The Club's Results

Embarrassingly bad. After spending every morning for the past two weeks ensuring I could row the course without crabbing or falling in, at firm pressure and a higher-than-paddling rate, whilst maintaining a reasonably straight line and steering around the non-existent bend without veering into the middle, I succumbed to a combination of nerves and unexpectedly strong head wind and managed to steer a slalom course involving many frantic half-crabbed steering strokes, and generally row like a completely spacky muppet. The only "good" thing was that despite under-rating the opposition by several pips, I was still in touch, and had I rowed at all decently, might have had a chance to take her when she steered for the bank just before the finish. Possibly. Instead I mistakenly wound it down about 10 strokes before the finish, thus ensuring that any official margin will be even worse than otherwise. (Jane)

Not coming to frontstops at any point during the race and rating a good 5 pips higher than the opposition was an excellent tactic; the other lad didnt know what'd hit him before John crossed the line.

Nice one =D (Jij)

Borchers had been tipped on the message boards, but a good clean row saw a very comfortable victory. (BJ)

The gospel according to STCS said I had to win this fairly comfortably. I didn't. Over confident, I cruised and went down a length in the first minute.
Still believing, I kept going and took it up a pip out of grassy, won the race in the third 500, and spacked it up to 35 through the final headwind. (Tom C)

It feels a bit lonely starting on bottom station without a bank party. He must have struggled a bit with steering, and very kindly let me overtake when he was parked opposite the Plough. (Tom C)

That's only because your bank party is usually so noisy. (Dan)

I wasn't too fresh after a hard race in the double about half an hour beforehand, so I went down quite heavily in the first 500. Didn't change much in the middle, and I was (allegedly) 6 seconds down at the Plough. He took Ditton better than me, and being on top station I had an extra 100 yards of headwind to deal with, so the race was effectively over with 500 to go. I wound hard for the finish and pulled some distance back, but it wasn't enough. Not at all.

Some days you race better people and lose. Some people say there's no shame in this, but they're dead wrong. I didn't lose in 8 minutes, I lost in 8 months. Must do weights. (Tom C)

Particularly frustrating as Pascovitch went on to win and certainly didn't appear to be significantly faster. A slight confusion on calls between sculler and steerer (I'd never banksteered Tom before) led to my parking him on the inside of First Post Corner. Sorry Tom. Next time I'll remember that 'AWAY HARD!' call... (BJ)

Next time I'll look over my shoulder. By the time I got clear of the bank he had overlap and was asking if he could come by. I wasn't having any of that, and carried on as fast as I could in the naive hope that he might crash at some point.

The only small consolation is that my 8.07 on Monday was the fastest time recorded. Whether I had a chance to win I'll never know, but actually I don't care. I hadn't realised just how terrible my bladework was until I watched Helen's race, and there wouldn't be much pleasure in winning purely cos I have the biggest arms. (Tom C)

Fancied another run out after the unsatisfying conclusion to small boats. This time I went solo and looked over my shoulder occasionally, which worked pretty well until the last 300 (unsurprisingly). After I'd left a reasonable gap the start marshal told me to get a move on unless I thought I was significantly faster than the chap in front. So to avoid looking like a tosser I set off. The first half was pretty smooth, but then I caught up with the wash and lost it a bit. By the finish I was only a few lengths down and thus the wind up was completely ineffectual. Anyway, I beat the 11 minute target, so I can leave pike alone for now. (Tom C)

Looked quite comfortable from the bank. (Matt)