Henley Boat Races

Wednesday: not my favourite day of the week as it begins with the 10k run, which isn't my idea of cross-training (If I'd wanted to run I'd have joined the athletics club!). The incentive to get round is breakfast, and in our own OUWBC version of the formal dinner ‘hall surfing’ craze, every few weeks we go to a different college.

Then lectures 10am till 1pm, a tutorial at 1.15pm, before cycling across town to the Rad Cam to try and locate the elusive linguistics textbook needed for tomorrow, on the way to catching the bus to Wallingford for the evening outing. This provides the opportune time for a 40 minute power nap or on this occasion a good moment to start recording my typical day for you all to read about. I should probably try and find the plan to work out what gruelling pieces we have to look forward to this evening, but for now I'm quite happy not knowing.

After this it will be home time, being the party animal that I am I'll drop in for a cranberry juice at the pub to meet the rest of my German group for their Stammtisch – a rare chance to catch up with my non-rowing friends. Inevitably I will leave early, head back to college and send a motivational email to rally the troops for their bed time reading.

Everything in my day is judged to the minute, I can tell you off the top of my head exactly how long it takes to get from my room in college to a lecture at the Taylorian and from there to the gym or bus stop. In general this lifestyle could be best likened to a mirror image of the rest of student society. If asked whether we are going out, the rower assumes this means an outing - the two worlds only momentarily overlap when the lycra-clad rower cycling to morning training passes the group dressed in black tie returning from the previous evening's Law Society do.  But now I'm writing on the bus home, and it has to be said the feeling of finishing training after a moonlit outing under the stars makes you realise you'd chose the world of the rower every time.