The Club's Results

With Ben having an unmovable? supo and Gevorg not in the country we knew we were in for a good race. Thankfully Bálint and Yoko swooped in the save the day and sub into the boat. This was M2's first race this year and second outing, we were a very practiced crew. To top it all I hadn't stroked a boat since HoRR last March.

Once we pushed off and got past the absolute carnage of boats around the boathouses we got into a nice rhythm and got together as a (scratch) crew. We made good time to the lock arriving 30 minutes before race start and watched all the other boats try to park in the stream and nearly collide left, right and centre.

The race itself started well with a nice rate of 32 from bridge to bridge and all the rowers were backing each other up. On each corner we called for a big push and the power came back on. Once we reached the railway bridge we started to climb on the power and the rate to empty the tank. Despite (some) of the rate climb coming from rushing the slide we made it with a respectable time given the stream and the wind.

When we reached the boathouse we discovered that the boat may need a bit of work as when we lifted it to heads two hatchcovers fell out and on closer inspection of my seat one of the wheels didn't rotate.

This was the first time we had rowed as a crew and also the first time any of us had been in a senior VIII in nearly a fortnight so we were setup for a good race.

We arrived (roughly) on time but were informed by a marshell everything was running 2omins late. We pushed off and had a good row up to the start. The first burst we did was awful (I was rushy) but by the third we had found our rhythm.

We did our rolling start as expected and built to a sustainable rate 32 which we held for the entire race. We rowed technically and together and every stroke we took length off Sidney M1 who were directly ahead of us. As we came under the railway bridge we managed to overtake them entirely. Given the massive head start they had Luke worked out we had taken 9 lengths off them over the course.

We paddled home in sixes with our heads held high after what we all deemed a successful race. We then realised we were only on average 20 seconds slower than M1 which has made us very hopeful for our Fairbairns race.