First and Third Trinity Boat Club
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The Club's Results

Lent Bumps 2013

1st men's VIII

Coxed by: Michael Thornton
Coached by: Ming-Chee Chung, Rob Stroud,

Wednesday
Rowed over
Summary for now:
Quicker than Queens' off the start.
3 boat sandwich fairly imminent.
Overlap in the Gut/Grassy.
Queens' go so wide they need hand-assisted steering.
(Iain questions umpire over potential technical bump in Grassy.)
Horrendous wash down Plough Reach makes effective rowing pretty impossible.
Looks like 2's blade will have stern contact.
Queens' do some pushes down Plough Reach, keep just off us.
Queens' escape wide around Ditton, slowly moving away.
The wash has done it's damage, we fall back.
Queens' bump LMBC, we steer to avoid.
Queens' clear in the direction we have steered, we hold it up.
We start rowing again but the Chief Umpire fears we will kill LMBC so stops us and awards a technical row over. (Thornton)
Coming into this, we knew Queens' were capable of bumping, and that we had to be quick in catching them. A quick start got us the first whistle coming into First Post Corner, and despite water coming over the saxboard from some pretty hefty wash, we closed Queens' down pretty effectively into Grassy.

The crew gained overlap through the second half of the corner, with Queens' having to hand-brake turn to correct a wide line, and we should have killed it here. Unfortunately, some confusion, and more wash, meant the bump was missed, and Queens' pushed back out to half a length. We stayed in touch with Queens', but didn't come as close again. They bumped out halfway down the Reach, and we were caught on the wrong (right?) side of the carnage and were forced to hold it up. With Jesus floundering in our wake, it was deemed acceptable to award a technical row-over.

Kudos to Queens' for escaping today. A more clinical row is needed tomorrow to set up the rematch. (Sam)
Off to a very solid start, the first whistle sounded just as we settled into a solid R37 off the stride. Whistle two and three came in quick succession through the gut.

Coming out of Grassy all hell broke loose: a lot of noise coming from the bank, waves breaking over Sam's saxboard in front of me and a pretty unsettled few strokes.

We missed the bump by a painfully small margin, and had a bad row down Plough reach. Coming into Ditton we didn't have enough left in the tank for another push and so began to fade.

Even though Jesus were no where to be found (already 5 lengths behind by the Plough judging from the video), we were happy to finish the race early with a technical row over. When Queens did eventually bump Maggie, they failed to clear quickly enough, forcing us to stop rowing.

With a few tweaks to our strategy we should be ready for a good race tomorrow and a rematch with Queens on Friday. (A.B. Abbasi)
Thursday
Bumped LMBC
For a crew rumoured to have a slower average erg than our M2, Maggie held out a reasonably long time, closing Queens' to half a length.

However, one does not simply escape winter on the Cam. We cruised through the Gut with more composure than yesterday, and got our first whistle a few strokes out of Grassy. We bumped coming into Ditton. (Sam)
Saturday
Rowed over
Missing Queens' is a big disappointment. Over the term, the boat has improved quite dramatically, and we feel that we have underperformed this week.

We certainly gave Queens' a good race to Ditton. Coming into the corner, we had a couple of feet of overlap, but I think we steered for the bump, and missed. These things happen. We stuck religiously to our plan, and blew so hard at Ditton that we managed to row more slowly than Jesus, who came as close as 2 feet from our stern before fading.

I remember sitting down at Dinner last year, and essentially saying that down 2 was a fair result. We had worked Queens' hard, and given a good account of ourselves. Since I had committed to going hard off the start, and blowing somewhere around the main, I don't actually know what was said last night about this set of Bumps, but I hope it was this: No, we shouldn't be happy with our results this week, but when we look back to our assessment of last year, we can see that the club is in a much healthier state. We go to race HoRR in a couple of weeks intent on proving that.

With continuing drive to improve, more rage, and regular opportunities to smash stuff, the May VIII should be a fast one. (Sam)
We went into this race with the attitude that we would bump Queens' somewhere around Ditton or die trying...and we died, hard. (Thornton)

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