The Club's Results

I was nervous for this as my previous longest races were SBR (2k) and Dev Squad pieces (2*1500)

Marshalling seemed to take an eternity, but that’s more because you’re stuck with your own thoughts in a single. 

First leg was well rowed and horrifically steered. I slalomed down the reach, and then watched as the apex disappeared 20ft past my blades on Ditton and Grassy. For first post I was determined to rectify this and took a very tight racing line. 

I then continued to turn very sharply into the corner after the river straightened back out which was suboptimal and led to my blade slamming the concrete wall support at full speed. 

A slightly dodgy stroke with my blade pulled in later and I was back under way, but any sense of rhythm or flow had gone. 

I also had hair and sweat in my eyes, so rowed first post reach mostly eyes closed. 

Vaila from Fitz/CUBC kindly checked my blade for damage at the lock, and I was thrown my drink. Marshalling was about the length it wanted to be - just long enough to recover. 

The return leg went smoother. The start line was moved 50 yards upstream of the bridge meaning that it was 2 strokes after the outflow. 

I got totally messed up by the outflow and just kind of muscled it through very inelegantly before re-winding across the start. I felt very settled in the boat and raced well. Probably could have pushed a fraction harder in the first (third?) km, but was still scared of blowing up. 

Vaila met me at first post having sprinted back down the course after the crew she was coaching finished. Her shouting was much appreciated!

I tried to go up through the gears down the reach, but my technique had started to fall apart enough that it wasn’t very effective unfortunately. One of these days I’ll nail a sprint finish. 

Draft results were 9:30.5 out and 32:30 back, but the final results corrected this to 9:38.0 back. 9 seconds quicker than SBR on the second leg feels like a major achievement so I’m very happy :-)

Based on %GMT I was 4.1% quicker than W2, corresponding to roughly 45 seconds over 4k for the VIII+

A huge thanks to Vaila for checking my blade and then cycling with me!