I am now so used to being trained by Olympic standard atheletes that I feel I will be left confused, angry and alone when they are no longer there in two or three weeks time.
Today I went to Henley to meet up with five times gold medal winner Sir Steve "Steve" Redgrave. Not content with employing the world's greatest ever rowers to train the world's least promising rowers, the BBC had also forced Sir Steve (or "Steve" as he wrongly likes to be known) into the lowly role of museum guide as he showed us around the rowing museum in that beautiful and posh town. Again, it was an incredible privelege to have the history of the sport explained to us by a man who had actually rowed in a couple of the exhibits we were looking at. He explained that thanks to new technology the boat we will be racing in is actually bullet-proof. I don't know if this puts paid to my bazooka plan, though to be safe (in any other part of their body but their feet) the Cambridge crew will have to row with an upturned boat held above them, which will surely slow them down a bit. If I can start spreading the rumour that I am some kind of psychotic gun-nut with a bazooka on order over the internet this might psyche them out a bit. I think the BBC will like it if it turns out to be true. Not only will the Cambridge boat exploding make great TV, the murder of 5 or 6 minor TV personalities will be good publicity. Murdering any one of these nobodies probably wouldn't even make the newspapers, but six together would probably add up to slightly more than one real celebrity. Let's call it plan B.
I hadn't known that Sir Steve was diabetic (which again gives me some hope that the fact we have five asthmatics in our boat might not be a hinderance after all). In the Atlanta games he had taped two sachets of sugar into the boat in case the race got delayed. He had no need for them and they stayed taped into the boat (adding a tiny amount of weight and thus making their victory even more amazing), but when the boat was cleaned by the museum the sugar was thrown away, which seems a shame as that's quite a nice little bit of rowing history. The pressures on these guys are amazing; Matthew Pinsent told us that he gets so nervous on the day of the race that he is unable to eat anything without throwing it up - I can't believe anyone is able to go through something as strenous as an Olympic final with no fuel in their stomachs.
I am making sure that I have as much fuel stored up as possible by eating as much Ben and Jerry's ice cream as I can force down my gullet. There may still be two and a half weeks til the race, but I am sure the ice cream will be stored somewhere for use when it is required. The fact that I have been too busy to exercise (and on the few occasions I have tired, too exhausted to do anything very much) does not mean that I should not continue to consume the diet of a rower.
I bought a postcard from the Museum shop of Sir Steve sitting on some steps surrounded by all the things he had ever won. I showed it to him and slightly took the piss that there were T shirts and tankards and stuff as well as all his medals. I asked him if he had included prizes from pub quizzes and tombola draws just to make the photo look a bit more impressive. God bless him he took it in good heart. He is a big man and could easily have knocked me flying out the door. I see it as my role in this show to be slightly cheeky, so later when I was asked to come up with a question for him, to get some advise for the race, I asked if as an incentive he might give me one of his gold medals if we won. After all, he's got loads, he wouldn't miss one. He said that he was sure we could come to some kind of arrangement.
It is good to see that so far all the pros have been charming and friendly to these ridiculous people who are wasting their valuable time and expertise.
