The Club's Results

My steering was akin to that of a certain cox of the same surname in Fairbairns 07, and hence we didn't do so well ;). (Tsunami)

I disagree with Jeff. Jeff was a fine cox for the race, and I hope he continues for the rest of the term. It was a mixture of not having rowed together as a crew, no working cox box and the rudder of Titan.

This was the first time the official NM2 boat rowed together and indeed "all eight" (although we did have subs who we thank for subbing in!) and the first time I feathered in an VIII, the second time ever in a boat.

The start was uneventful and we paddled away down First Post Reach without too much of a problem; the line round First Post corner was tight.

A push in the Gut gave us our best 10 strokes out of the race and then we parked on the outside of Grassy. We pushed off quickly and parked again a couple or so lengths down.

The rate started to go up nervously down Plough Reach and coming on to the Long Reach timing was lost and blades started to get stuck. Then we parked just after the Railway bridge.

From here to the finish ratio was about 1:1 (or at least that's how it felt in the bows) and we soared through the line.

We have something now to build on, we'll be back for Clare Novices! (Mark)

Apart from the absolutely hilarious marshalling procedure along Riverside, and the delay of almost an hour by that time, the actual race went quite smoothly. Thanks to some amazing bank-steering from Neil, I took a lot better lines than in Small Boats Head. Despite the clear lack of sculling training over the past weeks it felt technically reasonably ok. Curious to see the results (well, if they EVER manage to put them up!), although I guess being in the later division didn't really help, given that the wind picked up constantly over the day.

P.S.:
Now, with the results out, the resumé is obvious: too slow! (Ulrike)

We set off into this race with something to prove. The other IV may have been bigger than us, but littler guys with technique can still move a boat fast. Despite another crew getting in our way (despite valiant steering and screaming from Emma), I think we had a good, strong race. After a bit of a harried start (great marshalling, Cantabs!) we settled into a rate ~31 paddle. Admittedly a bit lower than we wanted, but chunky. After our forced restart at Ditton we set off with more power and a slightly higher rate than before - pushing past the offending crew in another 15 seconds and strong through the finish. First IV - watch out! (Allen)

Well, we lost out on winning by 2 seconds. Damn. However there are a lot of positives to be brought from this. Firstly, there were probably that many seconds to be had simply by me taking a decent line occasionally. Apparently you don't just aim for the kink off Ditton, and First Post corner was a minor voyage of discovery.
However the other eight people in the boat seemed to be really fairly effective. We did pretty well despite our stated aim being to row it mostly like the first half of a Fairbairn's race, and I certainly felt that we could have carried on for a fair while longer. It may take a while to convince the girls of that however :). The rowing felt sustainable, and the technical improvements we've been making recently seemed to largely stick. Judging by the split at 1000m we seemed to go off faster than most other people, and then it would appear that Christ's were a lot faster than us over the last 1000 odd metres, however I don't feel that we "blew up" at all. Maybe we should have gone for it a bit harder in the 3rd quarter. Anyway, we've got some 5K pieces over the lock tomorrow, so it'll be good to see what happens when we try the Liz Hill, "Let's do Fairbairn's at 40" plan. It think it'd be fun, but then I would wouldn't I... (Swords)

Having lost by a margin of 2 seconds sucks. Especially knowing that we could have pushed that extra bit harder to get these 2 seconds. No excuse for that.

On the positive side, we had our best row together so far, and it was really noticeable that things finally start getting together. Let's build on this and really consolidate the technical achievements! Our main issue so far was not a lack of strength or fitness but of togetherness in the boat. We're getting there now. I'm getting excited to see what we can do if we synchronise our power!! (Ulrike)