The Club's Results

I was expecting this to be the hardest race of the competition apart from potentially the FF final. It seems I was very wrong. Quite apart from attempts to guess differences between the respective members of the crews, I would guess having a crew with similar power is pretty useful. Well, that and Ro is phenomenal.
I was a bit worried 600m in that my technique/lungs weren't going to cope with the reasonably aggressive rate (compared to my sculling career), but shortly after that Emma's calls made it clear that as long as I kept the boat between the banks we would have the race. We hit their wash outside the plough, kept the inside line round Ditton, and then sat alongside them for a while down the reach, occasionally overlapping blades as they drifted back towards us. With 200m to go to our finish and a call of "Let's go" we pushed a bit and went a few lengths clear. We then easied, realised they were going to run into us, so paddled off in front of them again to let them finish.

After the race I realised I should have stayed at full pressure, as I won't much fancy going for a time on Wednesday morning if I have a FF final to follow. However, we might well go faster for less effort in future by the useful measure of me rowing in time. I enjoyed a lot sculling well, if I can get my bladework that sorted in a single it might actually be an enjoyable way to train. (Peter)

First race without the rudder, we very nearly took out the outside of grassy, which would have made the race slightly more interesting. Ro claimed this was because she wasn't concentrating, Mark Beer claimed the fin was probably bent, a view I came to agree with when I realised we couldn't get down Plough Reach on the paddle back in a straight line. Sculling was nothing special compared to the good bits on Monday. (Peter)

With Chris (and Alexis) having just got within 5s of Nash and friend, it seemed likely any chance of this being a close race had disappeared. With the fin straightened up a bit, we made it round Grassy slightly better, but strokeside corners were still very easy; that could just be our sculling tho. I'm not quite sure whether I think a rudder is better or worse for racing on-Cam; probably it is unless you've practised and got the hang of cornering hard with the blades.

I'm still quite surprised by the lack of speed of this competition; I've rowed in a couple of mixed doubles before, with girls probably 50s of erg slower than Ro, and I'd have expected them to be able to get inside 7:54. Can I get any Trinity girls pre-emptively keen for next year if there aren't any Bradburys entered? (Peter)