Jaded Juniors

Last Monday the boys awoke expecting to take on some strong crews at the prestigious School's Head down on the Tideway, only to find one of their crew had gone down with gastro-enteritis and they had to scratch.  They were psyched up for a tough competition only to find that they couldn't race, would have to go into school anyway, and they had double Maths! Oh dear… not a good day.

Today they were up for junior inter-regional trials at Dorney Lake - the Olympic Rowing venue owned by Eton College. However things were less than perfect - the one with runs hadn't eaten solid food since last Sunday, another had the same bug and hadn't keep food down for the last 3 days and even Tom had been up with some unspecified complaint three times in the night.

They decided to go ahead with the quad, which under normal circumstances they'd have a very good chance of winning, and also a double and three singles in later divisions. I was down for marshalling for the first time - helping doing timings at the finish. Tom was horrified - don't mess it up, mum, he warned me as we arrived. I love his confidence in me!

The quad did not go well. Poor gastro-boy could barely muster the energy to row to the start but they did manage to come in second, just 5 seconds behind a very strong Maidenhead crew. The double was a disaster though as it was J&Ts first trip together, and J was not at all used to steering - they zigzagged their way to last place. 

By this point I was avoiding Tom and his thunderous mood. Just the singles to go, and they turned out to be better than expected getting 3rd, 4th and 5th place behind two excellent young scullers, whom it was no disgrace to be beaten by.

The silver lining is that we don't have to go up to Nottingham for the inter-regional competition, Tom was happy with his performance in a  single, and even the clouds seemed to be clearing. Then I got a puncture…….