For 10 days all I've done is eat, sleep or row - and now I'm too ill for trials!

Golden boys: Hunter (back) and rowing partner Purchase
13 April 2012

This weekend marks the British trials for us rowers and I've spent the last 10 days building up for it at a training camp in Varese, Italy.

But I've just found out that I can't compete due to medical reasons.

I'm still recovering from a respiratory infection and it hasn't cleared up in time for me to race.

It's nothing serious, although I'm pretty disappointed. Unfortunately, there's nothing that can be done apart from rest and recovery but the good news is that it won't affect the rest of my season.

Training had been going well with my partner in the boat, Zac Purchase, and it's been good to get back together again. After we won our gold in Beijing, I took nine months away from the sport.

When I got back on the water, I was a bit rusty but we were working well together. We'd been having some good tussles and there was a real buzz about getting back to competition, with everyone in the training camp getting a little touchy and edgy with the trials approaching. But that will have to wait for Zac and me.

Talking of competition, we managed to tune in to the Boat Race at the weekend. Somehow in our hotel we found it on BBC World, I think. All of the lightweight squad sat down and I've got to say it was awesome.

In recent years, the favourite has always won and it looked like it was going that way as Oxford pulled out a solid lead but all credit to Cambridge for the way they came back. It's one of the best races I've seen for a long time.

I felt sorry for Oxford and one of their eight, Charlie Burkitt, in particular, who is a good friend of mine. I'd spoken to him a couple of weeks ago and he said the crew were going really well. But watching the race they didn't seem to have a plan B. Their aim was to go out hard for the first seven minutes and pull out a big lead but Cambridge came back at them.

It's a dangerous ploy and I felt for them at the end — it's awful when you lose after you've put everything into a race but that's what makes sport what it is and there was never a dull moment in that race. Being a race favourite, though, is hard. Zac and I had that in Beijing and it only gets tougher with all the hype and the expectation.

I've been sharing a room with Zac these last 10 days and it sometimes feels like we see more of each other than we do our girlfriends, particularly in an Olympic year.

Thankfully, I don't think either of us are snorers but basically all we've done in Varese is sleep, eat or row. People think we must be having an amazing time but you don't even have the energy to go to the cinema at a training camp like this and, anyway, an ice cream shop and a supermarket are pretty much the only things
near us.

I've had some time to read as well. I only really read autobiographies by athletes. I'm reading Andre Agassi's book and it's incredible that he played a sport for so many years despite the fact he hated it. I've never been a tennis player, so I don't know what the extremes of training and the sport are like, but I couldn't row if I didn't love it, as the training just kills you.

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