The Club's Results

Obviously, this was not ideal. I could sit here and make excuses (we were overtaken on Ditton by a very quick CUWBC crew and this forced us wide/panicked us, not our fastest crew, only one outing etc. etc.) but that would be missing the point. We got beaten very soundly by a Downing VIII, which start 2nd in the Lents. If we want to retain the headship, or even perform similarly to last year in Fairbairn's we are going to have to row with more length, more composure, more control, and a metric shedload more pressure.

On the plus side, we have a large amount of time and hopefully this will give the girls and I the motivation required. (Swords)

I happened to race with our girls after Tom called me yesterday evening and was very nervous my fitness would let me and the whole crew down. The row up to the start was I think good for what I thought was essentially a scratch crew rowing mostly in fours the last few weeks. On the start line, I was suddenly aware of the fact I agreed to race 2.7k with almost no training and having rowed sweep twice since Mays. Nervous. We hit rate 30 actually easily and despite Emma's lenghten calls we held it there. Felt good and stayed OK till Ditton. On the Reach we had a lot of grunty pushes (literally, grunty) and came pretty close to the City boat ahead of us, which was the only motivation I had not to give up. We kept it up quite controlled till the end the Reach when we just went flat out for the finish, which of course felt like miles away and technically less polished.
I am very very glad I subbed in for this race and I had loads of fun. We all did :) (Sonya)

Excellent job girls :-)!!! (Ulrike)

Well done! From all the way across the Atlantic :) (Julijana)

Only 13 seconds behind CUW!! (Alex)

Lost to Christ's and Pembroke. We can do better.

On the bright side, it was a scratch crew and we have 5 months 'til Lents.

Harriet not Dami. (Dami)