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For the last eight months myself and five other ladies and a cox have been training hard for the World Gig rowing championships held in the Scilly Isles last weekend.

We have ran in the wind in the rain with dogs around muddy farm lanes…

Lifted weights and attempted beating our pull up records in a cold barn…

Raced each other on the rowing machine desperately trying to reach our target 2000 metres time..

And rowed out of the harbour in all conditions with our cox Tom who coached us through each race, counting our stroke rate, watching our technique, our boat speed through the water, the wind, the tide and navigated around our coastline shouting at us all the way.

It was all going great, then we started dropping, FFi had flu, I hurt my knee and my back and half of us were finding the coaching all abit too much. There were tears, plenty of Chiropracter sessions, late night phone calls of encouragement and just terrible rowing sessions out on the sea.

Then last thursday we headed off to Penzance to catch the ferry, with the knowledge I couldn’t row and we would have to find someone to stand in for me, we were all nervous about what the weekend would bring.

The first race was all the womens gigs together, 118 on the start line, a huge swell and a bit of wind but the girls started well thanks to Hannah from Bristol who kindly stepped into my number 2 slot. After a spotless row and only a slight fight for water near the end the team came in 33rd position! We were very surprised and had to count on the results board 3 times to double check we were correct.

Last year we came 52nd over all so we were very pleased.

In the end after 2 shorter races in groups of 10 we found our place in group D and came 4th in that group in the final on Sunday which brought us to 41st overall which we were all very proud of.

Here’s a picture I took on a boat of the Porthgain Ladies near the finishing line on the first race, I’m very glad we were able to row and I still felt part of the team even though I didn’t row. It was very strange for me having spent 8 months training for something which I didn’t do, thanks to all the girls for their help and support over the last few weeks.

Porthgain Ladies Team near finishing line

To anyone else who went, hope you all had a great weekend and performed as well as you had hoped and see you again next year.