If I had to make a judgement, I would say the London Marathon has probably been the most beautiful event I have ever covered as a sports writer (certain West Ham United victories exempted, although of course as a member of the Fourth Estate I have always maintained a strictly neutral viewpoint here).

The reason being its almost unique blending of talent - at the front the finest marathon runners in the world, in the middle, respectable club athletes, at the back, people who have, perhaps, never previously regarded themselves as being capable of managing such a feat of endurance.

(I've run it once. On the day I wasn't thrilled with my time. But upon reflection I felt deeply grateful to have been a part of something so magnificent.)

Runners at Tower Bridge during last year's Virgin London Marathon - a glorious event
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I say "almost", because there are a regular series of events which rival the London Marathon for its range of abilities, and these take place on the Thames, following the reverse of the annual Boat Race course - that is, from Mortlake to Putney.

We are talking here of the annual Head of the River races involving Pairs, Fours and Eights. They too are glorious.

This weekend another gathering of scullers and sweep rowers is on the calendar as the Tideway hosts the 60th Head of the River Fours race, sponsored by Fuller's Brewery.

More than 1,600 athletes from across the UK, Europe and further afield will compete in quadruple sculls, coxed and coxless fours.

At the business end of the race there will be talents such as Olympic single sculls bronze medallist Alan Campbell, racing for Tideway Scullers, who won last year and will thus lead off this Saturday (November 1). The men's elite coxed four event includes a Leander crew featuring Olympic champions Pete Reed and Alex Gregory, and a Molesey crew including two of the crew which won world title for Britain in the fours this year, George Nash and Mo Sbihi.

A pressing sub-plot on the day will involve the men's and women's Oxford and Cambridge University crews, who will be cutely deployed in a number of fours ahead of their big day of April 11, where the women will row on the traditional course for the first time.

And at the other end? Well, I guess it will be a case of the usual hyper-organised overachievers making their mark.
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Racing at the Head of the River Eights in 2002 on the Mortlake to Putney course
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For many years, my interaction with rowing was interviewing athletes such as Steve Redgrave, Matt Pinsent, James Cracknell, Tim Foster and Greg Searle. But for the last six years I have covered the sport at a less rarified level. And discovered it is "oarsome".

Some years ago I decided to do a little feature at a Fours Head and interview a novice crew from Vesta Rowing Club which was starting from the back of the grid, as it were.

This crew's performance was such that they had risen 20 or so places in the rankings on the day. And as I spoke to the four of them - three of whom had been rowing for less than six months - I began to understand one of the basic truths about rowers: they're all a bit scary.

Scary, that is, in as much as they are all disciplined, committed, organised people, willing to work very hard and endure much pain for their goals and ambitions. And that physical excellence - evidenced in bodies that correspond very often to ideals of perfection - is very often a concomitant of professional excellence.

The Vesta four were of a professional calibre to make you feel unworthy. They were bankers, they were completing MPhils, PhDs. By and large, it's what rowers do.

The upside of this is that rowing constantly reminds one of the eternal truth of the ancient Roman axiom: mens sana in corpore sano.

The downside is, as previously mentioned, an inescapable feeling of inferiority among those who are, say, simply charged with reporting the events.

Pete Reed, pictured (right) with his former pairs partner Andy Triggs Hodge, is a double Olympic champion who will be involved in rowing's answer to the London Marathon
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Oh, and did I mention valour?

I am recalling now the members of an Army eight who spoke matter-of-factly about returning for a second or third time to a mysterious place called Eric. Upon investigation, it transpired that the place was not Eric, but Herrick - that is, Operation Herrick, the generic codename for the British Army's operation in Afghanistan.

No other sport has more consistently sent me away with a sense of being unworthy. But so what? No other sport has offered more inspiring examples of application and effort.

A couple of examples.

At the 2012 Head of the River Eights Race, the Cambridge lightweight crew, taking part in the event a week before they were due to compete in their Boat Race at Henley, included Matthew White, who had arrived at the University - to read medicine at Peterhouse - having, in his own phrase, let obesity get the better of him.

Having started at University weighing 107 kilograms, after two years of novice college rowing, this young man from Wakefield weighed 72.5kg, right on the lightweight limit, having lost nearly five-and-a-half stones.

"The training I did for college rowing meant I lost the weight," he added." Rowing has given me a healthy lifestyle, and it has also been a lot of fun."

After last year's Veteran Fours Head I spoke to the Broxbourne D quad crew in the Tideway Scullers bar as they waited for the results.

The Broxbourne four, which included Andy Kelly, a double masters world champion, had been buoyed by recent wins in the National Championships and at Henley as they targeted Walton D4x, category winners for two years running, who had finished 30 seconds clear last time round.

But as he sat with his crew-mates in the bar - drinking tea, it should be said - Quintin McKellar voiced a doubt: "I think that if we had won it we would all be absolutely shagged - and I don't think we are."

Sadly for Broxbourne, McKellar's intuition proved correct. Walton had won again,18min 04.7sec to 18:30.1.

Anna Watkins, pictured in 2012, the year she and Katherine Grainger won Olympic gold, has been a regular entrant to the Head of River races ©Getty Images

Two years earlier, at the Head of River Fours, some of Britain's most vaunted Olympians had taken a relatively rare opportunity to represent their clubs in what is the closest thing rowing has to the London Marathon.

The women's elite heavyweight quad win was won by a Leander crew comprising Olympic silver medallists Debbie Flood and Fran Houghton, double world champion Anna Watkins - who would win Olympic gold in the pair with Katherine Grainger the following year - and Rachel Gamble-Flint.