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The Club's Results

Lent Bumps 2016

2nd men's VIII

Coxed by: Lydia Bass

Tuesday
Bumped by Corpus
This was a pretty good race. We came flying off the start feeling smooth and confident. We strode with slightly less precision than we have in recent outings, but did so to a stable 38. We strode again down and continued rowing notably well, holding Corpus M1 chasing us. Darwin M1 smashed Downing M2 ahead of us and Corpus M1 began to gain. Lydia took some beautiful corners and we remained strong around Grassy coming up to Ditton, but we couldn't hold Corpus off. They were rowing well, and when they had their first whistle they made a massive drive and caught us. Unfortunately, the Corpus cox thought it fit not to stop rowing and managed to hit our cox at speed. How considerate. I sense a fine coming their way. A good row overall. We lost some steam and we need to push harder on Thursday; let's see if we can catch Corpus. Looking forward to seeing the GoPro footage. (Forbes)
Fortunately the kit had arrived this morning despite my expectations of a further 2 week wait, this afforded me the opportunity to dress entirely in tessellating lions so I rowed down to the start looked as ridiculous as I could (Barney pointed out that I need little help in this regard however). Sadly the rest of my crew (plus other crews, our boatman and various bystanders) disapproved of my fashion sense and decided to dress in less hideous attire. The row down was decent with some nice paddling and after a fairly fast start at the Plough we rowed onto station and began the tense wait until the start gun. Unfortunately the constitution and a zealous KSS prevented me from racing in lions so I was forced to change into the more traditional blue and gold, we then ate lots of jelly babies (thanks Millie!). By the one minute gun we were all ready to go and the final countdown began.

A combination of a good push-off, a fast start and one of the most obscure lines that I've ever seen from the pursuing Corpus M1 put us a bit outside station which we held into first post corner and down the gut. Around grassy and onto plough reach they began to move on us and an unmatched push by them bought the distance to about half a length as we approached ditton. Into ditton they managed to get their bows on the inside and as we slowed to turn bought the margin down to a canvas with the bump happening a few strokes later. They then failed to hold it up. Muppets.

Overall a good race despite the result. A few things we can take from the day are:

- Have a big push early to match pursuing crews.
- Square up!
- Wear more tessellating lions.
(MC Row(e))
We had a smooth start, though the stride was less well coordinated than when practising. I reckon we kept Corpus M1 roughly on station until we needed to manoeuvre around crews that had bumped out ahead (if I remember correctly this was just after First Post Corner), after which we had lost some distance but were again matching speed.
However, after Grassy our speed had come down and Corpus gained on us throughout Plough Reach. Then we lost a bit more speed around Ditton and Corpus had a big push. We responded when they got very close but too little too late, and we got bumped around Ditton.

We have certainly shown that we have plenty of speed, and we did a very good job of remaining composed and together under pressure. However, we should be able to get more out of ourselves in terms of pushes into and out of corners and pushing up the speed at an earlier stage if we lose distance to the crew behind, in order to avoid giving them a chance.
(Chris E.)

This crew has improved enormously since the beginning of term. After the shambles that was Winter Head to Head, we knew that we had a long way to go to be competitive in bumps. Apart from a few short plateaux that occurred due to lack of focus in morning outings and blistering headwinds, we improved at a rate that I have never seena crew improve at before, on and off the water. We were showing signs of proper togethernessa few weeks before bumps during paddling, but the lack of strong finishes that has plagued our training through most of this term led Jon Glass to say that we rowed like a Vets Crew...

Hmm, time for high rate pieces. Luckily, Julia came at exactly the right moment for this, and put us through two days of significant pain doing 500 m pieces. Things were looking promising, except for a sag in pressure after a minute into the piece (when our legs actually started to hurt, that is). Robinson Head was to be our last high rate full-course piece before bumps. Neil Talbott, who was bankpartying us for this race, urged us to sit up and look up, and, lo and behold, the balance of the boat was there and we had a great race, finishing second to a fast LMBC II crew.

With very little time left until bumps, we focussed on high rate pieces, with the low points for me being the Tom Rose - style 6x500 and the 10x (17 on - 5 off) Fartlek on the Friday morning before bumps. Another Talbott outing focussed on getting blades square early, and with a few days to go, I was feeling better about our chances, though still more uncertain that I had ever been about what our race speed would actually be.

