Olympic rowing champion Scott Brennan had a dream - a powerful and vivid vision of him winning gold again in London.

It has become a recurring dream for the junior doctor from Tasmania, one which has forced him to put his medical career on hold, and now he's busting his gut to ensure there's some deja vu in 2012.

The hard work continued on Friday when Brennan and long-time double sculls crew-mate David Crawshay started Rowing Australia's 2011 selection trials in impressive fashion with a comfortable victory.

The pair, who took out the event at the 2008 Beijing Games, combined for a massive 14-second win over the 2010 world championship crew of Nick Hudson and Jared Bidwell in Penrith.

Brennan and Crawshay have all but booked their seats in the double sculls boat for next year's London Games with the performance, on the back of their victory at last month's national titles in Adelaide.

But 12 months ago the chances of them reuniting to defend their title was clouded with Brennan, who hadn't picked up an oar since Beijing, seriously considering sticking with medicine fulltime.

That was until he had the dream.

"It was sealed for me when I had a dream about rowing in London and winning another gold medal and I woke up the morning and thought there's no way I'm not going to give it one last go," Brennan told AAP.

"I'd had a good think about it and realised I had a lot of time left in my life to work and enjoy this side of things but I've only got a limited opportunity to row in the Olympic Games.

"For me it was a sign and I seriously started getting back into it."

The 28-year-old worked as a resident at Royal Hobart Hospital as he took a complete break from the sport.

"In that time I literally didn't even think about rowing once, I was just happy doing the medicine," said Brennan, who switched to Canberra Hospital last year on ramping up his return to training.

"Funnily enough the very first time I had that dream was back in November 2009 and it's been something of a recurring one ever since.

"I thought it was really a sign to me it was something in my sub-conscious and in my personality that we have to give this one more shot.

"But I'm not surprised that I didn't dream about the hard training."

The hard training, and his hospital work of 14-18 hour shifts, saw him usually wake at 3.30am, get on the rowing machine for almost two hours then cycle to work for a 6am start.

The finish time could be as late as 11pm, but he knows it can't get any tougher in the rundown to London.

Jim Morton
AAP