Page 52 of Oar Than Friends

Rowing season …

Kate:

Oz:

It’s summer. I love the sunshine

Kate:

why?

Oz:

Oh no, Miss Rulebreaker, that’s a second question. My turn …

And on it had continued for the last eighteen hours. We’d only broken to sleep, and I’d woken this morning to the sun rising over the quadrangle, and a fresh question.

‘Kate, are you listening?’

I jolted out of my daze to find Coach stroking his beard and frowning at me. Crap.

‘Sorry, sir, could you repeat that?’

‘You should tell him he did a good job.’

Oh, right. We were talking about rowing.

‘I will, yes. Thanks, Coach.’

‘I want you down here every weekend training, and anyspare days during the week. You need to get to know this water better than anything you’ve ever coxed on; I want you to be able to steer through these waters with your eyes closed. I want you hitting dead centre of the cabling, on instinct. You need to know where to turn, how to cut through the currents, where to increase stroke, where you can conserve energy. If you do that, you could win us the race come March.’

I nodded, but didn’t say anything more. I wasn’t really sure what there was to say. I hadn’t dared hope I’d be coxing in the Boat Race my very first year, but now Coach was talking like it was a possibility, and I suddenly wanted it more than I wanted anything else.

‘Have you spent time with Becka Jones?’

‘Yes, we’ve spent some time together, she’s been super helpful with advice.’

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