The dreaded Typhoon Mawar, which it seemed was destined to go right over us ended up veering north at the last minute and handing a bit of smack to Tokyo instead. Neverless the impacts were felt here, namely in the form of more erg time.

 

The organising committee were having meetings twice a day for a couple of days to keep managers up to date and provide a bit of piece of mind I guess. Based on the initial path of the storm they had anticipated a delay of 2 days being necessary. So the river was closed, the course pulled up, boats de-rigged and put in containers, all the marquees started to come down apart from obviously, the one holding the 108 ergs. A roster was posted at the hotel to ensure everyone got a go on the machines.

 

Quite an interesting experience doing an erg with 80 other people battling away, but not one I’m to keen to repeat that often, especially this close to a world championships. What made it all the more grating was glancing to my right through the haze to see flat water. I guess in the end a call had to made however and the organisers have done a pretty good job making the best of the situation.

 

We knew by that evening that Mawar had decided we were not worth the effort and that we would be allowed back on the water the next day. The weather seems to have settled down now, it is consistently stinky hot but the breeze, which comes and goes, makes it bearable. Yesterday and today we (as in the pair) have only done one session per day, there is a lot of travel time involved getting from the hotel to the course, 45 minutes in each direction, and I guess John feels it’s best to keep us out of the heat as much as possible.

 

The rows so far have been ok, I have been known to get a little nervous at this stage building to an event and in the past have started changing things left, right and centre. This time I am being much more controlled and am pretty happy with our setup, however nervous energy must be diverted somewhere to the detriment of my fingernails.

 

I have meet a lot more rowers this worlds more than last time in Milan, I guess having been to a few more events I know a few more faces. Also we are staying in a FISA hotel with about 8 other teams, so there are plenty of opportunities to meet new people and namely talk that universal language of rowing.

 

There are a few supporters starting to arrive now, Dad arrived last night and managed to make it safely from the airport in Nagoya to Ogaki City, where the hotels are. The One News crew arrived about 3 days ago, and have been dutifully following us round since, we seem to be the only team with a media attachment, it seems a good sign of the interest in the sport back home though, all we’ve got to do now is provide some entertaining (and successful) racing.

 

So one more night to go, I’m definitely ready to race. Once we get the first race under the belt I’m pretty sure we’re going to be ok. The beauty of this attempt is that we go in as a ranked crew, making the path to the finals a lot easier, we shouldn’t strike any big crews till the semi and even then we should be one of the top 3 in our race so would be confident of getting a finals berth. It’s amazing the difference expectation makes, last year I was stoked just to be in the final, with the results so far this year I certainly am aiming to be on top of that dais.

 

I will try and get an update out after each race and if anything exciting happens in between times I’ll be sure to let you all know. Sorry about all the talk of hot weather, hope things are starting to warm up back home.

 

Cheers