James Cracknell is the champion rower who has won two Olympic gold medals and six World Championship titles and is therefore one of the UK's most successful athletes whereas I have won nothing in my life (not a bean!), am not one of the UK's most successful athletes, and may actually be its worst. I don't like sport, don't get sport, don't do sport and now have such pitiful upper-body strength that I can't whip cream without taking little breaks, and sometimes I just give up, which is why my trifle is so often like soup. I don't know if I can row because I've never rowed before. I did go kayaking once, but I kayaked straight into the bank where I got wedged and was then attacked by a dog. I've had better days out.
Anyway, I meet James at the London Rowing Club, which is on the river Thames in Putney, southwest London. It is a glorious, beautiful morning. Blue skies. Sunny. The water shines like glass. It's the sort of day that makes you feel glad to be alive, or would do if only people would leave you alone to sit inside and watch TV while, perhaps, enjoying a nice drink of trifle.
James is already here. He is 38, tall, and wondrously dishy but has horrible feet. I know this because when he changes his footwear, I see these feet, and shout: 'YOU HAVE HORRIBLE FEET! PUT THOSE FEET AWAY! NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO LOOK AT FEET LIKE THAT!'
Since retiring from rowing in 2004, James has reinvented himself not just as a media pundit and sports consultant, but also as something of an adventurer, and he has just returned from the Marathon des Sables. This, it turns out, is a 151-mile run across the Sahara desert, and I've already put my name down for next year. (Only kidding. I'd rather be dead.) The run, needless to say, was not kind to his tootsies. 'I got terrible blisters, which had to be cut open so iodine could be injected into them,' he says. James Cracknell: lovely fellow, but only from the ankle up.
Now, to the rowing. We are going out in a 'double scull', which, if you want to get all technical, is a long thing that's banana-shaped with two seats in it. We carry it to the water, by which I mean James carries it while I pretend to help (I have upper-body strength issues, remember).
James used to train for seven hours a day — seven hours! — but not every day. 'Once every seven weeks,' he says, 'I'd get a day off.' But didn't you ever get bored? Fed up? Wake up in the morning thinking: 'Oh no, not more rowing'? 'Nope,' he says, 'because I was always focused on the next thing, the next race, the next competition...' I ask if he misses it. He says not. He doesn't even think he's been on the water for a year. Really? So you must be looking forward to going out today. He says: 'I would be, if you could row.' Whoa James, I say. For all you know, I might be naturally gifted! I might be terrific! The kayaking incident might have been a one-off! I make a trifle you can drink! He laughs. I don't know why he isn't taking me seriously. With feet like that, you'd think he'd do what he could to win friends.