From results earlier in the term, I was convinced that Downing M2 were going to be absolutely terrible and would be bumped very early on by Darwin M1 ahead of us, and glimpses of their starts during our last pre-bumps outing seemed to suggest that I was right. M1's report of their sparring with Darwin seemed to indicate that Darwin weren't as rapid as last year, meaning that we might have a chance at bumping them on the first day - something that I had discarded more or less at the beginning of term, so I psyched myself up for a potential bump. Behind, we had absolutely no idea how fast Corpus were, as we had only seen them out on the river once before, but I told the crew not to be complacent and expect an extremely painful row-over at best (though obviously we would go hard for the bump off the start).

I for one was really nervous about this race, more so than for any of my previous bumps races, as I had no clue how fast we were and how we would perform on race day. Our paddle down to marshalling was the best low-rate rowing that we'd done so far this term, with commitment to long pressed-out strokes that made me quite happy indeed, and I was starting to lose some of the nerves that I had been feeling since waking up & going to Stomp. The first burst (to 24) on the reach was good, the second (to 28) less so, but still showed some of the togetherness of the row-down to marshalling. Our practise start was OK, but I think that nerves were creeping back into the boat at this stage. We paddled it down rather poorly to station down First Post Reach, and I was starting to be nervous again. We lacked a bit of focus between the 4 minute gun and the 1 minute gun, and I think that it affected our start a little.

We went off ridiculously high off the start, winding to a spacky 43 and striding for the first time to a OKish 38, which we had to stride down from to our race pace at 35. We were outside station on Corpus and at station on Darwin just before First Post corner, but lost a little power and send coming into the corner and didn't pick it up coming into the Gut, where the wash surprised me as usual. Apparently Downing II got bumped by Darwin at this point, and some of the crew noticed this and realised that we had a long row-over ahead, and the pressure sagged a little more.

Corpus closed to 1 1/4 lengths coming into Grassy, and got their first whistle coming out of Grassy, which we didn't push into properly either. Corpus got a sniff at the bump here, and started really moving. We responded, but possibly a little too late. We held them at 3/4 length down Plough reach, during which time Queens II behind had one whistle on Corpus. The pressure sagged again coming into Ditton, and an unsat corner and a big push from Corpus lost us most of the remaining distance. Lydia conceded about 10 strokes out of the corner, but unfortunately they failed miserably to hold it up for another 10-15 strokes, resulting in a rigger hitting her back and a blade hitting her head hard. I'm glad that they got fined for that!

We were obviously annoyed at getting bumped, but the row showed patches of very good commitment and we never resorted to a "shit we're about to get bumped, let's just give in" mentality. We had a good start and knew that to do better on Thursday, we had to push hard into and out of the corners and not lose vital ground to a fast Queens' crew behind.

(Neil I.)
Thursday
Rowed over
YEAH M2!!!!! That was pretty harrowing listening for me as I had a slow heart attack and gave up all pretense of working, but what an epic row! Massive, massive, MASSIVE props for not only taking a rerow in your stride, not only resetting and attacking the race, but for walking away from overlap...twice! Super proud, have an awesome race tomorrow! (Julia A.)
Stressful to watch. Not sure how it would have been inside the boat... there were echoes of the Thursday of M1 Mays 2014, where something similar happened.

After a bit of carnage in the Gut the first time around, M2 had to spin and row back to head station for the rerow - once they'd dislodged their bows from Corpus's stern. For the second time round, the start was a fair bit smoother, but Queens' slowly moved up on M2, till they were a canvas off at the railings, and overlap not long after. M2 took a big push, and got a couple of feet clear water. Around the railway bridge, another move by Queens' gave them overlap once again, and I was convinced that the bump was going to come soon.

Queens' didn't move any more, though, and the overlap fluctuated between 3 feet and 6 inches, till around Morley's Holt where we regained clear water. We pushed this out to a couple of metres at the P+E, where it became clear that Queens' had either given up, forgotten where top finish was or forgotten how to row.


