Race Reports by User

Find Rower Enter/edit crews

All race reports for Oscar Allen

Event: Cambridge Winter Head 2022 - Student Lower VIIIs
Posted as: Oscar Allen
Event Link

Having originally planned to race twice, this did not happen due to Mihailo being sick just 4 hours before our atbh time. Whether this was due to illness or out of fear of Alex's splashing we do not know. Miraculously the rest of the crew all arrived by 7am, but were unable to find an awake sub in time.

For the second race we managed to get Sam Kittle as a sub and decided that, amongst our unfit and technically mediocre crew, a former Fairbairns winner would be best put in 3 seat. We started the race fairly well and closed in on RUMSBC ahead of us. However once we got to around a length behind, their cox decided to take up the entire river while leaving Grassy. Bomber shouted at them as Steph had no room to overtake, leaving us stuck in their dirty water. After the confusion we lost a bit of power before taking the rate and speed up in the last few hundred metres.

We finished in 9:43.1 which was the 6th fastest time out of the M2 boats. Overall, while we feel like there is still a lot of room for improvement, we are relatively happy with the result and can tell that we've improved since Autumn Head.

Event: Head of the River Race 2023 - Academic
Posted as: Oscar Allen
Event Link

After the outbreak of "Tobyvirus" left the majority of M1 bedridden, we were forced to scratch from HoRR. I had been very excited to race tideway, with my only previous off Cam race being Bedford Head earlier this term, and was hoping that somehow I'd get a chance to still row it. However, just as I was beginning to like the idea of a Friday night without a drinking ban, Luke began feeling unwell. As the only healthy strokesider in M1 I was given the opportunity to sub. With HoRR being much longer than Bedford Head or the Bumps course and thanks in great part to our underwhelming performance in Bumps, I have raced further with M2 than M1 this term.

Igor, after having been initially promoted to M1 for HoRR due to Krisztian's geography school trip, was so desperate to find a way to race on Tideway that he went to London with us, hopeful that a bowsider would injure himself on the way there so that he could sub in. Unfortunately for Igor the journey was uneventful and we arrived comfortably in time for push off from Furnival.

Overall the time from push off to starting the race was about 130 minutes - most of which was spent taking strokes in the queue to combat the strong stream. During this time our bow got close to a QMUL boat, whose stroke man accidentally knocked off our race number. Then, in a display of both mental and physical ineptitude, their cox grabbed the number and attempted to throw it to us - only for it to land nowhere near us and sink into the Thames.

We set off well and soon settled into a good rhythm at around 32 spm. The rowing felt far more together than during the paddle on the day before. There were a couple of minor crabs including one from me but they didn't upset the rhythm of the boat very badly. In the last kilometre we started winding it up which initially went well however, at a final up 2 call around 20 strokes from the finish, we seemed to all have different ideas of what up 2 meant leading to a few very messy strokes near the end. During the race we overtook no crews and were a way off from those chasing us until Corpus M1 kept going after the finish, not winding it down until they were close to us.

We were quite happy with our time of 20:08 at 1:30 average splits, making it FaT M2's fastest since 2010. Although this of course has to be taken with a pinch of salt thanks to the extremely strong stream on the day.

Event: Marathon Erg 2023 - Time only
Posted as: Oscar Allen
Event Link

Last time I made it 38k before my glutes stopped working. This time I made it half way down Whewell's I staircase before spraining my ankle. I wonder if I'll even make it to Cambridge for my next attempt.

Event: Lent Bumps 2025 - Tuesday
Posted as: Oscar Allen
Event Link

Peterhouse gave chase,

Jesus caught Queens with much haste,

Over we did race.