The Club's Results

He said he hadn't done much sculling recently so I thought I might win. I didn't.

It started going wrong during the pause between "attention" and "go". Unfortunately I was busy buttering my second round of toast when the beep finally sounded, and my first stroke didn't produce any forward motion. I recovered OK but the outflow hit me very hard and I nearly capsized. After this ordeal I reckon I was a couple of lengths down, but found a decent rhythm at 31 which combined with his perilously wide line round Grassy left me a length and a half up at the Plough.

I lost my concentration slightly coming into Ditton, and had to corner quite sharply. It seems I'm using my forearm to turn, and by the time I was round it was completely burnt out. We were about level at the the start of the reach, but I was reduced to half pressure at 27 while he pushed it up a bit. I guess the margin would've been about 15 seconds if I'd bothered rowing it out.

The legs and lungs were still going strong so it's pretty annoying to lose it like that. Will have to work out a better way of cornering. (Tom C)

There was a pretty strong headwind on the reach, and the water was very choppy, but I'd done some training in fairly dyer weather so felt confident I could cope with the conditions. This, unfortunately, turned out not to be the case... Bryn tells me that I'd moved up a little in the first ten strokes, and then I caught an almighty crab and almost fell in. Having recovered I decided it would be best to rate lower and make sure it didn't happen again. The crab, and some rather tentative sculling (caused by wet and slippery handles after they got a soaking from the crab), caused me to drop back by a length in the middle third, which I then held for the final third.

All in all it wasn't a bad days racing, and I've had a lot of fun training for it. Apparently Adam went on to narrowly lose the final, which means I couldn't have been all that slow. Its just a pity that the quality of my sculling was dictated by the weather rather than my ability, but that's just the way it goes some times. (Phil)

I thought my arm might hold up after the races in the double; it didn't. Wasn't helped by the rain making the handles slippy.
First leg 12:06. Started to lose it round grassy, even went wide and easied.
Second leg 13:15. Very little recovery time at the back of the division, so I tried to take all the work out of my arms. Might've helped a bit but I didn't really survive Ditton and was rowing in circles down the reach. The last 700 was soul destroying.
Steering wasn't too bad in general, but I can't really draw any positives from this vile experience.

I'm very sorry to everyone for soiling the name of the club. (Tom C)

According to the official results, you beat a women's VIII, but if you're that keen to be last then I'm not going to change it... (BJ)