(Barney)
Based on having seen how Queens M2 moved on the first day, we expected them to gain on us off the start, but anticipated that we would be able to hold them off over the length of the course.

The starting gun went off about 5 seconds before we were expecting it but we reacted well and had a reasonable start. Queens did indeed gain on us though it was a bit more gradual than expected, and as we went into Grassy they were visibly inside station though not worryingly close.

Meanwhile, ahead of us, Corpus M1 and Downing M2 had bumped out and did a very effective job of completely blocking the river. We held it up but still ended up entangled with one of them. The umpires thought that Queens were likely to bump us, and therefore arranged a rerow with just the two of us, from Head Station to Top Finish. "If you get that far," they said.

With some consternation we focused in on the new race. Our start was good and again Queens did not immediately take much out of us. For the first part of the course, they gained slowly on us but we stayed focused and rowed our own race as we had confidence that they were sprinting harder than they could sustain. We did a much better job of pushing into and out of corners to maintain the boat speed, but Queens continued to move on us. If I remember correctly, they got their first - rather dubious - whistles at some point around Grassy, and by the time we got onto the Reach they were scarily close.

However, we kept rowing well together and having committed pushes. Queens got overlap on us not far into the Reach but we did not let go. Queens steered for the bump through the Railway Bridge but missed and this helped to maintain the lateral distance between us. From then on we knew the finish was within reach and we gave it everything with a final push.

This was rewarded by Queens falling back, so we pushed out a large gap behind and then had a relaxed row for the last section of the course after Queens started rowing in sixes. (I'm not sure whether they just gave up, had a problem or had forgotten that we were racing until Top Finish.)

It is in this sort of race that we really prove what we can do as a crew, and I am proud to have been part of it.

Tomorrow we should be able to put the "Down" into Downing M2 without too much trouble - but we do need to be patient about it, avoid complacency and make sure we stay ahead of what will undoubtedly be a very angry Queens M2 crew, as we know we can.
(Chris E.)
Mounted Corpus a bit in the first attempt to get round the course today and then found ourselves back on head station listening to the minute cannon go and the umpire saying, "you're going to top finish, if you make it that far." Very glad we had a chance to prove him wrong.

Decent start sequence with our first proper stride of the week, settling on to a long 34, and roughly held Queens a bit inside station around first post, through the gut and into grassy. They moved up a bit along plough reach and got their first whistle on the exit of ditton.

Our first half of the reach wasn't particularly solid but as they kept moving and got 2 whistles, we took it up two with a really solid push. 
Queens just kept coming, and coming, and coming and everything between halfway down the reach and the P&E is pretty blurry but I remember a lot of overlap and a heck of a lot of response to pushes from the boys. We broke them and walked away around Morley's Holt. My heart has never beaten so fast sitting still.

Couldn't be more proud of the work today. Incredibly gutsy, digging deep and not letting them get into our heads. Here's to tomorrow.
(Lydia Bass)
boom
crash
spin
spin
boom
ouch
ouch
ouch
YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH
(Ben)

Ben's race report pretty much sums it up, but I'll try and write about what I remember from my second most painful rowing experince to date (the most painful being the 2k in January that I paced at 1500 m pace and then blew up in).

After Tuesday's race, knew that Thursday's race was going to be very tough, as Queens' II were inside station on Corpus when Corpus bumped us. I tried to reassure the ex-novices in the crew by saying that we were probably going to row-over, but that it was going to be really painful. I thought that unless we pulled a miracle out of a bag, we were probably going to be bumped at the beginning of the reach again, but I kept my dark thoughts to myself. I felt better waking up on the morning of the race, then worse as I sat through a supervision slowly feeling my energy decrease to scarily low levels, then sprinted to hall, where for the first time in my time at Trinity I didn't finish my meal as I worried that I might throw it up otherwise during the race.

Back in my room for 20 mins, I decided that the best use of my time would be to watch the Abingdon vs. Belmont Hill Henley QF 2009 race, which showed a crew 1 length down coming through a seemingly faster opposition in the last 150 m, with crazy cox Rory Copus shouting some classic motivational lines. I got really pumped and walked to the boathouse feeling much better, and agreed with Lydia that the call "They've gone too hard, NOW WE FUCKING PUNISH THEM" should be given as soon as we moved away from Queens', whenever that might be.

