We rowed up in the cold and wet, knowing that the bump was in us – just as long as nothing ahead got in our way. And even if it did, the overbump was an option. Marshalling was miserable, but that’s not the important thing in bumps. As Emma H says “It was raining? Really? Didn’t notice cause we were a little busy”.
The gun went off and we got off to racing with a strong, balanced start. King’s got a hopeful whistle on us, but we soon pulled away from them and I watched Peterhouse close and bump. In the meantime, we got a whistle on Maggie and they got one on Queens. Then Queens bumped Pembroke and we knew we had the whole course to wind LMBC in. We ground them down slowly, always inching closer. We were on a whistle, then two-thirds of a length, then two whistles, then three whistles (it took much, much longer than that in the actual race). Finally, we had continuous and that quickly became a bump as we went into Ditton.
As Mark said, that was the first MECBC bump in 5 years of the ‘just grind them down’ type (I think that means he was proud of us!) and as Reana says, “BUMP, BUMP! That was, without a doubt, my best ever bumps race“.
Sally-Anne Bennett, 7