What it's like to take on the Devizes-to-Westminster canoe race.

It’s 3am and a voice calls my name from the darkness. It’s quiet at first, muffled by a scarf wrapped tightly around my head to keep me warm because I’m still soaking wet and bitterly cold.

“Chris – you’re steering us towards the bank”.

I groan, and think to myself “I’ve just fallen asleep again – how does this keep happening? The quiet voice is right, I have just knocked the steering handle of our 2-man kayak towards the mud bank. And if I don’t do something about it, we’ll collide and potentially put a hole in the hull, meaning we’d be out of the race.

On second thoughts, maybe that’s not such a bad thing..