3:50am - Alarm goes off. Get up. Get dressed. Pick up bag convieniently packed the night before.
4:00am - Drive off
4:20am - Arrive boad shed. A few minutes to doze. Tilt seat back. Ponder madness???
4:25am - OK get up get going. Stand around with others. Carry a couple of oars (ors ores awes) to the pntoon.
5:00am and we are on the water. Yellow boat and I am in position 7. A bunch of middle aged guys and our cox - "El". Who we later discover is doing some kind of drama arts course at uni and was involved in a performance the night before. One wonders how she made it.
An hour an 10km pass as we row up stream past the Uni, past the green bridge, past the Sommerville shed and Cansdale st (Where I work), past the rock and the green marker. Further up the river than I have ever rowed before. Somewhere we passed the tennis centre and then oxley creek. We can see Indooroopilly bridge. There is discussion regarding the whereabouts of the start. A kind man in a tinny drives over and kindly takes our number "6" from the cox and motors up to the bow and takes the light out the holder and replaces it with the number and advises us to row back downstream mid way between the Oxley sailing club and Oxley creek.
6:10 is am. (There is disagreement on the starting time.) and another man in a tinny says "six go" and we are off. A head of the yarra time trial. We have difficulty keeping the boat level so we try rowing with oars on the water on the return. After an age we pass the green marker and the rocks at Cansdale St. My lower back is beginning to ache.
We encourage our cox to encourage us. She is too nice. Maybe she is worried that we will die. Anyway she toughens up and we do some effort piecs. 20 hard strokes. minute on minute off and so on. That picks us up and interesting the boat runs much better when we are focussed on these pieces. My back is sore and so is my bum. I am controlling my breathing. I do not want to loose it and start gasping. Blow out as I push back and then in on the return. We are rating around 23 strokes per minute.
Finally the green bridge is sighted by the cox and some discussion ensues regarding the location of the finish. Democracy prevails and we agree that the bridge is not the finish. Nor is the City cat terminal nor the other one.
7:05am
suddenly someone on shore announces we have finished and then tells us we can stop rowing. That was a good call. 8.6km (I think). Avoiding the lay down sally thing, I do however arch back and lean forward in an attempt to reduce the pain in my lower back.
I am all for putting ashore and buying breakfast and a coffee. Our sister boat that started after us and passed us somewhere along the way has done this. But democracy prevails and we start rowing for home. Home is another k or two downstream.
7:30 am
We arrive at the pontoon and as luck would have it, my side (bow side) have their riggers to the shore. It is our job to get out and hold the boat while the stroke side rowers lean out over the river and release their rowlocks and then exit the boat and take their oars and our up the ramp. I acomplish my task of exiting the boat by moving my bum off the seat and onto the pontoon. In order to minimise the pain in my lower back and groin I delay standing as long as possible.
We then lift the boat and take it up the ramp. Turns out standing is far more comfortable than sitting and when we arrive at a local coffee shop for breakfast, I initially elect to stand. We then relive the race. Complain about the rough seas and so on. The other crew join us for a second breakfast and boast that they rowed the first half of the race towing a log and that once it was removed they overtook some boat(s) that had passed them.
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