Oddly enough, the race plan was for a row-over – we were racing at the top of the division, ahead of King’s whom we had bumped the day before. We had a strong row-up, catching up with King’s several times and winning the psychological battle.
We had a long wait for the cannons, and then were being pushed out. The start was strong. Kings got a single whistle several times (I don’t know whether it was an honest whistle or not, but like to think it wasn’t), but we stayed together and pushed just a little harder off the whistles and soon enough were walking away from them. According to FaT live timings, we had pushed them away to two lengths by The Plough, and they fell away further along the reach. We picked it up a little under the railway bridge to entertain the men’s boats who were marshalling. We were pleased with our row over.
Rowing over meant we were sandwich boat. To be honest, we expected to row over again at the bottom of the first division: we were chasing Selwyn again, and they were chasing the spooning Tit Hall. And the overbump onto Churchill looked unlikely as they were chasing St Cats. We knew we had to go ridiculously hard off the start if we were to have any chance of catching Selwyn, so we did. Unfortunately, that just meant messiness. In any case, Selwyn caught Tit Hall before the motorway bridge, although we had gained on them a little. We chased the overbump, but didn’t believe that we had the ability to catch it, having already raced 2k. Even so, coach Mark wouldn’t let us wind it down (which had been in the race plan), so we kept going at race pace. Eventually we crossed the finish line.
We were happy with our races today, with them going exactly as we expected. Tomorrow, we need to push off King’s again to row over at the top of division 2, and then bump Tit Hall to cement our place in the Women’s first division. That would be a perfect end to my years with MECBC.
Sally-Anne Bennett