First and Third Trinity Boat Club
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The Club's Results

May Bumps 2018

1st men's VIII

Coxed by: Liv Godwin
Coached by: Jacqui Round

Wednesday
Rowed over
Bit boring, hopefully some excitement tomorrow. (Ben)
A technically good row but a bit lacking in aggression, it felt like we subconsciously knew that Magdalene would get Jesus pretty quick and we'd be in for the long haul. We settled to a relaxed 33 down first post reach and trivially moved away from Selwyn behind. Around the first corner Selwyn encountered a particularly large crustacean (shortly followed by Queens' bow and a bank) and with Robinson never a threat for the overbump we pootled around the next two corners, rowing efficiently if lazily. We briefly had a push on the reach to scare Downing (5 ahead) who'd wound it down a bit too far but a 6 length bump from the railway bridge was never on the cards.

Overall a decent row, but if we'd been any more conservative we'd have spontaneously turned into Jacob Rees-Mogg.
(MC Row(e))
Thursday
Bumped Jesus
John 11:35
(Jedge)
The plan was to go hard off the start, settle to 38 and hold it until coming into 3 whistles where we'd take a push and catch Jesus just before first post. Surprisingly this is almost exactly what happened.

Almost.

I either misheard or imagined a 'hold it up' call 10 strokes before we officially bumped, this led to me attempting to fight the remaining 7 rowers in true three-seat fashion. Luckily I lost and thanks to the wonders of modern technology we know that I was only able to reduce us to a 1:33 split rather than the infinite split I'd been aiming for. Having realised my mistake I resumed rowing and we caught Jesus 10 strokes later which says a lot about either their speed or my ability to hold it up.

Yesterday Queens' had been bragging about how they were going to bump us so it was amusing to see them rapidly drop backwards off the start, in fact if they'd dropped back any faster they'd have been red-shifted out of the visible spectrum.

Overall a good row, let's try to do the same tomorrow.
(MC Row(e))
The whole crew had been visualising this bump for the previous 24 hours, at least, and that internal preparation showed tremendously from the moment we arrived at the boathouse. Confidence, but not arrogance, brought out a far better warmup than Day 1, and marshalling at the P&E was a calm, relaxed affair. The start was a little more energetic than yesterday, though still a little tense and some water was caught - however, we were nonetheless able to find a long, effective rhythm at 40 and the whistles came thick and fast.

At 2 whistles Liv called a bumps push, and it felt like we stuck there a while, but this is perhaps only because we were waiting after each stroke to hear the relief of her calling to hold it up (though MC's patience ran out a little earlier than everyone else's..). The bump was inevitable and it thusly came fast, a few strokes into First Post corner - same again tomorrow, chaps.
(Ben)
Friday
Bumped Peterhouse
Today things went exactly as planned.

We hit the start hard and took a quarter of a length in the first 5 strokes. Off the start we settled to what felt like a relaxed 34 but it turns out was somewhere above 40.

Around this point we received multiple 'moving' calls from the bank; however, as anyone who has done (and remembers) part IA maths or physics will tell you, this is completely meaningless without a reference frame. Conveniently we were moving in Peterhouse's reference frame and pretty quickly too with two whistles coming about a minute in.

We hit a bit of wash here and they briefly held us for a whole four strokes, presumably with a bumps push, before we continued to move. A good line from Liv put our bows on the inside of their stern coming into first post corner and they sensibly conceded as our bowball passed their cox on the entry of the corner. Within two minutes of the start gun we were pulled in and waiting for our bank party to commence their assault on the local willow population.

Again due to magical technology, (or a random number generator), I'm told that the race took around 1 minute 40, which is a bit quicker than yesterday, and that we never dropped below a 1:27 split. If I were so inclined this information may allow me to calculate the effectiveness of my rowing and/or holding it up by comparison with yesterday. I will, however, avoid doing this due to the risk of concluding that they'd be faster without me and then being subbed out for a ham sandwich.

Overall a very good row, the best so far, partly due to me taking the same number of strokes as everyone else and partly due to us feeling a lot more relaxed and comfortable in the wash.

Let's carry this momentum (and decent rowing) into tomorrow.


(MC Row(e))
Best row of my life really (Ben)
Saturday
Rowed over
A brief update in case the crew are heading straight to college:
Moved up a little off the start, perhaps dropped back a little in the first two corners, had a good move into Ditton and got back inside station. Hit big headwind on the reach and the gap between the crews oscillated between 1.3 and 1.7 lengths, but we finally got the first whistle near the pink house, and from then on steadily inched towards Emma, passing the P & E at 1/4 of a length. Not sure whether they got any closer in the final minute. When we got back to the boathouse, I learnt the coxbox hadn't been working for most of the race; we were impressed by how cohesive it looked in spite of this.
(Peter)

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