The Club's Results

One day this pair will win something...
We didn't row particularly well, and were probably a bit put off by the wind, and a general lack of rowing over the previous months. The pair that beat us were chasing, and looked like they might overtake around the middle of the reach. We pushed away a bit, and when they crashed in to a swan and kayaker an epic finish looked like enough to win. I still think we did, but results disagree, by 4 seconds. It's a shame, but considering we were only beaten by that little due to their lack of steering, it seems fair, though I liked the pots from this much more than those from autumn head the week later. (John)

As John said, jumping into the pair a few days before the race having spent the summer facing the right (wrong) way with twice as many blades attached to my oar didn't make for particularly classy rowing, but it wasn't too bad. Looking back on the results, it looks a bit better than I thought at the time; I thought we might lose to Ros Bradbury the way we were rowing 2 days before, but we put 35s on her in the end.
The rowing was on the whole rather better than it had been last summer, with reasonable timing and the boat going relatively straight throughout the drive phase. However, it turned out that the Broxbourne pair chasing were fairly fast and took a lot out of us, looking like they might overtake on the reach. We got a co-ordinated push together and held them steady for a while, and then after the P&E it suddenly looked like we might be back in the race. The Broxbourne threw away most of the 20s they'd gained by crashing into a moored boat and a swan, and narrowly avoiding some kayakers, but they extracted themselves with just enough time to cross the line and beat us by a few seconds.

Hopefully we can find some race sometime in the future where we've both been training, aren't ill, and have been in the boat together for a while and finally get round to picking up a pot. (Peter)

Not our finest hour. The plan of not drinking the night before went awry when I got skanked into going to BA dinner at the last minute, but at least I passed on the port. So we weren't quite at our physical "peak".

The first 500 was pretty good. Things started to go wrong when the Queens double ahead repeatedly crashed, and Barry started trying to overtake them by shouting really really loudly. So we had to take some bad lines, and Barry's lungs got burned out. Eventually we did overtake, but the unfortunate irony was they were actually faster than us when they weren't attached to the bank. So they overtook us back, which made us very angry cats. It was a real slog up the reach and beyond.

On the positive side, we lost by about the margin I thought we deserved to (30 seconds), and we've improved around the front a lot. Also, we did win the S4 pots and chuckled accordingly at the Burrells party. (Tom C)

Excellent lines from Pedro, lots of solid spacking, some tidy stretches, and even some powerful strokes were promising signs; the lady's single gaining on us down Plough Reach wasn't. Fortunately our crew pasta weight-gain program paid off as we cruised through the headwind down the Reach, leaving leaner crews for dead. Passing Peter's Posts we bee-lined to the finish, but were twice foiled by the bendy bank. oops (Jacob)

Well hardly an impressive result. By the gut the rhythm started to feel pretty good, but then we failed to take Grassy altogether. There was no boat damage but it took what felt like an age to get off the bank again. This disrupted us quite a lot and the rowing down Plough Reach was rubbish. Ditton was a stunning corner, James judging it to perfection with the bank only inches from his blade. Our rating wind after Ditton had the desired effect, but after about a minute it started to sag a little. We continued this mediocre rowing up to Peter's Posts which for some reason I thought was the finish and so stopped rowing. We were then told by a marshall that the finish was infact Top Finish, which we then wove our way towards in spactacular fashion. In hindsight its probably a good thing that we incorrectly stopped rowing when we did as we were heading towards the bank.

Our bank party clocked us at about 11:20 to Peter's Posts, which means we spent approx 1:16 sitting about and then crawling towards Top Finish. Not Good. (Phil)

Most importantly we secured the pots. My nasty cold kept the rate down, hence the fairly mediocre time. But we got good boat speed for our work and we didn't hit anything, so we can smile. And we did. (Tom C)

Ailanore and I cruised to victory (as the only entrants) in the Women's 2- event. Having allowed ourselves but one outing in preparation for this event, for which we made sure to row with one mens and one womens blade for that extra degree of difficulty, we decided on race day to swap the crew order and have Ailanore steering/me stroking since the power difference between the two of us was annoyingly exaggerated by my being at bow. However, having made it up to the start line (pretty much on time as well, I have you know) by the Motorway bridge, Ailanore announced that her first steering experience had been unimpressive and demanded to be swapped back into the stroke seat. We accomplished this feat seconds before having to row up to the start to the amusement of the Robs marshalls who, alongside all those little buggers from the Leys, had long lost all due respect for our superior pairing expertise. Since our race number was now no longer visible to starters, we were instructed to shout it out while crossing the start line which we proceeded to advance to (or rather, to which we proceeded to advance). This, and the fact that we had only perfected a standing start led to Ailanore catching her first ever overhead crab while I was busy turning to shout 'Wind one - 67'. My next memory is that of my knees colliding with Ailanore's shoulders... Since we hadn't actually made it across the start line, and had generally become an audience effective problem child, we were allowed to back it down and could finally demonstrate our unique standing start. The rest is already legend. A couple of Princess Bride quotes (e.g. 'Try ruling the world sometimes'/ 'Please consider me over suicide') and the odd Ailie-only strokeside corner later we veered across the finish line like John Earl out of the Biennial Dinner. Cheers, applause and 'You finished it!... That's all that counts!' from the bank.

We had made our mark on rowing history... and cycled off to run the 1500 in cuppers.

Many thanks to Ciaran and Matt for self-sacrificing bankpartying. (Pia)

with a small mishap! Well done, Tom. Still beat the Catz pair by 9 seconds 

fastest of our training pairs, beating the Catz pair but being thrashed by Wolfson