Isle of Ely run the Great Ouse (half) Marathon. Its about 22 km, approximately the same distance as a half marathon, and significantly shorter than Boston. Hence, an excellent training opportunity. Here we all are waiting for the start:

L to R: Keith, Big Simon, Will, Little Simon, William, Bailee, Sarah, Amanda, Lorraine, Dan.

We'd been through the traditional faff of exactly which crews we could put in, who was available, and so on; which resulted in a few late subs and ended up with Keith in the mixed VIII instead of a double, and Simon E generously offering to trailer. Just before the start, we all made our careful preparations:

And... it was all great. There's a GPS trace, of course. We managed 2:08 average. We started at 18-20, went up to 24 after a few k, stayed there for a fair while (with a break in pairs at 11 k), up to 26-27 for the last ~6 k and up to 30+ for the last 2k.

Afterwards, we were all smiles. Well, nearly. This is by me, standing up at 6 and looking towards the landing stages, with the cathedral in the distance. Sarah at 7 was a touch less smiley, having got something a bit like cramp for the last 2 k.

Our time, 1:31:58, gets us the IM3 Mx VIII course record. It would also have got us the Men's IM3 course record, had we entered as all men -). Or the IM2, since there's no record yet in that category. We were 5th overall. Winner was a very impressive MasE VIII from Monmouth in 1:27.