The college rowing winter season is a strange one. Faced with raw beginners in September, the coaches have to develop skill, technique, power and wisdom over a relatively short time, all the while having their training peppered with various races from 500m sprint regattas up to ‘Head’ races – timed point-to-point races ranging from 2000m to 4 ¼ miles.
This 4 ¼ mile maximum is the Women’s Eights Head of the River Race (WeHoRR), competed by 300+ crews in mid March. The course – the Boat Race course on the Thames in reverse, from Chiswick Bridge to Putney Bridge. The competition – Cambridge University Women’s ‘Blue Boats’ (deciding on final selection ahead of their Boat Race in a fortnight’s time), Cambridge colleges, Clubs (both national and international) and some GB rowers as well! Aside from boating with this daunting opposition, our W1 crew also had to cope with rowing on the ‘Tideway’ (the tidal stretch of the Thames on which the race takes place).
W1 raced in the ‘Novice Academic’ category alongside many of their college rivals including Sidney Sussex W1 (who bumped W1 on the first day of the Lents) and New Hall W1 (who were bumped by W1 on day 3). The difficult thing with Head racing is that once you cross the finish line a long and nervous wait is all that you have to look forward to unlike the immediate gratification of victory side-by-side regatta racing when you can see and respond to your opposition. Nevertheless our W1 knew hat to do – get a good, clean start, push away from the crew set off behind and hopefully overtake some of the crews set off ahead. The way to do this was by combining all they had learnt and fight for each other every stroke until they crossed the finish line. With Moritz Kottenhagen in the coxes seat, they knew they had an experienced Tideway cox in charge of steering and even had an entourage of ARBC fans along the course.
Conditions were near perfect – a strong racing stream, the faintest of tail winds and sunny, dry conditions. They got off to a strong start and found their rhythm early, making the most of the early sheltered section. By Barnes Bridge, they had gained on the crew who had set off before them and continued to grind them down between there and Hammersmith Bridge. Passing their first crew just under hammersmith, they sat tall and prepared to complete the race plan – a 2000m ‘sprint’ from there to the finish line at Putney Bridge. The bank party jumped in the minibus and drove from their viewing point at Barnes to meet up with the crew as they pulled in. The bodies and the faces of the crew told the story – they were blue-lipped and slumped with exhaustion. All that was left was to derig the boat and pack it back onto the trailer and await the results.
At about 8pm that night as crew and support were enjoying dinner in Richmond, the results cam through. A fantastic 147/300 in a time of 21:38. Not only that but they had beaten a great deal of Cambridge colleges and other universities, just reward for all their hard work in training, which continued at 6am the following Monday after a well-earned rest on the Sunday.
This entry was posted on Sunday, March 8th, 2009 at 3:01 pm and is filed under Frontpage, Results. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.