Rowing Sam Lynch's Diary: Monday morning, Blessington, 8 am: We've been having what passes for normal life for a little while now. No more cheek by jowl. No more life in each other's pockets. We train. We go home to our own separate houses. Simple. We meet for training during the day. We meet again in the evening. And home. No cabin fever.some rowers hate and others love. He has learned to love it. A little

Our days are like this. One session in town, somewhere in Dublin, just running or heaving weights. Then, the ritual trek to Blessington. We flounder out there among the waves and the winds. We get soaked every day. Drenched till our bones are damp. It's like being baptised into the faith again. Then we hike up to Blessington village to the Courtyard Coffee shop and hang out for a couple of hours over tea and toast. We swap gossip, make the same jokes. Feel at home.

It's morning now. A new week breaking open. I'm in a single. Alone on the grey water. I push off. This is home. Home feels really windy today.

You could call Blessington a mecca of Irish rowing. You could call it that but you wouldn't necessarily be right. Some guys hate this place. Some people love it. We all have memories of it.

For me it begins in 1989. A Junior D fours race over a thousand metres. Technically we didn't win at all. King's Hospital , the crew that beat us, crashed into us near the end and we got given the race by default. Our first win. We were the happiest boys alive.

I remember us climbing over each other to get out of the boat. Everyone wanted to ring Brendan Murphy, our old coach. Brendan was 23 then and we were his first crew. He died about 10 years ago and left a hole that has never been filled for us . . . I remember calling him from Blessington that day. He was so happy. We were so proud. We hadn't really won a race at all but 12-year-olds don't make that distinction. We all have Blessington memories. It's a rite of passage being here. If you are objective, Blessington is very beautiful. It's not beautiful to row in.

It's cold and bleak and austere. I've been here every year for 10 years. If I'm in the country then I'm on this lake six days a week. You can choose to hate it or choose to love it. No point in wasting energy hating it. I love it. A little.

I push the boat out this morning, feeling the waves fight me, the wind playing with me. The skies are grey as usual. It all feels good.

Monday morning, Blessington, 8:40 am: When we speak to Thor on the phone his words are heavy and ominous.

"Be sure to take it easy now for the next day or two," he says.

I hate the sound of that.

"Why?" I ask.

"Well," he says with a sigh, "the next three or four weeks will be very, very heavy."

This is hard to imagine. It is beyond us. How heavy can a heavy week be? Surely no heavier than what we've lived through since Christmas? I think I know what Thor means, though. He's talking about the seat races which will start when we go back. Four weeks or so of hell.

Here's how it works. The four boat which will race in Athens has, inevitably, four seats in it. There are eight, nine, maybe ten Irish rowers who can fill those four seats. Those guys have lived together, raced together, worked together, eaten together, dreamed together and fought together for months.

Now there will be selections. As primitive and brutal as anything in nature. The process will create havoc in all our lives but especially in the lives of the guys directly involved. It spills over onto all of us though like splashes of acid.

Nothing you can ignore.

They'll race all the time, switching guys from boat to boat. We'll watch a good group of friends realise they each want something which the others cherish. These guys have been rowing together all year. Now they'll just manage to be cordial to each other for the next few weeks.

It's simple and it's devastating. They'll race two fours over 1,000 metres. And then they'll swap two guys out (one from each crew) and race the same fours again over 1,000 metres. Then Thor will take the difference in time. And it's plainly obvious at the end of testing who is the faster. With every race it should get more obvious.

And the guys will be demented. They'll be about camp asking what this looked like and what that looked like. Looking for solace wherever they can find it.

It creates tension within the whole group. So much stress. There'll be arguments and fights. How do you console one guy without disrespecting another guy? And they need consoling. I did seat racing a few times. We did 30 times 500 metres over three days in 1995 right here in Blessington. You got three points for a win, two for second and one for coming last. One point. It was supposed to make you feel better.

You worked in blocks of five, six blocks of five. You were paired with one guy for the five pieces and your fate was tied to him. At the time I was staying with Derek Holland in Dublin. Derek was in the fours as well. I remember we went home on Saturday night, had half our dinner, fell asleep for a couple of hours, got up and had the rest of it . . .

That's why some guys hate Blessington.

Monday morning, Blessington, 8:55 am:

It's still chilly. A while ago I had a choice to make. I came here to do a 100-minute session. I was on the water a short while and I was wet through. Bailing water out of the boat with my cupped hands. Wet clothes sticking to me. Cold.

I could abandon the boat and go and do something else. Run in my wet clothes maybe? Or I could persevere. I paddled onward to the bridge. I couldn't go home without having trained. The decision made itself for me. I went on down the lake.

Blessington is so big there's always one sheltered corner. You'll always find somewhere you can work in. I've been out for about an hour now, tootling around. A shower came in a while ago and afterwards the lake calmed.

