The Club's Results

Having almost ejected out of the Grad VIII yesterday, I was a bit apprehensive about racing a pair today, but the sun was shining so it seemed like a good idea.

Whilst waiting at the lock, I came to the realisation that I had omitted one of my more important pre-race rituals - the Preparatory Evacuation. I like to think this gave us a sense of urgency.

The row itself was not too bad, although apparently we did a good job of squandering a healthy lead during the second kilometre (we had no idea as we were chasing). Tom's steering was pretty solid, despite my best attempts to make us hit the outsides of both First Post and Ditton.

We probably should have won more easily, but at least we made it to the Penny Ferry in time... (Albert)

Whilst I was "doing core" in the Penny Ferry, Tom was secretly hoping that I would return too late and get us DQ'ed. Sadly for him this wasn't to be, so we had to race again.

We rowed a bit better this time, pushing our finishes out more convincingly. But the first race had taken its toll and the power was lacking. The corners were more colourful, with a mini-crab sending us to the inside of First Post Corner, and this time I made sure we messed up Ditton by calling a restart before the corner was over.

Seb reckons we lost by about 20s but when the margin is that big it's hard to tell. Thanks to Dami and Seb for coming out. (Albert)

We suffered from indecision about what we were doing during our row over, so didn't exactly race it and didn't exactly paddle it... We more just spacked. At least it gave us the confidence that, however slow we were, at least we were going to make it around the course. (BJ)

We were ahead coming out of Grassy, but then I had sunglasses issues as they fell off my head and blocked my view. I tried to push them back up again but they fell back down, so I then put them on properly and rowed the rest of the race in near-darkness. One-handed rowing in a pair is not particularly clever. Tom called us a length up at the Plough reach timing posts and we put in a bit of a push to go into Ditton slightly up. Unfortunately, any potential drama of a tense finish was ruined by their bowman's getting stuck in his heel restraints and thus steering Ditton without a rudder. The last 500m served to prove that Jacob is more of a man than me and we wiggled our way over the finish line. (BJ)

We knew that we were up against it, as our oppposition had been proven to be exactly the same speed as Dan and Tom. Tiredness meant we probably rowed a bit more consistently but more slowly than in the earlier races. They were 4s up at the Plough so we knew we had to put in a big push - unfortunately they fancied catching us and put in a much bigger one. On the reach our rowing went to pot and they loomed ominously, but we managed to hold them off by about 3 lengths. If they hadn't hit the bank two strokes from their finish line, it could have been a different story... (BJ)

Well, all our opposition wimped out of racing us, so we raced the Men's Forster-Fairbairn pairs final instead of the Women's Madgelene pairs. We reckon losing by 22s to the FaT pair ain't too bad, and Eton Boy thought it was enough to earn us the won-by-defualt Uni medals.. Such a shame not to be able to race actual opposition, but we had a pretty good race. Despite our start consisting of "draw 1.. er.. wind some? go fast.." we went off pretty swiftly, and managed to pretty much hold the boys until about halfway down first post reach [apparently]. Lucw took awesome lines round all the corners, and we even managed to take it up two for the finish. Only one mini crab - our rowing was qualiteeeee. Bring on the summer! ("Light weight" Lilie)