The Club's Results

We'd entered a mixed eight but it didn't happen because of oversubscription, so I went back to Cambridge on Saturday night, therefore avoiding immense lash. I did have a few beers and about 4 hours' sleep, but must have been in better shape that the TSS guy who capsized immediately after pushing off.

Fordy had left the footplate higher than I prefer, but it was set like you would on an ergo for 500m so I figured it would be ok. It probably wasn't, in that I couldn't get past 3/4 slide or clear the blades on the recovery. After an average start I was surprised to be in the lead, but it was close and my attempts to go faster failed. I'd wanted to come second so I could get an extra race in the rep, but there wasn't space between the other two so I pushed to the line for first place. (Tom C)

Some lively folk had sunk a weed cutting boat on the finish line on Saturday, which meant the course was moved to the far end of the lake and no times were taken. So I had no idea what to expect in the final. I moved the footplate to a more comfortable position and opted to trade rate for length and power. The Rob Roy sculler who had been close in the heat was left well behind, so it's possible that I went a lot faster.

Steering was poor in the first half, and I had some worrying encounters with buoys. Eventually I found my lane and the second half was quite good, allowing me to win by about a length from Molesey. (Tom C)

This was my first ever race in a single, so I had no idea how fast I was compared to the opposition. Consequently, I didn't expect to get anywhere further than the first round, and my sole aim was to reach the finish line without crashing or capsizing.
After a shakingly nervous start, I was so focused on this aim that I completely forgot to push. Only after I realized that I miraculously had been going for quite a while and still not fallen in, I dared to look around and was surprised that I could still see one of the opponents! At that point I finally remembered pushing but by then the 500m were pretty much over...
In conclusion, this was probably the worst sculling I've ever done but I still didn't capsize and didn't even come last, and so I took a massive boost of self-confidence back to Cambridge. And was only the slightest bit annoyed with myself knowing that I clearly could have done better... (Ulrike)

Second race in a single, first one on the Cam. Fortunately, I wasn't half as nervous as in P'boro, but still too nervous for my liking...

I had a decent start and started to catch up on the schoolgirl ahead of me right away. Unfortunately the overflow of adrenalin from my silly nerves pretty much switched off my thinking, and as a consequence I took the worst possible line around every single corner of the course. The adrenalin, together with the fact that I had actually never done a piece past the railway bridge, also caused me to blow up completely somewhere between the railway bridge and Peter's posts. It was also somewhere around there where my fin picked up a reasonably sized ball of weed which caused me to drift to one side on every recovery from then on, apart from not actually helping to bring up the boat speed...
I somehow fought my way through to the finish line, not without crabbing twice on the last 50 m.

On the positive side, I got the fastest bridge-to-bridge time so far (9:27, kindly taken by Julijana), and (again, according to Julijana) ca. 50% of my strokes looked pretty tidy with nice and quick catches. (The other half was completely off...) Still, not bad given that I made massive technical changes during the last week before the race.

Coming 1st in WNovice and 7th out of 13 female scullers in all categories is clearly more than I expected and leaves me perfectly happy with the day :-D! (Ulrike)

Well done! Hope you are planning to come down to the Tideway for scullers' head (Nov 28 - doesn't clash with the Fairbairns this year). (Erica)