The biggest event to happen recently was my 50km row on the slides with my rowing partner at the "Hilton's around the world" event.

It is a yearly event where all the Hilton's around the world hold events to raise money for their chosen charities and promote getting out and doing things and getting healthy.

There are all sorts of ways to clock up mileage, we did our 50km on the slides which was quite fun, it was really muggy though. But there were people running around the Maidstone United's football stadium, one of our support crew disappeared and did a 10km run and various other events. On the day the total mileage was 1004 miles and we all raised £1640.60 which was great.

The renovations on our coxes' pair have been going rather slowly, mostly due to the weather as we are storing it outside and also because of work commitments. But we have managed to repair some of the small splits and Neil my rowing partner has come up with a cunning plan to fit some nice lightweight riggers we were given by Sudbury RC who gave us the boat. We need to finish stripping the old varnish from the outside of the shell and get some sealer and a new coat on her - or is that him- as the boat is named "Ted Eady", which we shall be keeping. Apparently the boat was affectionately known as "The tea lady" lol

Bad news was that a large contract that I was overseeing was moved forward, so I was unable to row the Ringvaart regatta; this was a real disappointment as I was really looking forward to it. But there is always next year and I'm sure we can find something else to do this year...

I'm really enjoying the Round GB row at the moment. 2000 miles non-stop and unaided around Great Britain, what a race. They started about 13.5 days ago (at the time of writing this). There were 6 crews battling it out for the new world record, current expected finishing time is around 26 days but 4 crews have dropped out for various technical problems. There are 2 crews left and they are only just behind the world record pace as they have just got to Scotland. Really looking forward to how the race pans out. Check it out it's worth a look.

Training in general has been going well when health has permitted. I have been able to up my running with no detriment to my Achilles problems, I have been running further than I have ever run now, so I just need to get a bit quicker. Swimming is going very well, had a few tips from a coach the other day, so she gave me a few little pointers to work on but she basically said I was doing fine. Have been working with some swimming gloves which really does work the shoulders and couple that with kick drills and some pull buoy exercises it makes for a great workout.

Lastly I am really looking forward to watching some great rowing at the World Cup rowing at Eton Dorney at the end of June, we have got tickets for finals day so that should be great.

As always I am doing all of this for The Meningitis Trust so you can support me here

Cheers,

Darren