Author: Alice Levin

It was W3’s first race of the term, and as we warmed up on the ergs and practised our start sequence, we were feeling confident and ready to go. The weather was beautiful, and we enjoyed a leisurely row up to Baits Bite Lock before marshalling just upstream of First Post Corner. Having arrived with plenty of time to spare and being one of the last crews in the division to race meant we and could sit back enjoy the sun. As the division started, we made our way up to the starting buoy (following a heated discussion with coach Gen about the pronunciation of the word buoy). After coming to frontstops, we stormed out of the blocks with the best start we’ve ever managed as a crew, and this gave us the confidence to put the power down and keep the rating up. We approached the finish line with a strong power ten and finished in 4th place in our division, a result we were extremely pleased to have achieved, and which puts us in a fantastic position for Bumps at the end of term.

Issy Pearce-Mason, stroke

Today was the first race of the term for W2. After all the rain this week, it was very exciting to see that the sun was out and the weather was very nice. Once everybody was there, we quickly got the boat out and were soon ready to set off. Unfortunately, there was some trouble with the cox box and our cox, Felicity, suspected that the cox box at the boathouse would run out of battery quickly. Luckily, W3 was in the division before us, so we hoped to get their cox box for the race.

We set off, rowed along the boathouses and finally arrived at the lock. We span at the lock and then it was time for marshalling. The time passed very quickly, Izzy came to bring us the cox box, and soon we were about to start our first race of the term. After our first few draw and wind strokes we settled into a very good rhythm and could maintain it over the entire course.

In the late afternoon, the race results came out, and we were very happy to see that we were faster than LMBC, whom we are chasing in Bumps. We have already improved a lot since the beginning of term, and we still have a few more weeks of training before Bumps. I can see us going from strength to strength and making our performance at May Bumps something to be proud of.

Lisa Kreusser, 2