Results and reports by Event

Well, we didn't make it easy for ourselves. First of all, it was really hot today - no spooky Halloween atmospheres, unfortunately, and no need for the splash top on the way down, no sir. It was quite an interesting format because as there were only three crews in Cambridge manly enough to brave the coxless IV, we had a straight final all staggered. Jesus were on top station, us in the middle and Maggie at bottom station. Our start was good, relatively sharp entries... the usual bow-side pulling round stroke-side off the start making us take the scenic route - come on Jon and Andy, get it together. We settled quite well after the outflow and just chugged it along, coming into first post corner we were still slightly more over the other side of the river, so when we entered first post corner we tried to take a shortcut, however the bank didn't agree. After a little altercation (two or three strokes) with the bank we pushed back out into clean river and got the rate back up to race pace. We then got calls from the bank that we started to close on Jesus, and at this point Maggie had slipped away slightly. Grassy went well (yeh bow-side) and we pushed out the corner and got back into some clean rowing. This was when we started to get calls from the umpire about overtaking!? Slightly taken-a-back about this, thinking we hadn't gained that much, we just kept on with the rowing up through plough reach. Coming into Ditton corner we were again pressed onto Jesus' stern not far away from overlap (I think? Hard to tell at 3), and Maggie had gone out of contention. But with being so close we didn't want to go for the over take around Ditton corner so we slightly eased off in the power (well, I did at least). This was detrimental for us, as out of Ditton corner Jesus put in a bloody big push and started to push away! Bugger. The first 100m of the reach were ok, but still being told Jesus were moving off we had to really lay down some power. This made the last 300m absolute hell - no idea where the finish line really was, whether Jesus had gone into the lead and still going balls out for what felt like forever (our rowing got slightly shoddy at this point). But alas! We got the whistle for our finish, a quick turn of the heads and Jesus were still racing. We had won!! Crap that was knackering. Thank you for the bank support giving us useful information around us. All in all, a really exciting race and many thanks to Jesus and Maggie for making it a good quality, hard row.

Uploaded Monday 3rd November, 10:07