Category: Races

The day is hot, muggy and wet. My nerves are doing cartwheels in my stomach. After the disappointments of Lent Bumps 2011 for W2, the pressure is especially on. Due to delays to the men’s division, we have a lengthy marshalling at Chesterton before arriving at the starting post with quite literally four minutes to spare. We observe our target, Darwin II, and then we are pushed into the middle for those few awful seconds awaiting that awful cannon blast. KABOOM! “Build one, build two!” screams our cox Chloe as we power through our carefully prepared start. Another 8 builds later and I force myself to look at the boat chasing us, Sidney II, is being pushed into the distance. Then during out power for ten I hear BEEEP BEEEP and then about a second later BEEEP BEEEP BEEEEEP!! We’re gaining on Darwin fast until the continuous whistles sound seemingly forever in our ears (as it turns our Darwin’s cox did not concede until she was reprimanded by an umpire). We bumped! And after a mad, fumbling scramble to park, the elation hits and for the first time I finally get to wear some greenery! Day one is over in just over a minute and now I am more than rearing to go for the next.

Eleanor Dickinson

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Day 1 of May Bumps – W1 Race Report 

Here is the long and short of my history with the Bumps: popped gate, broken boat, row of shame, spoons and finishing at the bottom of the bottom division. Not terribly auspicious. But that was last term, and it’s time for a fresh start. Hello, Bumps. I’m Reana. Let’s try to like each other.

Having moved up a crew this term into the first boat (who got blades in the Lent Bumps, no pressure), I’ve been helpfully reminded that there are a few girls in the boat who have never been bumped before (no pressure). I anxiously tuned in to CamFM to see how the second boat, my boat last term, fare in their division. Yes! An impressively quick bump (just over a minute, no pressure), and Darwin II are out of the way.

Thanks to delays, marshalling takes what feels like forever, though thankfully the clouds that kept threatening rain never followed through. It’s incredibly humid. Nerves build. Finally, we’re on our way up to the starting stations, squeezing in a couple of practice rolling starts along the way. In a somewhat poetic twist, we are also chasing a Darwin boat, their W1. We’re not long at the starting
stations when the four minute cannon goes. De-kit and recheck gate. Stomach is quite twisty now. One minute cannon. We push off at twenty seconds, and get into position. Front stops, blades buried, back straight, tension radiating off every one of us.

BOOM. Draaaaaw 1, draw 2, draw 3. Did we just get a whistle? Already? We’ve barely finished our start sequence, and the whistles are going like mad, two then three then continuous. It doesn’t even feel like we’ve settled into a race pace when we’re getting the call to hold it up, and we pull off to the side as quickly as we can. The whole thing is over in less than a minute.

After all the build-up, do I wish it had gone on longer, that I really had a chance to savour it? Uh, no. No, that’s fine. I will not look a quick-bump-gift-horse in the mouth. Besides, if savouring is what we were looking for, there was the entire victory row back to the boathouse, adorned with our foliage, basking in the cheers from the spectators. Not gonna lie – that didn’t suck.

Bumps, this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Bring on Day 2.

Reana Maier

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Our hearts sank as we arrived at the boathouse to be met by hurricane conditions. However, we W2 girls are made of sterner stuff and were resolved to fight back against the blustering wind, power through the stroke, and just generally row really good and all that.

Despite the wind, the row down the river to marshal was uneventful, and our spirits were lifted by the abundance of liquorice allsorts, courtesy of Eve, which got us through the seemingly endless wait under the motorway bridge. After this wait, we proceeded to the start line.

Then we were off! After a strong start, we raced around the corner only to be met with a wall of wind! However, we were prepared and the power remained strong (both epically and manly so). We battled on gallantly down the reach, I crying out calls from my carefully prepared race plan- which to my immense delight, did not blow away straight into stroke’s faces [Ying: it was a head wind, would have blown off the other way!]. A few (painful) minutes later and the finish line was in sight (which I observantly informed the crew of). Spurred on by this knowledge, we made a final sprint to the end, finishing completely exhausted, but with an intact boat and no crabs caught. And to add to that, a generally solid performance from everyone all round. We returned with heads held high and ready for some more action. Bring on bumps!

–report by Chloe Wallis (cox) and Eleanor Dickinson (stroke)

Result: winner of W4 division, beating 8 W1 crews and 11 men's crews overall, time 6:38

taken and made by Eve Bonner

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