All race reports for Alexa Pohl
Event: Emma Sprints 2012 - Division 1
Posted as: Alexa
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Event: Lent Bumps 2013 - Thursday
Posted as: Quick Hands Early Hands
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Looking forward to tomorrow and Saturday, as I still have some unfinished business with Ditton Corner. Even having bumped Emma today, I'm still hungry for that elusive perfect race...
Event: Lent Bumps 2013 - Saturday
Posted as: Alexa
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Coming into Saturday, everyone had agreed that today was going to be a "death-or-glory" race to the railings. We were going to take the corners technically, build speed on the straights, make it to Ditton in one piece, and then batten down the hatches and hold on for dear life. We'd spent weeks working on our catches, watching "Inches", and learning to move as one crew. Today was our day to push our boundaries and see just how fast we could make the boat move. I can't say it better than Steve Prefontaine and so I'm going to paraphrase him instead (note: it is always appropriate to invoke Pre): The only good race pace is a suicide pace, and today looked like a good day to die.
Spirits were high on the paddle down to the station. We were greeted by a very welcome (and surely illegal) bank party, and settled in to wait. Iain's watch did its thing, the minute gun fired, and we pushed off.
Our start felt quick and clean. Before I knew it, Yining had called to lengthen, and we were rounding first post corner. Sophia and Laura (and Yining, of course!) saw us through Grassy without trouble. I saw the first set of barges, and I knew it was time for the (already all-too-familiar) Plough Reach burn.
Ditton. Before bumps, I thought Ditton corner was my friend - the inevitable carnage zone during morning outings that guaranteed a few moments of rest during the middle of whatever piece we were doing. To any strokeside ex-novices at 2 reading this race report: Ditton Corner is not your friend. Ditton comes up just when your body is beginning to put up a serious fight and the lactate is starting to burn. Ditton is a harsh and unforgiving master that requires decent bladework and early catches. Ditton is a place where minds break, and crews get bumped.
Twenty incredibly tense and stressful strokes later, we were straight. Unfortunately, not five (or so) strokes later, so were (was? I'm so confused about whether other crews are singular or plural) Jesus. The race had changed.
We pushed hard off of Jesus as they got their second whistle. The Long Reach had never seemed so long before. I told myself the bump was imminent, and I was ready to commit when Yining called for our unsustainable minute. Things were less than ideal, but we weren't going down without a fight.
The video seems to suggest we did a reasonable job of holding them off until the Railway Bridge. Yining's bridge call finally came, and I knew the race was going to be won or lost by Morley's Holt. An "everything you've got" call came as we steered for the final bend. I looked at the girls in the Jesus boat one last time - the Jesus girls, with their carefully matched scrunchies.
I don't like losing to girls who wear scrunchies.
Morley's Holt. Gurns all round. Pain. Evasive coxing. More pain. Noise from the bank. So much pain. I didn't realize Jesus were going for the kill, but I knew this was it. Yining called for a bumps push. We took a stroke. Yining's hand stayed down. We took another stroke. Yining's hand was still down. Again we took a stroke, and the hand stayed down. I knew we could hold them until the line, and stroke by stroke we did.
Saturday's race was the kind of race that tells you that things you didn't think were possible, are possible. I'm sure no other club on the river thinks we'll hold the headship in a year's time. They could be right. But I believe they're wrong. Saturday's race was the spark we needed to get us back where we belong.
Event: Peterborough Sprint Regatta 2013 - Women's Novice 4+
Posted as: Alexa
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We eventually recovered, and caught '99s and Auriol Kensington. We were fortunately first over the line shortly thereafter, enabling us to skip straight to the final.
All in all, not a bad row, but perhaps another piece of evidence that perhaps IV+ scratch crews typically should try to have an outing before racing to prevent comedy rowing.