There's a 600-metre open stretch which rowers know. It's a barrier. When it's windy you can't get through it. It sort of separates the big lake from the small lake. That's as I imagine the two parts of the lake. The big lake and the small lake. When it calmed a few minutes ago I bolted through that 600-metre stretch. Into the big lake. Freedom! Once years ago I was out here in a single and I got scared. I was less experienced in singles boats then and Blessington is a really big lake. Six kilometres across. Even still I will never go into the middle of it on my own. It just frightens me.

We've done it in the double but being in the middle out there on my own. I know it would freak me out.

Today, though, it's Monday morning and I'm feeling braver than I should. Next week we'll be back in Spain. The lads will be enduring the torment of seat races. Gags (Gearóid Towey) and I will be onlookers. Any wonder I'm feeling brave?

Hard days. Typically, there might be three races in the morning. Guys swapping in and out of each boat. In any group there'll be a subconscious tendency for the group to pick the team it wants to pick. The likeable guys, the best competitors, the leaders or whatever. The system of continually swapping makes sure you stay honest, though, because you don't know who is going to be next.

I've done hundreds of those races. There's little tricks. You are only in the boat for 20 minutes. You try to make some positive input to the boat straight away. "That feels good," you'll say. "We're flying."

Other guys will hop in and have a dig straight away at the other boat. "The other boys are dying over there, they were struggling when I saw them."

I would always say something positive. "Feels like a good rhythm," or "we're moving well." Just to get some kind of crew spirit. A tiny edge. Everyone is tired. Everyone's senses have been assaulted. If there is some positive input it might help.

And yet you know the outcomes are almost inevitable. You have the choice to bet on strength, technique or mentality and really it's no choice. Mentality wins every time.

Seat racingtears away all the layers. As an athlete it leaves you naked and crouching. Some guys will settle for second. Some guys won't be able to settle for that.

That thought, that suggestion of predetermination through character, is a little bit depressing.

I always wonder if character can change within sport. I think it can. I think people have to recognise first their mentality is a weakness. Everyone has problems.

Nerves.

Or just avoiding asking themselves questions they have to ask.

Or controlling tension levels.

These are all mentality issues yet they are kind of a taboo area for most of us.

People avoid saying that my weakness is my mentality. They'd rather admit to bad technique. Yet mentality is something that can be worked on and developed through habit. The guys who win are mentally tough. They are the guys in training who ask themselves the questions. The mentally tough guys are the ones who are mentally tough on the first day of training. They don't just get tough for the big day or the seat races.

The mental thing defines your whole philosophy of training.

There's an old Norwegian rower called Alf Hansen. He and his brother Frank won gold in 1976 in Montreal. Thor was their coach and because Alf was the smallest and the youngest and the toughest Thor has a soft spot for Alf which is as wide as Blessington lake.

Thor tells us little parables to improve our mental toughness. Alf Hansen is at the centre of each one. Every lake that needed rowing, Alf rowed it. Every race that was lost, Alf came back and won it. His suffering didn't end there. Every disease that mankind has ever known, Alf had it first.

You come into Thor with a case of tendinitis and Thor will look and say, "Oh my god, that is the worst tendinitis I have seen since Alf Hansen. I remember in 1971 Alf had the same thing. Only worse."

He had everything, did everything. We love the stories.

Once one of Alf Hansen's wives left him. He had to go training one day but he and his wife were supposed to be going for dinner with another couple and Alf didn't want to go. He suggested his wife leave a little later in the car while he, Alf, would run the distance between the houses. That way they'd fulfil the engagement and Alf would get some training in.

Once he was out, though, and the miles were disappearing behind his feet, Alf realised he needed more. He ran between houses and took a little digression turning the trip into a 60-kilometre run.

"This is the sort of mentality you need," Thor will tell us earnestly.

Once Thor found out that Alf used to add 20 per cent to his training programme every year. This is how Thor expects us to approach the programme. Wanting more. He'll talk the talk about rest and adhering to the programme but there is a part of him that loves it when people put it up to each other. Myself and Paul Griffin and Gags or whoever will lock horns some days and training will get competitive and less controlled. Thor will be there saying, "No, no, no," but you can tell by the grin that he likes that kind of aggression.

I'm thinking of Alf Hansen right now, right out here in the boat in the middle of Blessington. Alf trained in the fjords, right out in the middle of where it was really, really rough. He'd battle the elements every day and his season would begin out there when the snow and ice were just melting.

Thor would say to Alf, "If you're going out there I want you to bring a life jacket." And Alf would say, "Will that save me?" "No, but it will make it easier to find your body." It's all about mentality.

Monday morning, Blessington, 9:20 am:

It's getting windy again now. White-capped waves are pushing me about. I'm enjoying myself out here, though. Somewhere in my head I realise what was going to be a 100-minute session is going to be about 20 minutes longer now. Two hours.

I enjoy it here and have done so much rowing here I feel I own the water. Yet when I shut my eyes and visualise myself working on water I am always in Stromstad in Sweden. It's where we train in the summer and I've spent a lot of time there on my own. Cumulatively it's where I learned to row a single.

