Morning all!

Another busy week here on all aspects of the row, very happy its now the weekend to be able to get some sleep in!

I have another training sponsor on board! Sussex Yacht Club, based in Shoreham, West Sussex have given me a temporary membership and are allowing to use all facilities at the club during my on water training. The boat now has pride of place in the boat yard and it now means that I don't need to worry about towing it everytime I head off training, which is amazing.

The Club is in a fantastic location, set where the river Adur meets Shoreham harbour so it is protected from the open channel and gives me the provision to head upstream as well as into the harbour and out to sea. A huge thank you to them and if you find yourself in Shoreham pop on down as it will become a 2nd home over the next few months so I'm sure I wll be around!

Plans are continuning to come together for the fundraiser dinner at the RAC and I will let you know when tickets go on sale.

I had a meeting at Victoria Station yesterday and all is confirmed for my 24 hour row on October 15th! Very simple set up, I row for 24 hours whilst someone joins me every hour to keep me going! I will be raising money on the day for Mind and with an average foot fall of 315,000 a day, hopefully we should be able to raise a good amount of money. Sign up sheets are just being made up, so if you fancy rowing for an hour in the centre of Victoria Station to help raise loads of money, get in contact!

I have worked really hard over the last few months to secure exposure that then I can use to draw sponsors in and along with a lot of luck and a huge amounts of genorosity I now feel I have a strong package that I can offer.

Training has also been going well this week. I am coming to the end of the strength phase of training and over the next few weeks I am now going to be changing my programme to much more endurance based in the run up to the row.

I am also now considering my mental preparation. Obvioulsy it is very difficult to put myself in the situations I will meet at sea, but there are some usefull ways of training. I am planning a trip out to Dartmoor with Jon for a few days which will just be a hell of a beasting but will be invaluable in terms of learning how to cope when I am hanging out. I will make sure I take a video camera along...

I am also going to get away on my own for a few days, again to put myself in the position of spending days on end with no human contact. This sort of training is arguably more important that the physical side, if I can't handle this row mentally then it doesn't matter how fit I am.

ATB

Tommy.