Movember, Four's Head and month of pain.

Training has gone into 6th gear, the problem is I thought I was only driving a five speed. In the next fortnight I've got an internal trial on the water and an ergo (rowing machine) test. I'll then be heading out to Sierra Nevada for one of our altitude camps. You can read about last years Sierra Nevada camp by checking out the blog posts from January in the archive.

I came second at the Four's Head (in our boat class) and came 8th overall. We were 2.3 secs behind the winning Molesey crew, which isn't very much over an 18min race! We should have won, but we ended up taking a detour towards Westfield and the King's Road - sadly didn't pick up any decent bargains to give that cloud a silver lining.

If you follow me on Twitter you will see that I've been supporting the Movember campaign. Fundamentally it's about raising awareness for male specific illnesses, specifically prostate and testicular cancer. I will talk about it again soon - in the interim you can do three things

1) Men, make sure you don't become that statistic, book your annual doctor's appointment and get that check-up. (Women you can encourage your nearest man)

2) You can donate to the campaign at mobro.co/nrod/d

3) Pass the word on.

As always, thanks for reading. Questions or ideas welcome.