The Club's Results

In what should have been recognised as an omen for Hambleden's second race of the day, it took only until first post corner for the steering to pack up. Armed only with wild variations in pressure we managed to meander our way through the corners, clearly causing some distress to Emma as we pushed the limit of how wide its actually possible to go around grassy. Thankfully the Selwyn guys were doing their fair share of meandering too, I think they might have even scraped the bank once or twice.

However, the end result was good, we never really stormed away, but I think we just steadily edged further and further ahead. Good to have one race behind us going into Wednesday.

This race gave us the honour of being the only FaT pair to beat another college this week, Coker having also won a round of Fairbairn Junior Sculls to uphold the club's name. (Will L)

It was looking good, our row down had been some of the best rowing we'd ever put together - our burst on the reach was powerful, our practise start was clean and rapid, I was even lined up almost straight at the start. The, dare I say it, class continued down first post reach, the start wasn't too shabby and nor was my line.

However, rounding first post corner we threw away anything resembling timing, rhythm or balance and instead did our best to spank the boat along with complete disregard for technique. This second style of racing perservered for the remainder of the course and explains why this was one of the most physically demanding races I've ever done. This was a shame because that level of exertion probably wouldn't have been necessary had we rowed to our technical potential, and left us in pretty bad shape for the next round, not that it turned out to matter.

A good race from Christs, from all accounts they were much slicker than on Monday and certainly gave us a decent race.

This race took out the last remaining non-FaT entry into Foster-Fairbairns and assured us the Michell Cup points. (Will L)

They row better than us, they have more power than us and just to put the icing on the cake, they have working leg muscles.

They were faster and would most likely win any ordinary race against us. In fact they were in the process of doing just that quite convincingly when my hamstring started to go. So we stopped, and lost. We then subbed me out for Bryn (who is inelligable for this event) and thus probably lost again. They were kind enough to allow this new crew a fresh race from the plough, which we promptly lost. All in all, I think we have to concede that they deserved to win.

We weren't in tip top shape after our semi, but that wasn't going to change the result, however I would have liked to make it look a bit more competitive, which I'd like to think on fresh (working) legs it could've been. (Will L)