The Club's Results

This wasn't pretty, but by the end of Sunday I think we were getting the hang of 500m racing: take lots of strokes and push hard when the blades happen to be in the water, then hang on for dear life.

Sonya kept us calm on the start and the first few strokes were effective, taking half a length before 100m. I think some members of the crew were finding the "wind to 43, lengthen to 39, hammer it" race plan a bit out of their comfort zones, but the finish stayed clean and we kept moving away, breaking clear by around 250 to row home in some comfort.

Some slightly out of the ordinary tankards for everyone was a nice way to finish off the weekend, thanks to all for a fun weekend, and particularly Sonya, Thornton and Sarah Faull for subbing at varyingly short notice, and to Fletcher and my mum for hanging out/guarding all the electronics/debating rules with umpires! (Peter)

After beating our only opponents by several lengths in the previous day's final, we were expecting this to be fairly easy. As such, although we moved nicely in the first few strokes, we were both a little worried at leading by only a length at 250m.

In 500m races you don't have to hold on for long though, and our race plan of "stay on rate throughout, push a bit harder in the last 10 strokes" worked fine; even after visiting the opponents' lane a few more times than necessary, the finishline still came a stroke earlier than I expected.

It was nice to note that in the following Sen 2- race (which we would have been in if we'd picked up a point the previous day) we would have been very close to 2nd and a length down on the Cantabs pair who won to become Elite. This makes it feel slightly less bad that we're now ineligible for the event we failed to win on Saturday... maybe I should have regressed a point when I had the chance. (Peter)