DW Final Blog

Today is Easter Monday and we thought we should complete our blog for the weekend. We didn't manage to post a Day 3 blog so here is the final instalment to cover Day 3 and Day 4.

Day 3 was Easter Sunday and as our last blog said we had made a plan at the end of Day 2 to complete the 38 miles in under 7 hours. We started at 7.15am and set off on a mission of 6 miles per hour. Our support crew of Tom and Phil were on form to keep us motivated and on time - and they did a cracking job! - thanks boys :-)

We paddled the first 6 miles in under an hour, and by 3 hours of paddling we were 20 minutes ahead of schedule. We had a few mad moments including an interesting approach to the rollers at Sunbury Lock which resulted in an almost, but not quite, capsize which even the supporters classed as a "good recovery".

Phil produced the best motivator call from the bank of "Go Girlfriend" which made the lady in the Mr Whippy van next to him smile and made us laugh for quite sometime!

By 30 miles in we had overtaken all the other crews who had set off before us on Sunday morning, meaning we had to keep our stroke rate up on our own without the motivation of chasing anyone down. We have to admit to reverting to a bit of a sing song to keep us going "there were ten in the bed " proved quite inspiring in terms of keeping our stroke rate up and we even found ourselves singing the "12 days of christmas" to the people taking their Easter Sunday stroll by the river!

We crossed the finish line first of the day in a time of 6 hours 52 minutes.

That meant our time to Teddington was 21 hours 40 minutes and we were lying 7th in the Senior K2 Endeavour category.

Day 4 was always our biggest concern. We are not the most stable of paddlers and the tideway is very fast flowing and can be really difficult to paddle. We were worried and slept pretty rubbishly on Sunday evening especially as we had to get up at 3.45am with no breakfast! We were on the water by 5.45 in the dark but we managed through some low points in moral to get to Battersea Power Station with relative ease. Time seemed to go very slowly this morning even though the water was flowing very fast. We approached the finish line with the Houses of Parliament on the left and Big Ben chiming 8am. We were home and dry - literally!

I have to admit to hugging the man who placed the medal round my neck - I think I was the only person to do that as he looked quite surprised!! Our overall time was 23 hours and 56 minutes and we are vey proud. We hope we might inspire you to take a challenge and Challenge your Positivity!

It only remains for us to say a big thank you to everyone for their support and encouragement and all your wonderful donations. We have successfully raise £2155 for the oncology ward at Queens - if you wish to add a donation there is still time - visit our justgiving page at www.justgiving/Claire-Lis. Thanks for reading!

Claire and Liz signing off xx