The Club's Results

After a rather rough start, we had a brief blades clash with Peterhouse. Peterhouse crabbed and the cox decided it was necessary to hold it up and restart so we took a pretty big lead. The lead gave us the opportunity to get some panic-free rowing in though at one point a whistle from the bank made several the crew stop rowing for a bit. Should only have stopped rowing if Tony called it, but either way we carried on soon enough and crossed the finish with lots of room to spare. (Sean)

A much better start than in round 1! Much thanks to Neil for all of the kit and food between round 1 and round 2. My left foot came out of the strap in the first or second stroke, but fortunately that did not cause any disruption as my right foot-strap held. Again, the opposition crabbed early on and we maintained a strong lead throughout the duration. (Sean)

Following some time back at the boathouse, the first thing the crew did together was take a pee on some trees near the marshalling area. Hopefully it's true that 'a crew that pees together, rows together.' The start was decent. Unfortunately, Stan caught a crab in the early part of the race and it was difficult to recover and we lost quite a bit on Maggie NM1. We seemed to be gaining on them a bit once we recovered, though, as we could hear their concerted grunts getting closer. (Sean)

This race was fairly typical novice racing, the crew that messed up the least won.

The race began and FaT's better patience on the first three strokes had them up a few seats almost immediately, then both crews settled into a race rythm and Queens' began to slowly pull away, up the reach we had a few pushes, each one of which took a couple of seats, but Queens' higher cruising speed had them half a length up coming past the white house.

Queens' two man decided to even things up by catching a crab and stopping rowing for a few strokes, FaT pushed on to try to make up the distance, and even after Queens' two man had recovered make up some more distance, pulling it to dead level under the railway bridge, it looked like we had ourselves a close race on hand.

Then Queens' decided to crash into the inside of the railway bridge corner, giving us a large margin, we held onto this untill 5 strokes before the line when bow man's seat came off, but there was far to big a margin for Queen's to capitalise and we crossed in victory.

Well done to NM3 for their first win, I was very impressed with their pushes, every one of which took distance out of Queens'. (Jack)

The weather was quite good that day: sunny, not too freezing, and the wind was minimal. I was really eager to win. But to be frank, I didn't really have much confidence because we were "only" NM4.

The first few strokes were smooth for both boats, although I think the rate at which we started could have been a bit higher.

However, our stress was soon relieved as Fitz ran into the south bank of the river. We rowed at a very relaxed rate for about 150 to 200 meters, which was good for our stamina but not necessarily so for our morale.

I didn't expect it at all that Fitz could recover so quickly from the crash and could still carry on with the race with such strong will and powerful strokes. In fact, Fitz was constantly approaching us until we were about 1 length away, when we began to row really hard. I personally suggest we give them a big applause for their sportsmanship.

The two boats remained close for the rest of the race, and we tried to keep the rate and pressure till the end.

Judging by what I saw, Fitz certainly had stronger rowers, but our skills were the key to our winning (timing, feathering, etc). Fitz could have done much better if their blades hadn't got stuck in the water, which actually happened at least twice.

On my part, I did feel tired in the latter half of the race, and I guess my pressure went down a little bit. Soreness mainly concentrated on my forearms instead of my thighs, which indicates I ought to pay special attention to my upper body strength in the future.

This is my first race ever, and thank you all for fighting hard as a team. It's really been a pleasure training and racing with you. (Charles)

Generally speaking, I felt less energetic as I did in the previous race. It might be that the first race had exhausted the crew more or less, and we did not have enough time to recover.

The starting strokes were technically better than the previous race, as far as I saw. Nonetheless, a few strokes later, despite the cox's repeating orders for more pressure from the bow-side, both boats began to deviate from the original course and soon got stuck together in the middle of the river. We had to align and re-start at around 50 or 100 meters from the starting point.

From then on, Caius was obviously faster than us and soon escaped my sight. We rowed on with our maximum possible power, but still could not catch up with them.

I made a few bad strokes during this race, mainly feathering problems, which I suppose was due to my incompetent arms, especially forearms. Luckily, these bad strokes didn't affect the stability of the boat.

From this race, I realised that I still need a lot of improvement on my strength and techniques compared with other crews. Although we didn't win, I still consider our performance quite satisfactory. Great job, crew! (Charles)