The Club's Results

Physically and mentally drained from the doubles race, I wasn't especially keen to participate in this race, and only slightly keener to win it. Sat at 32 pretty much the whole way, and didn't cope well with the slightly choppy water. The corners were pretty tough because I was almost too tired to notice them, and even when I did there was a considerable delay before I'd start doing something about it.

BJ did a pretty good job. I made it unnecessarily difficult by slacking off every time he said I was in the lead. Presumably I would've gone about 30 seconds faster if I'd taken the impeller off, but at least I know that my 500m splits were 2:00/2:09/2:06/2:06. (Tom C)

Logistically difficult, and I had very little chance of winning. (Tom C)

After my inability to get anywhere near someone vaguely my size in the previous race, trying to chase a sculler the boat race site proclaims to have: "Height: 2.03m, Weight: 95kg" was always going to be a bit futile. However, undeterred by either the loss of my bank steerer (to persuade coker to go round the corners), or by the marshals dire warnings about the binbag lying in wait for me on the apex of first post corner, I prepared my race plan which consisted of: rate so high off the start that stutt falls in out of surprise. Sadly, the only surprising thing I managed to do off the start was snake wildly, first due to indecision about which way first post reach actually went/which way I happened to be going when I looked round, and then due to the outflow.
As Stutt seemed not to have fallen in in spite of my best efforts, I spannered my way down the rest of the course, the binbag having found its way to a docile resting place on the bank, and grassy providing surprisingly few close misses. As I came onto the reach, the marshal cycling with me started saying things which sounded bewilderingly like "you're on station". As this was clearly entirely impossible, I eventually realised she was saying "you're gaining." However, it seems this was probably less due to my frantic attempts to get somewhere near a respectable mid-race rating for the last 250m, and more to do with Stutt winding down. Ah well, I learnt quite a lot about how to race in a single, even if I was entirely in isolation. It seems the answer is to put my blades in the water quite often, rather than trying to get the longest possible strokes, infrequently, by half-lying down in the boat. I should probably have realised that before. (Peter)