It's a dogs life

This last weekend has been reasonably eventful.  As usual I was training on Saturday and then went on to coach mid-afternoon.  In the evening was the GB Team Dinner.  It's an annual event where GB athletes, sponsors and other dignitaries come together for a presentation to those that have won medals at a World Championship level.  I went with Louise and sat on a table with Matt, Stan and George (we were the U23 coxless four last summer - winning a silver medal, for more details of last year look up the "Season Round-up" in the blog archive), along with Laura, Hester, Adam, Chris and Rich (all GB lightweights).  It was good to catch up with friends, but the main entertainment came from winding-up George and Stan (George is at Cambridge, Stan is at Oxford - they are the strongest two athletes in this year's boat race but are also good friends).  The presentation was long, usually due to excessive speeches, but this year was down to a bumper crop of medals.  Hugh Robertson MP (Minister for Sport and the Olympics) was our guest speaker and made a good speech about the building excitement for the games.  The dress code was black tie/club blazers.  Many wear club blazers, I wore my UL blazer, a dark purple number.  As usual there was at least one person inappropriately dressed.  There are some who make little effort, there are some that make too much of an effort.  One junior girl decided "Shakira" was to be this year's theme and came dressed to impress. 


I had Sunday off training (next one will be in quite a while).  I went coaching in the morning and went to watch UL race at lunchtime.  UL were hosting Durham and Newcastle University, there were some good races and UL performed well.  A report of the racing can be found at www.ulbc.co.uk.  As the last race of the day was taking place I noticed a reasonably large crowd had formed on the bank.  I was impressed at the number of parents that had turned out to support; it was then that I realised they weren't parents, but dog lovers.  A labrador thought the Thames looked inviting and jumped in for a swim; due to steep banks the dog couldn't get out and was starting to struggle in the freezing water.  James (a coach at UL) drove the launch over to the dog and I fished it out the river.  I have had to drag a few people out of the river but this was my first dog.

My back is strong and I am pretty much recovered from the fever I had last weekend.  The focus for training is the up and coming trials - 12th/13th Feb.  On the 14th Feb we travel to Aviz, Portugal for a water based training camp.

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