I love that lake. It's a narrow 14km loop. That's 7km out from the boat house to the end of the lake. What make it different is there's a dog-leg, so you row around a long curving bend which lasts for 3km or so and sometimes you are exposed and sometimes you are sheltered but then for the last 500 metres of the lake you are almost in a cove.

All around are really high rocks and trees. And the water is completely calm. If you look from far away you can see the line on the lake where it all changes. That 500 metres in Stromstad often comes to me unbidden. It's a reward for rowing the rest of the lake. 500 metres. That's where I row in my mind and here in Blessington it comes to me sometimes. Stromstad. Those 500 metres. Suddenly the world seems muffled. The boat takes off under your power.

We're going there the first three weeks in June. We'll be there for six weeks. It's where the team used to go but I feel quite proprietorial about it now. It's my place.

Now the lads are warming to it and in my mind I kind of accommodate them. We did the seat races for Atlanta 1996 in Sweden. They are a blank to me. I remember that as the weeks went by the older guys could tell you the times of the fours and who had won what and who was going well. I hadn't a clue.

I'd go to the dock. A voice would say, "Sam you're in that boat." "Race in this time."

I'd nod. "Okay."

I'd do the race. Get into another boat. Same thing.

I was too tired to absorb any of it. 1,000 metres is a really hard distance; you build up more lactic acid in 1,000 metres than in 2,000. I didn't even know my own name at the end of each day. We'd have four races in the morning , four in the afternoon and then an easy row to clean up the body, as Thor likes to say. We'd stumble away in the evenings like blind men on uncertain terrain.

I've seen people break. The odd person who just blows a gasket. There's a code, though. We all talk about seat races but never outside the group. It's an honour thing. We don't discuss detail outside the group. I like that. Everyone is trying their best. It's not for public consumption. It's as intimate as a sport can get.

For these next couple of weeks Thor is right. Very, very heavy. He'll hate it. He'll hate the decision at the end. The margins will get tighter and tighter and there'll be a point where the margins are finally inconclusive. The cumulative times for all the races might be about 30 minutes with one second separating two places maybe.

That's where the system falls down. One second could be wind, waves, bad luck. One second. After that Thor has to be subjective.

My bet is when he's forced to choose he'll go for somebody on the basis of mentality. I would. And I'd tell the others that mentality can change.

When I first won the singles in Seville in 2001 I remember being in a World Cup race at the start of that season (again, it was Seville) and Stefano Basolini the Italian was on one side and the Czech Michal Vavrosek was on the other side and I'd never beaten either. I was scared of these guys.

I sat at the start and looked at the two of them and said I won't preclude the possibility I will win this race. That's all. Sometimes you have to win despite yourself. I beat the Italian in a really good race by under a second. And after that he never came within two seconds of me. I never expected him to. Maybe he didn't expect himself to either. You can change your mentality.

Some people are lucky they are born tough. The rest of us have to learn to win.

Monday morning, Blessington, 9.58 am: Everything changes. Yesterday it was calm. Today it wasn't calm. I felt a bit braver than I should. Now I'm in a little bit of trouble. The outing has turned into a two-hour stint. I've been paddling away till I felt I should go back. Till I felt I had to go back.

There are 2,000 metres of waves and wind between myself and the shore. I've decided to keep going, ploughing through it. Cocky bastard. I know I should have headed for the side and taken the longer, easier way but instead I've headed straight through the middle. I've keptgoing till I had to look around to see exactly what danger I was in. I'm up to my ankles in water. Every stroke is a struggle. The waves are breaking over my back.

And I'm remembering my first year in a single boat. I wasn't happy back then. I was injured racing in the four the year before. I'd taken up single sculling for the wrong reasons. I felt sorry for myself. I was only 21. I'd been knocked down by a car. I'd got glandular fever. Everything, everything pear-shaped. I was out to prove to everyone that I could actually row.

One Sunday afternoon I came here to Blessington. Another day with nobody else here. I got the bus from town to Blessington, the 66 rumbling out through Tallaght and just about everywhere else, a 90-minute ride. I was up at 7.30. I was frustrated. I hadn't been going well. Then , in the afternoon the lake got really still. I went down to the Poulaphouca part of the lake and lost myself in the rhythm of the day.

I realised after a while I was really enjoying myself, that I wouldn't choose to be anywhere else. I was enjoying it in a visceral way, in a way I could feel. Nothing cerebral about it. That was a huge turning point for me. I was doing it to prove nothing. I realised I loved it. I rowed to shore. I got the bus home. Happy.

That was then. I'm ankle deep in water now. Four weeks of the "very, very heavy" in Seville lie ahead. It takes everything I have to get the boat back to the dock in Blessington. I'm cold and I'm soaked.

Absolutely soaked. I'm cupping water in my hands, tossing it over the side. The wind just gets stronger and stronger. It's great.

Everything changes. And that's great too.

(In an interview with Tom Humphries)