apologised for being hungover and tired and for rowing so badly. But I managed to hold it in. Emotions were running very high and Little Pippin did let a few tears flow as she apologised for her own mistakes. Which set some of the other hobbits going (not me obviously because I am impervious to human emotion. I had something in my eye, that's all) and even Gimli Young had a bit of a crack in his voice as he spoke. In hindsight I can see that this failure was not only necessary, but an amazing turning point for us all. We were upset that we had let the team down and we were all starting to feel very passionately about the importance of doing as well as possible. Helen had been perhaps the most frivolous at the beginning of the week, so the fact that she was now crying with frustration showed how important this had become.
It is probably not possible for me to convey in a stupid blog how difficult learning to row has been and how much we've been through even in the last few days. Having shared this ridiculous ride we have become closer that I would ever have imagined possible. We've worked so hard at getting to this point that none of us want to let the others down, yet strangely having failed so badly today brought us together more than ever. In the boat we become a single entity, but one that is reliant on all of its individual parts. When it is right it is a thing of grace and beauty, when it is wrong it is like having a turd in your sock. And then having to walk to Leicester. And then stay in Leicester. For the rest of your life. Still wearing the sock. Which is refilled with turds on a daily basis in case the original turd dries out.
Martin asked us what we'd like to do differently tomorrow and I said that I was not going to drink again before the race. I had made some similar jokey comments earlier in the day, but this time I really meant it. It wasn't just because of the effect it had had on my ability to row, but I simply never wanted to go through that pain again. I knew that the way I felt was as much to do with general exhaustion, but there was no need to add to my problems. If the Salvation Army really want to stop people drinking, all they have to do is force us all to get out of bed and get in a rowing boat on a daily basis. Not even George Best would want to have another drink after that.
The afternoon outings did not get much better and we were still finding it difficult to keep the boat balanced. This meant that the people on stroke side (with oars to the right) were finding it difficult to connect with the water. We persevered onwards and made some progress, but I really just wanted to get to bed.
Unfortunately we were not allowed to retire at the end of the day as the BBC had organised a pub quiz event for us where we would be competing against the Cambridge crew. On any other night I would have been happy to have this laid on, but as I wasn't going to drink and desperately needed sleep I wasn't looking forward to it. I wasn't really up for socialising with the Cambridge idiots anyway. They are our enemy.
I was in a grumpy mood but they really got on my nerves at dinner, shouting and showing off for the cameras. We were all so tired and hungry after a day on the river that we just sat quietly eating our grub. Strangely the minute the cameras left the room they all stopped poncing around and ate fairly quietly too. I didn't mind this; they clearly aren't taking things as seriously as us. Maybe their physical superiority means that they don't have to. But I think that given we are being trained to do this by the topmost coaches in the country it would be a bit rude to not knuckle down and try our best. Perhaps we are just mad. Perhaps this is how cults start. Though if more cults insisted on rowing training I think they would get a lot less business.
We lost the pub quiz, though won an IQ test that we have cheated on (but so had the Cambridge team, so that still proves our intelligence is better). Sid Waddell, the flamboyant darts commentator, was the quiz master though, and he was extremely good value.
Then just when I thought I could go home, we had another surprise entertainment foisted on us. It was a performance by this year's Cambridge Footlights. There is nothing that I wanted to be forced to watch less than this. My day of Hell looked like never stopping.
I did student comedy myself and I am not having a go at the people who performed for us (in most cases they were better than the average student comedy). But the fact that I've done student comedy means that I have also seen pretty much everything that any student comedy group is likely to come up with. I certainly wouldn't have wanted to sit down tonight and watch the young me, Stew, Emma and the rest performing the sketches we thought were amusing when we were 20. There's a time and a place for this kind of thing. Which I've always found handy because it means I can be at a different place at that time, or the same place at a different time. I tried to sit back and look like I was enjoying it. Sometimes I didn't have to pretend (there were a fair few funny bits), but mostly I couldn't be bothered to pretend. There were just so many of the young, enthusiastic buggers and they seemed to want to do four or five sketches each. As I looked at my past, the feckless youngsters unknowingly looked at their probable future. A life of anonymity freckled with the occasional appearance on a strange reality TV show, alongside Kit Hesketh Hardy.
I have never been so happy to see a day end.
In the car back to the hotel Emma and Anna said that the solution to our balance problem might be for stroke side to go for shorter strokes to match the rubbish rowers on bow (ie me) whose stroke is too short.
I vowed to myself that I woudl sleep as long as I could and that when I awoke I would show Martin and my team mates just how good a rower I could be.
Having seen the Cambridge of the past and the present I felt, more than ever, a desire to create an unlikely triumph for the Oxford crew who seemed to have been created by the Oxford pen of Oxford Professor J R R Tolkein.
Oh and Edward Sturton hadn't understood why I had singled him out in my video message and had looked confused. Mission accomplished.
