First and Third Trinity Boat Club
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The Club's Results

May Term 2016

2nd men's VIII

Head of the Cam (2nd Mays)

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Cambridge Head-2-Head (2nd Mays)

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May Bumps

Wednesday
Bumped by Downing II
Soon off the start, Downing II started gaining on us rapidly. In the face of this threat, we did not stride it down from the starting rate of 40. Nonetheless, by the middle of First Post reach, Downing II closed to an overlap of about 1 metre, and maintained this overlap until they held it up about 30 seconds before First Post corner. No contact had occurred and our cox did not concede, but it appears that Downing II heard someone (not an umpire) shout "hold it up", stopped rowing and started celebrating.

For us, our race is still on, but in the confusion, the pressure dropped off greatly. Our 1/2 length gap on Darwin, largely unnoticed due to the threat from Downing II, quickly widened. We were crawling up to the middle of the Gut when the klaxons sounded. A few strokes later we held it up, only for Corpus to close up and believe they have bumped us. 

After some conversation between confused bank parties, they concluded that the klaxons meant we're likely to be given technical results, and we started rowing back. Umpires at P&E told us to stop, and we spun in expectation that any re-row will occur immediately. Sadly, that was not to be the case.

1.5 hours, 1 lost strokesider and much emotional debate later, we finally rowed up with 7 rowers, where 5 held both 5 and 6's blades, forcing the crew to row 1/4-slide-1/2-arms. Michael Thornton, who only rowed once on strokeside, joined us on the Long reach. Considering this, our practise start was quite smooth, and we reached our starting station for the re-row, amidst Division 1 which is waiting due to an equipment failure.

Darwin, FaT II, Downing II and Corpus were in the re-row. Once again, Downing II rapidly gained on us, and stayed about 1/4 length away for much of the row. This threat meant we again did not stride it down from 39. Fuelled by our anger at our perceived unfairness of CUCBC's decision, we maintained this rate, and the distance from Downing II, well into the Plough reach.

However, they then began to gain on us again, and despite several pushes, we were caught by Long reach spinning zone. This time however, Downing II celebrated before holding it up, and collided with our 7 rigger. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be noticeable damage.

With Darwin having pulled away and Corpus given up, the re-row was effectively over, and we dropped off our sub and rowed home with 7 rowers.
(Peter)
Unfortunately, due to injury and exams, we had not been able to get the full race crew together for many outings after the first few weeks of term, and I think this prevented us from fulfilling our potential in terms of getting the power down together and making the boat move.
Nevertheless, we gained on Darwin M1 from the start of the race, but Downing M2 also gained on us (despite having seemed noticeably slower than us when paddling). This movement continued until Downing M2 unexpectedly stopped rowing and were then overtaken by Corpus M1.
It seems that most of our crew hadn't realised that we were gaining on Darwin M1 and when the pressure from behind was removed our commitment flagged and we let them move away again. After about half a minute there was a klaxon due to a dangerous incident ahead.

When we were allowed to proceed, Downing M2 and Darwin M1 went home but we and Corpus M1 were informed that there would be a rerow and were made to wait near race control. This was apparently because Downing M2 had said that they stopped because someone on the bank had shouted at them to hold it up, and the umpires felt that they needed to honour this to encourage good safety habits. This was annoying for the club because last year when First and Third M1 stopped in similar circumstances there was no rerow and a bump was instead awarded against them.

Furthermore, the rerow was scheduled for a later time and our 6-man had to leave before then, so we needed to find a sub and none of the obvious choices were available at such short notice. Eventually we set off towards our starting position with 7 rowers in the boat (rowing quarter-slide-ish in sixes with our 5-man carrying two blades). Michael Thornton kindly agreed to sub in even though he had not been training and the vacancy was on the wrong side for him.

Thus in the rerow we had a lot of anger and not much respect for the situation, and knew that we had to try to make something happen off the start. We set off and kept the rate high with no stride, and managed to hold off Downing M2 for much longer than anyone expected, making it onto the Reach, but were eventually bumped. Then Michael needed to leave and we rowed back to the boathouse in the same comedic configuration as before. (Chris E.)
Thursday
Bumped by Corpus
A solid row in front of a faster crew. Fantastic steering from Emily through the corners prolonged the race past Ditton, but M2 fell to Corpus on the straight, just before the Railings. Definitely more to give -- greater commitment in response to pushes from behind should yield a favourable result tomorrow! (Yining)
Today we had a sub (though in a much more planned manner than yesterday) and the comedic rowing with 7 rowers yesterday was probably also not the best preparation.

In the race I again feel that we were not managing to translate our underlying ability into boat speed and Downing M2 and Corpus M1 both went faster than us. We had better lines around the corners than Corpus M1 which gained us some distance but we were caught quickly on the Reach.
(Chris E.)
Friday
Rowed over
I had high hopes that as the week progressed we would be able to find more speed and I think this did begin to happen today.

We moved up half a length on Corpus M1 off the start and then sat there for some time. However, when the boats behind us bumped out and we didn't have anything to push off it seems that (as on Wednesday) we slowed down and Corpus M1 moved away from us substantially. We wound it down when they eventually bumped Downing M2.
(Chris E.)
Saturday
Bumped by Clare II
We knew that Clare M2 were going to be very fast, so our plan was a total sprint off the start to try to catch Downing M2. Also we were finally getting two consecutive days in the same crew and I think we had made substantial further gains in underlying race pace.
Thus off the start we went quite a lot faster than both Clare M2 and Downing M2 and I was thinking that the revenge bump was actually going to happen.
Unfortunately we were still not fully in time on the recovery and one thing that had remained a concern during the warmup and the approach to the starting position was balance: we were not sitting the boat well and it was lurching rather chaotically from side to side.
As we got into some choppy water this got worse and finally a crab was caught. We recovered from this but it had brought an end to our absolute sprint and despite a valiant effort to bring the boat speed back up we were caught fairly soon by Clare M2.
(Chris E.)
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