Event: Peterborough Sprint Regatta 2013 - Women's Novice 4+
Posted as: Alexa
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A nice, calm, 500m later, with a few pushes and some nice grinding down of elderly women, we were quite pleasantly surprised that we could claim some pots, if only bow pair managed to produce some passport-sized photos.
Despite having earlier run into town for the now traditional mid-regatta coffee break*, Alex and I had neglected to consider that in the unlikely event that we were to win, locating a passport photo machine prior to 5pm on a Sunday evening might be a good idea.
Immediately after the race, we hopped out of the boat, leaving the boys to deal with derigging while we chased down some photographs. After a dead end at ASDA and some quick thinking, we found ourselves at the Peterborough Railway Station (which has been renovated quite nicely since the last time I visited, I might add) imposing ourselves on the very lovely staff. Fortunately for us, we found a passport photo machine and returned to the regatta site just in time to collect pots and points!
*Poor Alex also was rear-ended during this ill-fated coffee trip. She's a trooper.
Event: Cambridge Winter Head 2013 - Student Senior VIIIs
Posted as: Alexa
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We pushed off from the boathouse in quite a rush, as several other FaT crews were waiting to get their boats out. We then sat in a queue for the next hour or so, and made friends with an Emma IV+. The queue provided lots of entertaining carnage coming back upstream. We had a lovely paddle from the P&E up the reach. We did a lovely wind along Plough Reach, and settled into some paddling with pauses as we were rapidly encroaching on the crews in front of us. Marshaling took forever, but it provided us with the opportunity to embarrass Simon (Hi Simon!) multiple times. Also, I want some of the Imperial Medicine BC leggings. They're awesome.
Anyhow, the race.
We had a reasonable wind into the motorway bridge and strode onto a reasonable 31. After a quite rapid start, we grew a bit complacent into first post corner, and settled a bit more than we should have for a 2K-ish race. We'll have to find more commitment for Fairbairns and Lents - no one was quite ready to go unsustainable, and, as Thomas pointed out, we need to get there. However, we did pick things up a bit once Yining informed us that Emma was pulling away from us on Plough Reach. We had a nice push into Ditton, cornered and pushed again on the reach. I thought we rowed particularly well on the Reach today, but perhaps that's because there wasn't much of a headwind - in any case, the Reach didn't feel horrific, and though the pain was setting in, bodies and blades stayed fairly accurate. A push off the railway bridge brought a few pips more of rate into the finish.
All in all, a strong, confidence-building race that demonstrated that we still have a bit more to give.
Event: Novice Fairbairn Cup 2013 - 2nd division
Posted as: Alexa
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Beautifully raced, ladies. Let's go get some blades in Lents
Event: Fairbairn Cup 2013 - Senior VIIIs
Posted as: Alexa
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"A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself to an exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more." - Steve Prefontaine
Ultimately, if we rowed yesterday to see who was fastest, we would have given up after the (my) horrific, boat-stopping crab, and we would have sat at a comfortable rate 30, probably in our puddles, putting in the minimum to get us over the line. Somewhere between Uni IVs and yesterday, we found some guts, decided we liked pushing hard, and stopped compromising. Sadly, this crew won't be remembered on the walls of the boathouse, but I am going to remember the hell out of this crew, this race, and this term.
Julia has given a pretty accurate description of the race, but I'll add what I can remember:
We wound incredibly high off the start, settling to 36(!) and then again to something more efficient. Just after the second settle call, I found myself losing a fight with my blade. I've replayed that moment so many times in the past 18 hours, trying to figure out what went wrong - I think I couldn't square and took a feathered catch. I'm so sorry - I plan on taking an imperial fuckton of strokes before Lents in whatever sweep boat I can find with whoever I can find until "tap down, feather, square" is so engrained in my brain that I could be having a seizure and still have perfect bladework.
Right. Now that I've gotten that off my chest....