Our paddle down was poor due to nerves, but at least we got all of the spacking out of the way before the start. We were a little more focussed before the cannon, and it translated into a cleaner and less frantic start sequence. We held station on Corpus, but as expected Queens' moved up on us, gaining their first whistle justbefore First Post corner. Corpus bumped Downing II at that point and failed to clear properly due to their bows being jammed into the outside of the corner, which in turn led to us holding it up and mounting their stern. Queens also held it up and parked next to us. Some of the most intense carnage that I've seen in bumps so far. All of the boats behind had bumped out apart from Sidney Sussex who rowed past the carnage and continued on for their row-over. The umpires, seeing that Queen's had moved on us, gave them the option of a re-row, which they took. We had to spin and go to Head Station and start all over again. The minute gun occurred quite quickly, and very soon racing was underway again.

We had a better start due to the clean water and really powered away around the corners. Queens' got a 'bullshit' whistle around Grassy, which turned to a proper whistle coming into Ditton as they started to make their move. Our pushes in and out of corners were much improved from yesterday, and so we didn't lose ground around them (Lydia's lines were as tight as usual, of course!).

Coming into the Reach, I thought that we would probably hold them off as we had had a good start to the race, and if they had a "fly and die" race plan as I thought that they did yesterday, they were probably not going to move any further. I got tunnel vision at this point, so I don't remember exactly what else happened, but I remember small sections clearly. At the kink, we had a few bad strokes, and they closed from just outside 1/2 a length to a few feet of clear water. This was reduced to no clear water, then overlap about 8 strokes before the railway bridge. A the point at which Lydia called "five strokes to the railway bridge" (probably the only call that I remember from that entire section), I thought that we'd made it this far, so why not just make it the last 100 m of a race just there.

We held them, then they took a poor corner under the railway bridge, and opened it up toalmost no overlap, but a second big push from them took them to 2 metres of overlap again, which they held for the next 30 s. I can vaguely remember a roar from the cheering women's crews parked on the bank, but at that point all I was thinking of was: "my legs are no longer responding; please don't black out; why are we still racing". We somehow held it together better than Queens', and after more than a minute of overlap, they started to blow and forget how to row, and we eased it out of overlap, and then to 1/2 a length at Peter's posts. I then remember seeing them about 6 lengths behind (they had stopped rowing), but all that I could think of was "I need to get past that line", so when Lydia called us to wind down I freaked out massively and shouted, incoherently "Lydia, we're not yet at the end", and then when we had paddled to Top Finish, I pointed at the finishing post and screamed "that's the finish line", crazily, maniacally, desperately.

And then it hit us - we had rowed over, walked away from the closest race of Lent Bumps 2016 so far, and adrenaline took over. I forgot to be exhausted, I just had the most enormous surge of excitement, and shouted myself hoarse: "YEEEEEEES, YEEEEEEES, YEEEEEES" resounded under Chesterton Footbrdge, and I grinned all the way back from my most exciting bumps race so far. Crew Nandos was very cheeky, and we now have a shot at having a very successful bumps week.

What we need to remember for Friday's race: Queens' are going to want to bump us badly. They will close hard off the start. We will need all of the composure that we can muster to stay away from them, or Thursday's awesome race will have been for nothing. They are faster than us, but we have shown that we have the mental strength to hold them off. If we can do all of this and row cleanly and with long, pressed-out strokes, then we will bump Downing II and send them on their way down to well-deserved spoons.

(Neil I.)
Ow, my legs hurt... (MC Row(e))
Friday
Bumped Downing II
Our plan for today was to row sustainably, recognise that the bump on Downing M2 could take a long time, and make sure to hold off Queens M2 for as long as it took.

However, there was naturally some nervousness and excitement in the crew, and this translated into less neatness off the start and a higher rate than we had planned after the stride. But when Queens did not come close and we very quickly got a whistle on Downing, we knew that things were looking positive. The next whistles took longer to achieve but we kept moving on Downing without having to change what we were doing and without Queens causing us any worry. When we reached three whistles, a Bumps push was called and this achieved the bump fairly promptly (even though I think I stopped rowing a couple of strokes prematurely having misheard something as "hold it up"). I cannot remember exactly where we bumped but I think it was at First Post Corner.

