Category: W2

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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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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