Despite what the official results may suggest, this was actually two races; to avoid ambiguity these will be referred to as "Beating Caius: Part I" and "Beating Caius: Part II". As is often the case, the original was better than the sequel.
Beating Caius: Part I was definitely our best race of the day, we had a strong controlled start, wound to about 38 and settled into a powerful 36. By the end of the start sequence we were half a length up, we pushed hard through the next minute and as we approached the railway bridge were leading by a length. The inside corner combined with another push gave us half a length of clear water and at this point things were going swimmingly (rowingly? we're not Homerton after all), our powerful rhythm would carry us to the finish and all would be well. Sadly this was not to be and at this point I heard a call of 'Maggie, move out the way' from Neil. Well this is odd, thought an oxygen deprived me, aren't we racing Caius and I'm pretty sure they're behind us?. I soon discover that despite starting a minute ahead of us Maggie W3 were sufficiently slow that they looked likely to be beaten not only by their opposition but also anyone racing behind them and maybe some particularly fast logs. Since Morley's Holt is not really wide enough for 3 racing crews, we were forced to wind it down and then told by the umpires that we would be doing a re-row. Fun.
Beating Caius: Part II turned out to be much harder than the first time round as it seemed that at some point between the races, their coach had either given them a lecture on how to row or found 8 subs. Either way they went from being a load of big guys to a load of big guys that could almost row. Our start was a bit less effective this time which combined with Caius being a lot faster led to us being half a length down a minute in. Now at this point I was somewhat miffed, I'd been hoping for a nice easy race with a quick start and then a casual row to the finish, maybe peaking at about 3 Watts as we crossed the line but it seemed Caius had other ideas, mostly 'push really hard'. Luckily our crew rose to the challenge and we never gave up. As we approached the railway bridge Caius had pulled out to almost a length but a push from us combined with the inside advantage brought this back to under half a length. We then held them around Morley's Holt and began to move again in the final 200m. We crossed the line almost level though I confess to having ignored the 'eyes in the boat' rule and glanced sideways as we crossed the line to find myself level with their 5 man, however I was too out of breath to communicate this information so some confusion ensued before it was eventually concluded that we'd won. We then rowed back up to where Clare M3, our opponents for the final, had been waiting, presumably enjoying a nice break while we were rowing our arses off. Downside number three as it turns out is that 1k sprints are really quite hard work.
(MC Row(e))