Friday morning on the way to our simulated heats race, Pete was in a bit of a hurry driving and was pulled over by Senior Constable "Penriff" for driving 70km/hr in a 50 km/hr zone! All he could think of was how much this ticket was going to cost him. He was asked for his licence at which time he told the officer that he had to get it from the back of the vehicle. When he stepped out of the car the officer say that he only had one leg, was wearing team gear with AUS all over it and when he opened the back of the Tarago saw all the backpacks with Australian Rowing Team on them. The officer took his licence went back to his car and a few minutes later came back telling Pete that as the local police were conducting industrial action he was not going to give him a ticket today! I personally think it was because of the artificial leg!!! Henry offered to take his eyes out if it would help the “pity” reaction, but luckily it wasn’t needed!
We have also come up with nicknames for the whole crew. Let me start from the stern:
· Lisa has now become “Little Sherpa” due to the fact that she runs around getting things for us
· Henry has become “Where’s Wally” due to his Mosman zootie looking like where’s Wally’s shirt
· Pete has become “Pirate Pete”, due to his “peg leg”
· I have become “Mum lady”, thanks to the Junior rowers who forgot my name and actually called me "that mum lady "
· And finally Alex is now known as BB, which stands for “Bow Bitch”. This is not meant in a derogatory way at all, she was named this by the Juniors too!
Now I guess I should get on to the important information and that would be about how we are rowing.
We had a fantastic heat race, on Friday and our prognostic ranked 4th out of the 10 Australian crews. This made us feel like we really did belong here once again. I think that at times we are all still amazed that we are part of such an incredible Australian Team!I don’t think that any of us had ever worked so hard. To me it felt okay up until the last 250m, which I felt had let us do
wn. But once we had looked at each split of the race, it was the best we had ever done. We held all splits fairly even and at one point we were running on just over 100% prognostic! It ended up being the fastest time we had ever done. We even had to contend with a nasty cross wind with a slight tail wind combined. It is hard to believe that we are the same crew that rowed at selection trials in April, the difference is astounding!We have also been lucky enough to have an amazing medical team with us and I must say that Doc Krys, Physio’s Judi and Ollie and the massage therapist Heike have been amazing. I would love to have Judi and Heike living with me full time!
Friday night Henry wasn’t feeling the best and the doctor was worried that he may have contracted gastro, so he was quarantined for the night. This morning the doc suggested that we not race and to be honest I was quite happy about it. I was feeling very run down myself and the decision was made that it would be better if we just went out and had a paddle. So we sat at the finish line cheering the other crews on and then went out for our own paddle. We actually had a fantastic row and probably rowed better today as a crew than any other time.
It was time to de-rig the boat, wash it down and put it on the trailer back to Canberra, as we had borrowed it from ACTAS. It has been a great boat for us and many thanks to Gordon at ACTAS for letting us use it for the last couple of months.
The rest of the day has been spent buying those little thinks you always just about forget about, laundry, packing and then out for a crew dinner, along with Pedro and his wife Pam, Ray (one of our team managers) and Bilko our support person. It was a great night, albeit short.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say…”We are SO excited!!!” We leave tomorrow at 11:15 a.m. to head to the airport.
Next stop ITALY!!!
Photos courtesy of Jane Spring
No comments:
Post a Comment