The Club's Results
Cambridge Head-2-Head, May Term 2024
2nd women's VIII (Mays 4th)
| 2nd women's VIII | |||
| in Amanda | |||
| bow | Ellen Forsman | 2 | Amy Freeman |
| 3 | Kasia Kobalczyk | 4 | Zara Bek |
| 5 | Charlotte Fischer | 6 | Julia Roberts |
| 7 | Qingyue Zhang | str | Rosie Baish |
Coxed by: Bao Tao
2nd in Div (Officially 3rd due to category error)
Time: 16:46
Time: 16:46
Head to head, twice the fun.
Easter term, here comes the sun.
Marshalling, take the run.
The race starts, now await the gun.
Down the first half in 7:45,
At rate 33 all on the leg drive.
We spun at the lock, waited for other crews to arrive.
Had some sugar, needing to revive.
9 flat was not quite the vision,
Nevertheless we came third in the division.
Perhaps with the blades there could have been more precision.
Anyway, back to revision…
Head to Head, a 2*2k race which was an intimidating prospect for me in my first race at Stroke (in about 6 years)
Our race plan was to wind to 35, and then settle to 28-30, but we ended up settling to more like 32 and stayed there all race.
We had a plan for our start sequence, but it didn't really work and was just a bit of a scrappy chaotic mess.
Bao and I had agreed that if I needed to focus on putting down good rhythm rather than raw power (aka because I'd blown up) he'd called "Frontload", a call which means something to me if no-one else.
He called this <500m into race 1, which did good things for our boatspeed and our rowing and says bad things about my fitness.
We powered down the course at a solid 32, and tried to take it up into the finish but I didn't manage to lift the rate.
First leg was 7:45.9, the quickest 2k on the water I can remember.
We spun at the lock, and while marshalling Emily showed me the stopwatch for the Darwin crew I coach. 7:52.3 was an amazing result and my jaw hit the floor, because I was hoping they'd do 8:15 in my wildest dreams!
With my confidence in my coaching ability if not my rowing back up, we set of for the second leg.
We once again had a bit of a mess of a rolling start, but got the boat moving quickly at 35 and then settled down to 32 for the duration.
I made it a whole 750m into the race this time before Bao screamed "Frontload" at me, so we'll call that progress!
I was watching Churchill W2 chase us and had a horrible feeling they were gaining by a small amount, but we gave it everything and powered to the line.
Unfortunately I'd paced it badly and had utterly blown up before the line, and the rate ended up coming down rather than up in the final 250m which didn't help much.
I heard the horn go on the finish and the only thought in my head was "thank god". My grip subconsciously relaxed a bit, but unfortunately my legs didn't get the memo and gave one last full power stroke. The result - I shot backwards towards the finish and my blade didn't come with me.
I landed in Qingyue's footwell somewhat stunned, and then watched in horror as my blade caught on the water, pirouetted in what felt like slow motion and the handle shot round and hit Qingyue. Fortunately she was OK, but I felt awful.
Final time: 16:46.2, 5.7s slower than Churchill over 4k which isn't too bad.
We ended up second, although the official results show us as third because Homerton W2 were in the wrong category.
A good race, but with some lessons to learn for next week.
Links
Full May Term 2024 2nd women's VIII results
Cambridge Head-2-Head 2nd women's VIII results archive
Compare this time with all Cambridge Head-2-Head times in the archive
