Mark gave a little speech of sorts at the station, commenting that both Sidney and Pembroke II have “competent starts”, so we should expect the first whistle to come in time, but until we get it, we should get the legs down and keep pushing. He speculated on the possibility of Sidney catching Pembroke, suggesting (as we have agreed) that we go off hard and not expect to have the full river to catch Sidney. He also waxed lyrical on how station 5 is the “best station for pushing out, well past the outflow with a nice straight line to the corner”, while I was more interested in thinking about whether it is a good idea to row without zephyrs, as it was getting chilly sitting around. Of course, a cruiser was trying to get to the lock as 18 boats of 8 girls + 1 girl/guy slowly lose body heat parked at the start…
The 4 minute gun came as a surprise; it was still very loud at station 5. Decided to row without zephyrs, so it felt like an even longer count down than normal as it was really getting quite cold. 1 minute gun came and went, and Mark collected the pole (with somewhat nervous prompting from us) and pushed us out, blades square, all good, and we were off. The start was reasonably strong, not our very best, but felt like a good start though not sure what rating we were. I think I heard Mark shouting “just outside a length” for a little, then entering first post we got a lot of calls of “toes-heels-swing” and we got to one length, one whistle. Chloe called “give me their cox” and we responded with power, though getting a touch sloppy with bladework. I heard “three quarters” from Mark, the two whistle followed, and Chloe started calling for push for 10, which collected us a bit and gave us a good surge out of the corner. I think I heard 3 whistles after that, and I remember Chloe calling “this is it girls, push for 10”, and that was a good push. We tidied up and put our legs down and the boat moved. The whistles went to continuous and it was a bump going into grassy. Not a bad location considering that most of our supporters are on that bit of river.
It was only afterwards that we found out how close Sidney was to Pembroke — apparently it was down to half a length at one point (and apparently nearly gave Mark a heart attack) but all is well, the bump is done, and we can look forward to catching Pembroke II a little sooner tomorrow. Not sure what will happen on day 4 yet. We will take it one race at a time…
For today, we’ve kept that Blades dream alive. Still lots of bumping to do before the dream comes true. But hey, 3 crews, 2 days, 6 bumps— WELL HARD.
Wing Ying Chow, W1, 7