Despite not having the start to May Bumps we were hoping for yesterday, we all arrived at the boathouse ready for a new day and a new race. We knew a bump was bound to happen in front of us, but we didn’t know if we would end up chasing the bump or overbump. Either way we knew we were in for a long fight today.
After a slightly scrappy, but strong start we struggled to find our rhythm and Tit Hall slowly began to gain on us as we came around First Post corner. As we came through Plough reach we really began to hit our stride, however, at this point Tit Hall had moved up on us and had overlap. Even though Tit Hall were pulling up beside us, we refused to lay down and die. If they wanted this bump they were going to have to fight for it.
Coming around Ditton, we had a big push and not only began to pull away from Tit Hall, but also managed to get a whistle on Fitz in front of us. Unfortunately, Fitz were closer to Selwyn than we were to them, meaning we had to hold it up to avoid any broken boats. Tit Hall, still going for the bump, hit poor Octopussy and our cox quite hard.
But the drama was not over yet! As we were clearing, Emily, our boat club captain and bank party, dived to grab a blade, missed the edge of the bank and ended up in the river! As much as we enjoyed watching our captain taking a quick swim in the Cam during a Bumps race, we quickly refocused on figuring out what our result actually was – there was talk of technical results or rerows. Despite our hope of a rerow, CUCBC decided to give Tit Hall a technical bump due to the separation when we had to stop.
As we rowed home with a substitute, soaking wet cox sat on the canvas of our boat we vowed that tomorrow we would avenge our broken stern and injured cox.
Maria Rust, stroke