Somehow the last term has flown by in a blur of lambing shifts, exams and more hours of training than we care to count and now we've arrived back in Henley for our third year here. It's almost starting to feel like a home from home, returning to the same beds, being greeted by the dogs and with a great view of Leander and the river from our bedroom window.
To try and condense what we've been up to over the last term since our return from training camp could be a bit of challenge but we'll try and give you a bit of an overview and a bit more of an insight into what the build up to the last Blue Boat Henley Boat races has entailed.
After camp we moved back to training on the not quite so glamorous River Ouse at Ely and have been treated to a full compliment of different weather conditions over the last 8 weeks. Thankfully with no flooding though, while the rest of the rivers in the country seemed to have burst their banks and be largely un-rowable the water levels at Ely just seemed to get lower so training was able to continue in earnest for us. This term has also been filled with trips away to train too, we've been to Nottingham for a weekend, getting very soggy (although massively enjoying the amazing showers and the Saturday night tv) and we also had a trip down the Tideway for some great sparring experience with Thames Rowing Club.
Interspersed with our weekends away we've also had a few exams, the rest of the squad now know a lot of vet knowledge especially a lot of diarrhoea related knowledge following our alimentary system exam (thankfully for them we've got alimentary part 2 to come after Easter so they still get to enjoy more poo chat). This term we also had lambing shifts to fit in as well, 12 hour shifts out at the university farm. The romantisced view of our lambing shifts would be getting to bottle feed the pet lambs and watch cute newly born lambs pronking around in the straw, however while these things do feature in the reality there are also some slightly less glamorous aspects - the intermittent couple of hours of trying to sleep in between your turn of checking the cold lambing sheds, the smell of sheep that sticks with you for long after your shift and becomes a feature of your next training session and the tiredness that stays with you for days afterwards with you unable to explain to anyone who's not a vet and a triallist quite how you're feeling and why you are quite so incapable to human interaction after about 8pm. However, it wasn't all bad, getting to see a lamb being born and taking it's first couple of steps and the initial bonding with its mother never fails to be amazing, even if it is the middle of a cold night having been on our way to Ely at 5.55am that morning.
Now the craziness of term has finished and already seems a long way away, being back in Henley the excitement for the race is building, 5 days to go......
