The Club's Results

A race that's better quickly forgotten. I had tried the boat briefly a few days before but with different sculls that apparently had significantly slimmer collars. Unfortunately I only realised that the gates were much too tight once I'd pushed out. Quite understandably, neither I nor any of the folks around me on the way to the start happened to have a spanner on them...

The race was accordingly more than unpleasant. I had loosened the gates as much as I dared without risking them to come undone during the race but still had to wrench around the blades violently every stroke. Consequently my hands and forearms were totally cramped up halfway into the race and my technique accordingly screwed up. I haven't sculled that badly in a while!

Crashing into the buoys in regular intervals during the race didn't really help either... every time I caught up with my opponents again I found myself on one or the other side of the lane again. Given that the lanes in P'boro are actually quite wide I must have steered some impressive zig-zag!

Nevertheless I managed to push back several times and in the end I only missed out on the rep by 3 seconds. Which made the whole mess even more annoying! A glance at the results table showed that the first 3 boats in my heat were all within 6s, and the heat itself was about 30s faster than both other heats. (Ulrike)

I have hardly ever sculled worse. However, my opposition was still worse than that, so I won despite about half a dozen crabs. (Ulrike)

A textbook example how bad nerves can screw up a race despite the fact that you are faster than your opposition.

I started. I got approximately to "lengthen". Then I crabbed.

I restarted. I kind of found my rythm (well, at something frantic like r34) and caught up. When I was level with my opposition I crashed into the bank.

I restarted. I put in a series of all-out pushes until I was level again. My opposition decided to steer into me so that I was wedged in between the bank on one side and overlapping blades on the other. I was, however, a tiny bit ahead at that time so that the overlap would *only* affect me if I crabbed. (This was about 100m to go to the finish.) I crabbed.

I restarted. By that time I was basically foaming with rage and consequently wound it up to approximately 38, which brought me almost level again on the finish line. Unfortunately only *almost*.

I would have liked to be a bit more successful in my last ever race as FaT. Ah well, at least I put up a good fight! (Ulrike)