First and Third Trinity Boat Club
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The Club's Results

Fairbairn Cup 2007

1st men's VIII (Senior VIIIs)

Coxed by: Emma Salgård Cunha
Coached by: Ming-Chee Chung, B. Szczyrba, Neil Talbott,

1st
Time: 14:04.36
Training plan called for technical pairs work...

...but seriously! We arrived at the boathouse a very confident crew with a job to get done. There really was a lot of trust in the boathouse this year - each of us knew the rest of the crew had trained their arse off - and we weren't afraid to lay the power down even in longer pieces.

The start was very smooth, rating over 40 without really thinking. The first third went very much as planned; sitting on a comfortable rhythm, putting the power down as a crew. If anything this was slightly faster than I was expecting, and I was very proud sitting at 7 in such a classy boat.

Coming out of Chesterton hurt more than I expected it to, even though I've done this once or twice before. My main mistake here (and I think quite a few of us did this) was wrenching the finishes a little, gripping the handle a little too tightly on the recovery. The rate didn't drop and we didn't tense up an awful amount, but it did mean my forearms were burning down the reach.

Last third was mostly about trusting the base rhythm while holding onto whatever was left. We were still powering along nicely, but ye gads it hurt. Good wind for the finish, some inspiring bank partying (cheers nm2 boys!), and generally a decent row.

Not the result we were looking for, unfortunately, but only 1.16 seconds off. Hats off to the lightweights: for all the banter, it must have been crap being a light crew on the reach this year as the tailwind was pretty blustery. Perhaps some sparring will teach us how to row...?

Plenty more to come, which is exciting. We really need to hit the weights to front load the catches a little more halfway through long races - a Bumper to anyone training twice on Christmas day, knowing the oppo will only be training once! (Dan)
As with Uni IVs, this race was won in spite of rather than because of me. I spent the morning throwing up and was in no condition to race, but decided that a sub would be more disruptive to the crew. I still think that this was the correct decision, and hope I wasn't overly influenced by a selfish desire to win Fairbairns. It became clear not long into the race that I was dead weight, which isn't ideal in the heaviest crew member. Sorry about the lack of middle four pushes, guys...

It was frustrating that this felt like the best row we've had in a while, and I'm sorry not to have contributed to it. There's clearly some sort of negative correlation between how hard I pull and how well we row - perhaps something to think about for the future.

It would be nice to think that, if I'd been healthy, we would have beaten the lightweights and maybe even dipped under 14 minutes, but who knows and, ultimately, who cares? We still got the shield and the big races are a long way off. The honeymoon period looks to be drawing to a close, though: Maggie and Downing are closing rapidly and no doubt Jesus and Caius will follow soon enough.

Our other aim (other than beating the lightweights) was to be closer to CUBC than the colleges; luckily Strawson seems to have done the job for us on that one... (BJ)
It being extremely unlikely that we could lose to a college crew, this was a race against CULRC. Our timing team called us dead level at the railway bridge, and we responded by lifting it to 35 in the tailwind. There was a little drop in power around Ditton corner, but we recovered well and never lost our rhythm in the final third.

A solid performance, nothing special. Comparison with Pembroke suggests we should have been about 5 seconds faster. I suppose this can attributed to Bryn's illness, and I felt that we were slightly over-geared for a long race.

We didn't win this on the day; we've been winning it every day since the end of September. Winning Fairbairns is huge, it's an achievement on a level playing field. Thanks boys. (Tom C)

1. Bryn wants out
2. Over
3. No pain
[more...]


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