After the glory that was Peterborough, the next step was The Big Time: Marlow regatta on Eton Dorney. Sadly, this was more Peterborough-Sunday than Peterborough-Saturday.

We needed to be there to race for - I forget; but it was early; say 8:30 - and so elected to stay overnight "somewhere nearby", which turned out be be a very nice Airbnb place. Watching Die Hard was the ideal pre-regatta preparation. After a good night's sleep we got up - still early - and got to Dorney with not-really-quite-enough time to be fully settled before it was time to boat for the time trials. For Marlow was being run on the Newe Systeme, in which the various entries in each class are sorted via time trials into A, B and so on finals. Note that Met, or so I'm told, takes this even further, and puts all IM3, 2 and 1 VIIIs together; that would have suited us as we were faster than some IM2s.

Anyway the format of the time trial wasn't quite clear to us - it was over 1900 m, we knew that - but it turned out to be that we were started, errm, near the start and then timed from crossing a mark at 100 m, to the line. With crews started at about 30 second intervals it meant we had someone behind us, ish; who gained on us a little, but not too much. We had a decent row which I felt fairly happy with; but alas when it came to the times we were last and hence in the B final.

Come the final itself: a fair but not perfect start, and we were soon about 1/3 to 1/2 length down on Marlow; with Lea lost out in front. But we kept at it, and managed a push back in the middle of the race and took a few seats off them; but they didn't crack and in the end we lost by 1.8 secs: 6:24.8. Hey ho. That may well be a club record for 2 k, though; anyone know any better?