Rowing/Sam Lynch's Diary: It's been a roller coaster ride lately - surreal highs and unreal lows. The focus now is getting back on an upward track.

1 - DUISBURG

We've been warming up for the longest time. We've been hunched at the start-line for an eternity. Now a pistol points at a cloud and - bang! The season takes off.

We are in Duisburg, racing the heavyweights. There's some immutable law of Nature that says whenever we race against heavyweights there'll be a headwind. We arrived and, sure enough, the wind is cracking its cheeks, blowing hard. There's not just a headwind, there's a roaring headwind.

We're racing two one-day competitions here. The first day is strange, a reminder of the comforts of routine. Gags and I have a normal procedure on race days. We go down to the bank two hours before race-time. We weigh in. We rest. We eat a little bit. An hour before the race, we start to move around and stretch. We go on the water 40 minutes before the race. We do our stuff. It's all very formulaic. We've been doing it for 10 years.

Race preparation is instinctive. We don't have to think about it. Here, though, because we're racing heavyweights, there's no weigh-in. It puts a big hole in our routine. We're at a total loose end. We go down an hour and 15 minutes before the race. An hour and 15 minutes? It just feels wrong. We just get on the water. We feel weird.

Something missing.

We lose the race, fighting all the time against a really strong headwind. The crews we have been up against are the bottom crews from, say, an A final in World Cup. They're the sort of heavyweights who'd be taking the fifth places down to 11th at the Olympics. We'd fancied we'd have a good chance to beat them.

We knew, of course, that it would be a long race with the wind blowing so hard, but Thor said to us, in that way of his, that if we could have the race won by the time we got to 1,500 metres it would be a help! Everyone else would be tired by then.

Take a lead and they won't come back.

Grand so, Thor.

Thor, we have a problem. Coming through 1,500 metres there's two crews left instead of one. There's ourselves and the Polish heavyweights. And they are leading us, and by the looks of them they are thinking that if they have the lead at 1,500 metres, well, everyone else should be too tired to come back.

I smile to myself. So much for us tiring everyone else out. There is an epic sprint to the line, ourselves and the Poles killing each other all the way there. The Poles beat us by a photo-finish. One word for the feeling. Gutted. No, two words. Gutted and knackered.

The lightweight men's four won their race, though. A successful day for the Irish, but not for us. We smile with everyone else, but not winning hurts us like a toothache.

The following day, the Greek lightweights decide to ante up and play a few games with us. They enter our heavyweight race. Today, though, we fell back on our routine. We get down there two hours before race-time. We have our bottles of water and our bread and jam. We do the things we always do. We don't know any other way. The familiar routine makes us much more nervous and jumpy. Gives us our edge back.

And the Greeks give the race some spice. They're a good crew and a good benchmark for us. Today, it's a completely different race. In fact, it's over by 1,250 metres, by which time we have seven seconds on the Greeks and five seconds on the same heavyweight Poles from the day before. In the end, we win by a length and a half. Good race.

We're feeling good. We're moving through the water well. This is the summer we'd looked forward to during the dog days of spring.

2 - MUNICH

We're racing the heavyweights again. There's still a long time to go till the Olympic Games and Thor says he'd prefer it that way. Myself too. I'm not comfortable staying down at 71 kilos for three months. It puts the system under a lot of strain. Heavyweights it is. Cue headwinds.

It works out interestingly. We end up in the same race as the Polish lightweight crew who beat us into bronze medal position in the Worlds last year. They were silver, we were bronze. It's a semi-final, and on the line with us are the heavyweight crews from France, Slovenia, Hungary and the US. Lots of really big-name heavyweight crews. Then ourselves and the Poles as a sort of sideshow.

That's how it unfolds anyway. Two races for the price of one. The heavyweights slugging it out. Ourselves and the Poles just watching each other.

We beat them well, beat them from the start. When we hit a 1,000 metres we know they aren't coming back. They know it too.

Then we look around to see how the rest of the race has been getting on without us. We end up in fourth place coming through 1,500 metres mark. We're not far behind the Hungarians.

Slovenia win. France next. The Americans slip in between ourselves and the Hungarians. Overall, there's six seconds between ourselves and Slovenia.

