His biceps raged with a burn he hadn’t felt before, sweat seeping from the seam of his sports cap, his rep speed unlike anything he’d ever displayed. Could this be it? could he finally prove them all wrong? ‘Why not me? 3 years of hard training, its my time!’ These thoughts raced through his mind repeatedly, timed with the rhythmic thumping of his heartbeat.

Deyton Jill was a small, sliver of a man, barely a man as he had just turned 18 that summer. His parents were the athletic type, Dad played football, golf, squash and enjoyed a bit of swimming, his step mum ran, park runs, 10ks, even taking part in marathons if she felt like it. The family held memberships at the local gym, sports club and the nearby sailing club at the lake. As a child Deyton hated competition, taking solace in the tranquility of the sailing clubs fishing trips, but ‘fishing isn’t a real sport’ his parents would claim, so, at 15, Deyton decided to take up rowing, at least he was still in a boat.

As he repeated his chant to himself the sound of adrenaline pumping through his body threatend to disrupt his rhythmic flow. Deyton thought about the last 3 years, how he would train late into the night because he ‘couldn’t compete without building mass’, how the posh arseholes with lucky genes, who seemed to effortlessly beat him in every competition, would taunt him and his slight appearance daily. ‘Why. Not. Me? Its. My. Time!’ The finish line seemed so close, and yet a million, nautical, miles away. There wasn’t anyone in front of him, at a glance there wasn’t anyone either side of him. He darent look behind him, he can’t break focus now. Deyton chants his mantra a few more times, it’s within grabbing distance, they won’t catch him now surely.