I just got back from Peterborough and boy my arms are tired. OK, that joke doesn't work too well as I neither flew (as the pun requires) nor am I particularly tired. We drove up on the Friday evening (late, as usual for our driver) and then proceeded to do things like put up the tents and go for a pint (I don't really drink) rather than light the barbeque. As a result we didn't actually start putting meat onto it until gone 22:30. Silly. I don't think I suffered from eating underdone venison burgers but only because they were good quality. Happily no-one really drank much that night so we were all pretty OK for the 1000m races on the Saturday. It rained a little here and there but our heat (which we won convincingly) was rowed in the dry. Later in the day we took part in the final but only came last (although only five or six seconds separated 1st and 4th (us). No pot won there many of my crew decided to get completely rat-arsed Saturday night and stayed awake until gone 02:00. In fact, our Stroke was so ill the next morning he not only went back to bed between 09:00 and 13:00 (our heat being at 13:48) we also moved him out of his seat to one where he only had to follow. As a result we showed a decent turn of pace in our 500m heat by coming second and qualifying for the final. Unfortunately our chance to win a pot and break our Novice status was stymied by the crew we'd come second to in our heat. What was doubly galling was that the same club's previous Novice crew last year had done exactly the same thing to my boat (I hadn't been available to row as I was in New York seeing Kris) and gone up to the status above (currently known as IM3) then too. Still, this probably means we're in good shape for the Bedford Regatta next month where we should have a Novice race against much slower crews.

The drive to Peterborough and back were pretty damned fast on account of the driver being a lead-foot. It did mean that I got to have a fair proportion of the Sunday evening to myself at home after a hot shower. I decided to make the executive decision of getting delivery food (and even stumped up the extra pound delivery charge for the order value being so low) and didn't regret it one bit.

Happily I'm suffering no ill-effects this morning although I don't think I'll do any exercise this evening. Work is quiet, especially since the RAID failure which occured seconds after I posted Friday's entry has turned out to be one of those Dell PowerEdge reseat-the-drive-in-its-bay-and-the-error-stops things. I'm running some diagnostics now but all seems well. Monday, another week, but one in which Kris comes back to me, even if it is towards the tail end of it.