We are pleased, though. We've beaten the Poles. We know that we've put some speed on since last year.

So we came off the water with grins as wide as the Shannon, and Thor greets us. Ah, two ex-World Champions so happy about coming fifth in a semi-final! You bet.

The next morning, in the B final, we are side by side with the Poles again. When we beat them yesterday they slowed down and conserved their energy. We are quite tired, because we've raced to the maximum the evening before. The Poles are a good deal fresher. This B final is dog early too. We've been up before the devil has his shoes on.

After 10 strokes of racing we knew that the Poles are up for this. We can see them beside us. So we change our race-plan completely. We know if we let them go we won't get them back. You have to dominate them. So we go much, much harder in the first 500. At that point we are level. By 1,000 metres we have open water on them. What we don't realise at first is that we have open water on everyone else.

Thor is following in the car. Afterwards he will tell us about how amusing the race looked, these two little lightweight crews at the far side of the course just darting out hell for leather and catching everyone on the hop.

The second half of the race is wonderful. We are always half a length ahead of one crew or another.

The Norwegians come at us. The Americans. The British. By the last 250 we think we're just going to die. And then the Poles come back at us. We end up winning. The Poles in second. Happy men. Two weeks to go before the big one.

3 - LUCERNE

We arrive a week ahead. It's still all good. We're ticking all the right boxes on the way to Athens. Weight is right. Technique is there. Feeling good.

We've trained well in Lucerne for the first two days, but on Monday we are out and there's something wrong. Nothing you can describe. Just something. Thor can't see it. Gags and I feel it. I put it down to nerves. Mine. Gags'. Could be just the aggregate of the way the two of us are feeling.

Lucerne is one we all get excited about. It's so big, so enjoyable, the mecca of rowing. The course is small and tight and the set-up is compact. The water is fast. It's always sunny. There's pretty girls everywhere. People in tans and sunglasses. Gags' father and sister are coming over. The crowds can mingle with the competitors because the boat park isn't closed off. There's just this festive air to the place.

We tootle along happily enough, doing some speed work during the week. We do a good 500-metre piece on the Wednesday, two days before race day. Really quick. Occasionally, that odd feeling comes back to spook us, but we're all business now, ticking those boxes.

Thor says we look good. If Thor says it, well, maybe. But inside, inside the animal that is the two of us working together, something feels wrong. Something missing.

FRIDAY. THE HEAT

We're off the blocks well, but the Hungarians get a jump on us at 1,000 metres. They go on to win. Afterwards, off the water, we're philosophical. Okay, we'll save it for the repercharges. Inside, though, we're both interrogating ourselves. The Hungarians aren't better then us. Are they? Fine. There's a silver lining. The Italians, our greatest rivals are up and down this season. We've drawn them in the rep. Now, we're quite looking forward to this. If you have to race a rep, it's good to get a chance to go up against the Italians.

If you race the World Champions you'll get something out of it, you'll see for better or worse where you stand.

In this race it's us, the Italians, the Australians and Hong Kong, with three to go through. Sorry, but it's got to be goodbye Hong Kong and thanks for your time.

It should work like this. Three crews go off at the start, 25 strokes a minute and paddle home. Hong Kong finish a little while later. And for the Australians that's how it works.

As the Aussies say to us afterwards, though, there were three different things going on. Hong Kong just doing their best. The Australians sensibly going through. And the craziness between us and the Italians.

We both take off as if we are in an Olympic final. We go through 1,250 a length ahead of the Italians and it's maybe the best feeling I've had in rowing. We're comfortable, we're in a good rhythm. We're beating the Italians, we're beating these boys we've thought about for so much of the winter.

And then suddenly it's not there. Whatever it is, well, it's not there now. We end up crossing the line one-third of a length behind them. We tell ourselves that they are the World Champions, that we've just raced maximum, that our speed is there. We know, though. Something missing.

It's timing, perhaps, or something even more intuitive. Nothing anyone can see, just something Gags and I can feel. We're like an old married couple in that regard. Between us we have a feeling that nobody else can have or can see. It's that feeling of moving with the boat, the feeling you get when every ounce of energy you have is going into making the boat go faster.

