I continue to surprise myself (and others apparently)!

A friend (who shall remain nameless - Hey Chris) confessed the other day that he thought I might be a bit mad, when I first was chatting to him about doing the Ocean to City rowing race on the 2nd June, which was the result of a bit of a drunken conversation at my work Christmas party, it's kind of understandable, despite increasing my activity levels I'm not exactly known for my athleticism, only in the last year have I managed to jog about 3km without feeling like my lungs and heart are going to explode and I before I went out for a few sessions myself I was thinking "What on earth was I thinking?"

We had a couple of lessons with the lovely Clare Hayden of Meitheal Mara, Cork to get us on our way, it was tough, none of us had rowed a currach (traditional Irish boat) before and some of us hadn't really rowed at all before. Whilst we were waiting for our own boat, the Mainport Muirin, to be built, we trained in the mornings twice a week with the experienced rowers of Naomhoga Chorcai, Cork's local currach rowing club.

Our boat was completed at the end of March, once complete we were getting out 2-3 times per week and trying to clock up the distance to prepare for the race. It was hard going the first couple of weeks whilst we got to grips with timing and steering but eventually it fell into place.

Here we are 5 months later and a week after the race, we completed the 22km row in a respectable time of 2 hours 28 mins, which is pretty good for complete noob rowers and I've found a new hobby that I really enjoy and I am not terrible at. Hopefully, this was the first of many races.