Duncan keeps his blog up to date with news after his first day of racing. There are some photos too on the site.
Heat in the heat and humidity
Well, its always good to get the first row of the regatta out of the way, get the cobwebs out of the system, size up the opposition, and puff and breath a bit. Today we did that in our heat and it was probably the most humid day so far since we've been in Beijing. Now that we've been here about 8 days we are now pretty much adapted so it wasn't too bad. Still the most uncomfortable conditions I've rowed in though!!
We've done a lot of solid training in the past couple of months that has paid off and we're travelling pretty well. In our heat today we had South Africa with us for most of the first 1000m but we then moved away for a comfortable win in the second half. The other heat winners were the Kiwis and the French. We next race in the semi finals on Wednesday at about 4:00pm – 4:30pm again (6-6:30 Australian time).
The team function two nights ago was pretty awesome where James Tomkins got named to carry the flag. Having the whole team in one place like that was a buzz along with the viewing footage of great olympic moments – very inspirational. I'm sure everyone walked away on a high.
Unfortunately we didn't walk in the opening ceremony due to the late night required to do so (after 1am bedtime) as we were racing the next day. I'm sure you'll all agree when I say it looked pretty amazing on TV though.
Now the focus is on the semi final on Wednesday so the next 3 days will be about getting in some more good training as we lead up to the final next Saturday.