When it goes right, two men and a boat are just moving like parts of one beautiful machine. Place a little bit of stress into that machine, though, and you feel the difference. You don't see it, but you feel it.

I'm walking home. I'm feeling low. I don't think I've ever felt lower in my career. My head is down. I'm trying to figure out what's gone missing between us.

Gags is going to meet a friend for coffee, but when I get back to the hotel room he's already there, he's sitting on the bed.

"You okay?" I ask.

"No," he says, "I'm not well actually. I'm sick."

After the race he's been to the doctor. John Treacy once said that elite athletes get up in the morning tired and go to bed in the evening tired. He was right. Tired is the default setting for us. We go for long, long periods with our immune systems compromised and vulnerable. Gags has picked up a bug. He's running a temperature. He's feeling weak. Shitty. Flu type aches. He's been given a handful of antibiotics.

He's been feeling bad on and off for a week or so, but it's the nature of this business to feel bad sometimes and it's the nature of Gags - the athlete he is and the bloke he is - to keep going.

We sit and talk. Out of loyalty to me, Gags has kept pushing himself, because he felt he didn't want to let me down. He didn't want us to have to miss out on Lucerne. That was his concern.

He hasn't been worrying about anything else, but our well-being as a crew. Knowing that one of us has been sick takes care of my worries about that same well-being. One of us being sick is the same as the two of us being sick. Me being sick is Gags being sick and vice versa. We're just parts of the same body.

Now, once we've found out what it is, a bug, the feeling is pure relief. Before we found out what was wrong, before we had an explanation, we were in trouble.

Details: Five days rest. Light training for a couple of days. Full training again next week.

Walking home from that rep a little while ago, it felt like the end of the world. Suppose we never identified what was gone and it was just gone for good. Who'd say it first? How would we deal with it at this stage in an Olympic year? We speak to Thor. He advises us to withdraw.

Gags has to go for a full medical with the FISA doctor before we can do that. There has to be due process in these things so teams don't withdraw for their own convenience. In the end, though, seven crews withdraw from Lucerne through illness. On Saturday at 5.30 I am sitting back at home in Ireland.

Back in Dublin we go to see Dr Moira O'Brien in Trinity. Prof, we call her. She says the same. Just five days off. That's reassuring. Prof isn't interested in making Sam or Gags or the crew get better for the Olympics. She's just interested in making Sam or Gags or the crew get better. Full stop. Everything else is secondary to the basic health issue.

The balance sheet? We've lost a week of pretty light training. I think we've gained more than that.

There's going to be a benefit to this. At the end of this year nobody is going to remember who won in Lucerne. I won there four years ago and got a silver medal in the Worlds the same year. I don't spend much time gazing at my Lucerne 2,000 medal.

I think about the one I lost.

Getting out of the boat for a week has been useful. We can stand aside for a little while and realise how far we have come. There is such unity between us now when we row that when things don't feel right it's impossible to tell why. That's an achievement. A year ago I could have said when Gags wasn't going well. He could have said when I wasn't going well. Now, I don't know if it's me, Gags or the boat.

The way it is. We were in Stromsted three weeks ago. We were out for a while. Afterwards, everyone came in moaning. It was really bad out there today! Waves and wind. I was looking at Gags, he was looking at me. Shrugs. Never noticed.

We said it to Thor later in the car. Yep, he says, there were bad waves and bad wind, but this year we are a crew. We don't have to make technical calls between us we are so cohesive. We can go through a whole outing without saying anything to each other.

This business of picking up a bug is an occupational hazard. When you are dieting and train hard, for instance, you don't feel that great a lot of the time. You drag yourself around, you feel bad. You get into the boat and there is a demand from the boat, a demand from what, as a crew, we have been through. This is how we do it. We row this way. The default is to row this way. Tiredness. Fatigue. Sickness. Those things don't interfere.

In the last six weeks the level of what we have been doing has upped significantly. If the quality of what you do in training is good enough it brings you to a level when you can find more when you have to.

Gags hadn't been feeling quite perfect for two weeks before Lucerne. It was intermittent. Poor man, he did what we all do, he battled through it. That's the thing with good athletes. Until a sickness comes and slaps them in the face they write it off.