We quickly recovered and immediately went looking for some boat speed or guts or rage or whatever else we could find. Our 8 man strong bank-party certainly helped with that - it's incredibly easy to push when there's just a general roar of encouragement coming from the bank. I wish I could say that I could hear more from the bank, but it's all just a blur of noise and Julia's back and Yining's voice in my memory. After our restart, the stretch between Victoria Road Bridge and Chesterton flew by. Taking Jon's advice about killing it at Chesterton to heart, we started turning up the heat. The reemergence of our massive bank party at the P&E probably gave us another surge of power. We hit the reach and continued to gun it. The second half of the reach felt a little scrappy (where by a little scrappy I mean that I had completely forgotten how to row).
After Ditton Corner, we hit the plough, and Yining asked us for 2% more. I honestly don't know how it happened, or where we found the inches, but our Plough Reach burn gave me my favourite moment of the race - boat speed surged again, and I heard someone from the bank yell "You're out of your puddles!", lifting my spirits. Being out of our puddles meant that we were still rowing well, even if every muscle in my body was screaming with pain. After that, we were through the corners and on our way home. The last 200 meters or so was an interesting effort - but it didn't matter, we had blown up because we pushed like hell for the previous 4.1 km.
While yesterday's result isn't the one we wanted - and we're heartbroken, make no mistake - it doesn't erase the progress we've made this term, the fitness we've gained, the boat speed we've found, or the family we've formed. Aside from a slightly disappointing outcome, this Fairbairns and this term has given me some new favourite rowing memories:
(in no particular order)
- Finally beating Downing in Uni IVs. Glorious. Then, watching LMBC cross the finish line before us in the final, and internally swearing up and down that it would never happen again.
- Going from hating IVs outings and thinking they were useless to hating IVs outings because it turns out that we can actually sit a IV and get some good pieces in - it's just hard and it takes a lot of work.
- Our long over-the-lock outings where we discovered that the River Cam has really nice stretches where it looks like an actual river.
- That awful circuits session where we listened to the Great Cambridge Bake-Off on Cam FM while struggling through Daisy's killer core set.
- Waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the results of Winter Head at the Fort St George,and then hearing we'd won and going on an adventure with Daisy and Julia to pick up our hip flasks from Winter Head
- Neil walking into the BA Rooms covered in mud, blood, and tree.
- Chris's "Don't be the first to pull a weak stroke" speech. It doesn't get any simpler than that.
- Kate Bruce-Lockheart's confession that she chose Trinity because she'd heard we had a strong women's rowing squad.
- Jon Glass vs. Daisy Gomersall in a lyrical showdown for the ages
- Our 8 man bank party for Fairbairns - Nina was right when she suggested that we should each just have our own a boy for the race.
- Embarrassing Simon Wright (and Julia?) every time we saw Catz M1 during an outing.
- Having a crew pasta where more and more coaches and bankparties and supporters kept turning up, and having the meal turn into a First and Third family reunion.
- Thomas's endless supply of neon yellow cycling kit and cheerfulness.
- Nina's Miles Davis erg soundtrack
- Coming back from a Gents outing, and knowing that our boat was rowing better than the Gents, and having Fordy agree.
- "Yining, I can't hear you!" - Danielle, every outing. We'll get you a hearing aid.
- Our new friend, the speed coach, telling us when we weren't pushing and a very belligerent Michael Thornton ("no, really, PUSH, you're not PUSHING YET, you were doing 2:15 two days ago in the FOUR") demanding more
and, my favourite:
- Our first VIII outing after two consecutive weeks of IVs, when we realized that we could make Valkyrie fly. It was nothing less than magic.
Thank you to everyone who has helped us to come this far - Fordy, Thomas, Thornton, Neil, Jon, Emma Mi, Charlie, Jonathan, Chris, Roisin, Sophia, Rachel, Emma Smith, and anyone else I've forgotten. With this crew, and the support of the club behind us, I believe we have even better moments and memories ahead of us this Lents.
Event: Cambridge Autumn Regatta 2014 - CRA IM3? Mixed Double
Posted as: Alexa
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