After the wild excitement of the Head of the Cam it's back to the mundane racing life with the City Spring Head to Head. We had entered our mens's IM3 VIII, rather weaker than the crew for the winter Head to Head; the women's IM3 VIII; and Keith our lone sculler.

Here are the results, which were published commendably quickly.

Of the Men

L to R: Dave Richards, Dan McGreal, Lewis Clark, Brian, Your Humble Correspondent, Lewis Gray, Ondrej Cervinka. Chris Wood took the photo as a way of refusing to be in it; our cox Simon Emmings had run off with the women.

We got 15:00.7, which was pretty tolerable for a mixed IM3 / Novice crew with only one rather ropey outing under its belt. Faster than Winter H2H 2012 anyway :-). We were the fastest Town crew by raw time - admittedly against fairly thin competition - and won IM3 pots. Where am I going to put them all? On the (gloriously sunny) start line we looked at the crew ahead - Nines IM3 - and behind - Downing M2 - and thought we ought to tailgate Nines - who would surely be faster - so as to let Downing leave us a large gap. This plan totally failed. We turned out to be faster than Nines, by (as it turned out) 20 seconds over the first leg, so got to row in their puddles the whole way and nearly overtook them on the finish line. All good bumps practice. Meanwhile Downing, who started a rather close 7 lengths behind, caught up all but 3 of those on the reach which started to look worrying for clashes around Ditton and Grassy, but fortunately that was most of what they had, and they finished a length or so off us, 13 seconds faster (actually I find that puzzling; surely they were more than 13 seconds faster than us?). The way back was less exciting: we left Nines a larger gap, and Downing, whilst not over-generous with theirs, finished about 3 lengths off us.

Witty moment: no-one had told Ondrej it was 2 * 2km; he thought the first leg was all there was, and paced himself accordingly.

Other years: winter 2016: 14:28.6. 2015: 16:41 as the Mx VIII. Winter 2014: 16:26.

Keith did 0:20:28.3; which puts him 2/3 in CRA Nov 1x, beaten by the Mighty Morley.

Of the women

The ladies came 3/3 in 17:39; but "I think the results don't really show the full story. It was an epic first leg. St Edmunds gained quickly on The Reach but then we held them off racing side by side for the remaining 1200m round the bends, keeping our cool despite clashes of blades, they eventually overtook but we were within a canvas again by the
end".