Back in the dark months in Seville, when we were training 30, 40 hours a week, it was the weekends like Lucerne and the promise of them which got us through it. So Gags ignored the way he was feeling.

We both knew how much the other was looking forward to Lucerne. We both know that if either of our bodies had raised an objection in the week or two beforehand we'd have been telling that body to shut up.

That's the life. Some days you are getting up out of bed and peeling yourself off the sheets and wondering how you'll walk downstairs to breakfast. It's hard to distinguish between that and sickness.

Thor often drags us into early meetings and we're stiff and aching and sick and can only open one eye, and he says: "So, is everybody tired?" We'll mumble a "no". Thor will say that the point is to be tired, that's part of the programme. When you are used to feeling that tired and when you have a mentality as strong as Gags has, you don't feel a sickness on top it.

You see it with people sometimes. You either buckle or you go on. You get people who decide early on that they can't do it, they're sorry, but they'd rather take the old walk of shame. And then there's the people who say there's no way this training programme is going to beat me. There's no way this feeling is going to beat me.

You say this programme isdesigned for people to win the Olympics. Well, I'm going to finish it if it kills me.

In our boat we have that mentality. That mentality is what makes people win. It makes you capable of beating everyone.

It can be your downfall, too. I remember from studying psychology years ago being told that the people most likely to die from those creeping illness that get to you slowly, things like heart disease or lead poisoning, the people most likely to die are the ones who are the most resilient and who will push on and tell themselves they are fine.

The people who buckle under the first sniffle are the ones who catch everything quickest. Perhaps hypochondria is the way!

So we're home now. And loving it.

We have an eight-week training camp before the Games and we need to be fresh. From next Wednesday till July 26th we're back in Stromstad. Then to Zagreb for two and a half weeks. And then the Games.

We head into it all refreshed. All we have to be concerned about now is staying relaxed and following the programme. We're over the hurdles. The illness is gone. The weight isn't a problem.

This is the time when Thor comes into his element. He's getting calmer and more serene every day. The more exciting things get, the lower Thor's pulse gets. It's about nerve. He loves this, the tweaking, the sharpening, the control. We take our lead from him.

It's really painless right now. It was the finest feeling to get home. We hadn't been home in nine weeks. When you are away you don't allow yourself to be homesick till you feel you are on the way home.

The minute I knew we could go home early from Lucerne I was desperate to see Ireland, to sit in my own car, in my own place, to see family and friends.

Home. You can be uninhibited. There's stuff you can talk about at home that you can never talk about at training camp. Your fears. Your tiredness. How hard you find things.

When you train there's a front you have to keep up. You're training for something. There are responsibilities. There are the requirements that go with your goal. If you don't want to win, then don't do it.

If you do want to be champion, then these are the standards you have to meet, it's as simple as that. The first standard is shut up and don't moan.

So, sometimes you need to go home and let it all out. You need an outside voice just to tell you that of course you can do it, that you've done it before, that you've always done it. Home is the place to say it and to hear it. If I go down to breakfast in the training camp and announce, "Lads, I'm not able for this", the spoons would drop. Half of them would be thinking, how do I get into his seat, and the other half would be thinking I'm staying away from him. He's a Jonah. He's sinking the boat.

Like the best teams, there's a heart there, but they're not a sympathetic, mawkish group.

What's happened since Lucerne has been important to us. Sometimes, there's not a lot of emotion in what we do. It's about numbers and being professional and tough. It's about monitoring. Diet and weight and speeds and lactate profiles. All very sterile.

You inject last weekend into it and it changes things. After last weekend Gags knows that I trust him 100 per cent. I know the same. We sat in the room looking at each other and saying the things which had to be said.

He said he felt he'd let me down. I said it happened to be him, it could have been either one of us. It doesn't make a difference to the outcome. He reacted the way I would have reacted. We both feel the same things. That's reassuring.

Pulling out of Lucerne has made us realise how much this year means to us on a visceral level. It's more than numbers or stopwatches or charts or things you can measure. It's about a love for the sport, a desire to be the best you can be. A passion that's not explained by science or gold medals. It's not rational. It's emotional.

We know what we have now and we know what it means to both of us.