The Club's Results

An unfortunate first off cam race for Angela. Off the start it was clear we weren't the fastest crew in the heat, but it looked like we might not be the slowest. We sat about one seat up on Sheffield for the majority of the race, maybe taking another temporarily during a push around 500m. But in the end we lacked cohesion and we suffered for it. With no second gear for the finish, we lost our lead over Sheffield and came 4th. Seeing as we had nothing else to do, we naturally decided to have an outing. Subbing Adam Dougall at stroke we went a-paddling. We only nearly capsized twice in the process. (Thornton)

We made this a lot harder than it needed to be; at about 300m I realised we were on a strong pace and moving away, so called down 2 to save energy. I was hoping for a long relaxed rhythm, but instead we took it down a bit, rowed worse, and had to work just as hard to stay a length ahead of Leicester. This led to a very ugly wind in the last 250 to hold onto our length lead, which later turned out to be irrelevant; the umpire at the start who announced "first to final, 2nd to rep, 3rd eliminated" turned out to be wrong, and we were both many lengths clear of the Vet E+ pair in 3rd. (Peter)

After the experience of the previous round, and from racing various people down the reach, I was aware we didn't have a particularly effective sprint available. As such, even sitting on quite a nice 36 (?) through the middle of this final and leading 2nd and 3rd by a little over a length at 500m, I was worried we didn't have enough lead; calls for increased pressure at the same rate were variously not heard and ineffective, so when Lea visibly lifted the rate at 300m to go we were a little under a length ahead, and they quickly moved out to lead us by a length at 100m out.
When we heard the hooter as they crossed the line we essentially stopped rowing, so the result was exaggerated a little, but other than that I didn't think we did a huge amount wrong in the race. Not fast enough. (Peter)