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A big thank you to alexskelton.com for getting the site going again and enabling me to share my Olympic experience in Beijing. I am currently in Dublin, on a 3 day break from team training before we fly to Beijing to begin out last build up to the Olympics.
It has been a long time since i have updated my site with THE NEWS, but suffice to say, a lot of water has gone under my particular bridge (excuse the rowing-ish analogy!) since then. Our Atlantic crossing attempt in the two man craft resulted in a capsize and stormy rescue in high seas about 1000 miles off our intended destination (Antigua) after spending 40 days and nights at sea rowing 2 hours on-off constantly. There is a huge story to be told there and i will place that elsewhere on the site, but a lot of lessons have been learned and it would be impossible for something like that to not change one's outlook in some way.
Life has been good since, completing my degree in Trinity College Dublin, making a return to competitive rowing in 2006, winning the World Cup series and collecting a bronze medal at the World Champs. However, i decided to leave the world of rowing soon after that, due to lack of motivation, a need to do other things and a general feeling of flatness with the sport which I thought would only be remedied with a prolonged break.
I took the break and decided to return for one last attempt in the Olympic cauldron. I travelled extensively throughout Europe on my break and got enough distance from everything to look at it in a different way, and decided to return only if the project was going to be handled in a professional way, with a group of like-minded athletes. This change took place and without even realizing it, i was back on the rowing machine cranking out the miles day after day. From september on i just kept my head down, working hard on my fitness to bring it back up to the level required to even contemplate an assault on Olympic qualification.
I came up for air around Christmas after a few training camps, with the back broken on a long period of mileage. I was beginning to see the value of team mates. If this was a solo effort, it would have been much harder to continue, but my team mates kept me going, and in many ways, i was doing it for them rather than myself, over the winter months. It is amazing what one can use as his motivation to get through something, and i was finding lots of them by simply looking around me.
I will tell the tale of Olympic Qualification in a future post, but for now, i am back on the airwaves and look forward to sharing my stories of the last few years, and of the ongoing story of the Olympic Games 2008 from my perspective.
Keep tuning in..
Slan
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