This result is our reward for the performance yesterday - we have earned it and should savour it - but I think our rowing was not as composed as it has been. Tomorrow we are not anticipating pressure from behind, and Darwin will be difficult to catch, so we should try to settle to our target rate and keep things clean to give ourselves the best chance.
(Chris E.)
Could have been cleaner, but today was a fairly classic bump on a spoonbarge. Tomorrow won't be as easy. (Lydia Bass)

This was the day when we reaped the rewards from the crazily intense row-over on Thursday. This time, we expected to bump, and this led to nerves throughout the row-up and we never properly found our rhythm and togetherness in the bursts and paddle down, practise start excluded (that was surprisingly good, given how poor the rest of the row-down was). During marshalling at the P&E, one of the Downing II guys had come over and told us that he thought that they had no chance of rowing over in front of us, and hoped that the race would be over quickly. This made me feel more confident that the bump was going to happen.

Whatever happened, we were not going to row the whole course, either bumping Downing II or being bumped by Queens II. This led to a 500 m race plan, which we followed quite well. The start was quick, slightly spacky, and the stride which we had executed so well on the previous day never really occurred. We got one whistle after the end of our start sequence, and basically just slowly ground them down over First Post Reach, keeping station on Queens' and bumping shortly before the corner. With people unsure exactly when to hold it up and Ben catching a massive overhead crab immediately after, we failed quite badly to clear and Queen's had to do some fairly tight evasive steering to go around us, but luckily for them Sidney Sussex weren't particularly fast and both crews rowed over. Greenery was dealt out in a fairly extravagant way and we rowed back from what was half of the crew's first bump in a slightly wobbly but controlled manner.

Overall, the result that we wanted, but if we want to stand any chance of bumping Darwin today, we'll need all of the compusure and commitment that we demonstrated so spectacularly on Thursday. We know that we can give them a fright - let's go out there and bump them!

(Neil I.)
Saturday
Rowed over
Our plan was to row as fast as possible over the course, trying to recreate our cohesiveness from Thursday and push just as hard despite the lack of a credible threat from behind. We knew that a bump on Darwin M1 was a difficult target to aim for but hoped that it might be possible on the Reach.

Unfortunately we never really started rowing cleanly today, and we rowed the course as a very messy piece without ever putting Darwin under any pressure. This probably didn't affect the result, as it seems they were simply a faster crew than us. However, Downing M2 actually came within a length of us before being bumped by Queens M2, and although they were obviously sprinting as hard as they possibly could, this still suggests that we were being rather ineffective today, given how much faster we were than them yesterday.

We can all be proud of what we have achieved this week as a crew, despite the slightly lacklustre performance on the final day.
(Chris E.)
A slightly disappointing end to what has been my most intense bumps campaign so far. We were all feeling really good before this race, knowing that we would have no pressure from behind, and I at least was quite pumped for today. The paddle up was marginally better than it had been on the previous two days, and unfortunately, as I mentioned to Fordy last night, our races seem to inversely correlate with the quality of the paddle-up.

We had a lack-lustre start that saw Downing gain a whistle on us when they got bumped, then saw Sidney Sussex close distance on us when they got bumped, and then had a (mostly) clear river behind with only Eddies M1 in the distance. We had OK pushes in and out of the corners, but we just spakked around massively, forgetting how to sit the boat, get our blades in together and press out our strokes. This meant that we were never really inside station, and when we realised that we didn't have any whistles coming into Ditton, the power sagged even more, and we finished 3 lengths off them. It's a bit of a pity, as I'm sure that we could have given them a good race had we committed hard from the start.

As I said after the race however, it speaks volumes about how the crew has improved and committed over the other three races that we had this week that my least favourite race of the week was a row-over that saw us not be too far behind a decent M1. We committed when we had to (on Thursday's race), and we reaped the benefits of that great row. And more importantly, I think that we have all learned just how valuable commitment and perseverance in the face of adversity and pain are, not only in relation to rowing, but also in other walks of life. Here's to another successful term of rowing (and other things of course)!
(Neil I.)

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