Chesterton Rowing Club
The current committee, with contact details, is at chestertonrowingclub.org/contact.
At the AGM in September 2015 the following were elected:
Club Captain, Simon Emmings
Women's Captain, Lorraine Turville
Men's Captain, Simon E
Secretary, Annie West
Treasurer, Dawn Hawkins
Kit officer, Kate Winter
Equipment officers, Hannah and Andy Southgate
Vice Admiral (social sec'), Barney Brown
Race Sec,' Meg Richards
Safety officer, Dave Richards
Webmeister William Connolley
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.
We win! The men no longer novice, and the ladies at IM3.
Simon Lloyd, Dan McGreal, Simon Emmings (cox), Bailee Stratton, Brian Stevens, Keith Lee / Lorraine Turvill, Jo Raskin, Amanda Clarkson
Photos "courtesy of", i.e. nicked from, Brian Stevens. Now, if someone photographed the men racing...
Results (from http://www.peterboroughcityrowing.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Summer-Regatta-2015-Results-Board-Sun.pdf)
W3: row over. W2: down. W1: row over. M2: up! M1: down.
The last night of the bumps loomed like a giant grey rain cloud on the horizon, which is exactly what was coming. The early divisions got the worst of it.
Afterwards, we all repaired to the Waterman for drinks, speeches and prize giving.
M1: back row: Mike Parrott (5), Andy Southgate (stroke), Dan McGreal (3), Connor (pushing off), James Tidy (shouty person), Rob Doubleday (4), Chris Wood (7). Front row: Dave Richards (1), Simon Emmings (2), William Connolley (5), Paul Holland (retired hurt).
Here we see M1, somewhat damp: the row down was dry enough, we timed it to not to have to wait much at Stourbridge, and the rain only really got going for the row back. But what of the race itself I hear you cry? Well, It wasn't our finest hour. We had Nines 2 behind us who had got City 3 the previous night, but not till the reach; and we'd held City off easily enough. But alas we went down in the gut. They probably got a better than usual start; we certainly rowed worse than usual after the bridge and it didn't really come together. Its always disappointing to end bumps that way; but for a crew lacking many of last year's M1, down two overall with two good solid row-overs is decent.
M2: bumped up! Yay for them, a fairly short row mowing down Champs just after the bridge. Our roving reporter reports "It wasn't pretty but it was brutally effective. Stroke showed us no mercy with a rating of 38 and we put Champs to the Sword within 100 metres of the A14. Well done M2!!! Yeah!!!!".
An ex-spoon.
W1: rowed over.
W2: awaiting report.
W3: rowed over, but it was epic.
W3 and W2 down. W1: up. M2 and M1: row over.
W1 looking happy, having bumped City 4 on Ditton.
W3: Bumped on Ditton alas. Pic. Video.
W2: no report yet. Pic.
W1: bumped City 4 to go tenth; only one more to single-digits. Well done.
M2: rather more of them in the Waterman tonight, and they were looking much happier, having put the threat of spoons behind them with a gutsy row over. From the horse's mouth: "So a streadfast row over tonight. We held Aquaphobes nicely and they looked shattered by the finish. Another smooth start - we really have got those down to a tee now boys. They took a length out of us by the Plough but could not press home. We kept our style and rhythm beautifully - unlike last night. Will asked us to lengthen and push and we did. Never seen a Cox so excited to get a row over!" Video, with more of Jo's enthusiastic commentary. And from Will the cox (speaking on Friday): "Yesterday - it wasn’t the row over as such that got me so excited, but rather the way you guys raced; I think it was your best performance since I have been coxing you. The start was good, then we hit a pretty good rhythm after the outflow to start ourselves moving away. The focus was there when it was needed, particularly around corners where they appeared to get closer quite quickly (purely due to the fact that we have started cornering and they haven’t). Having watched the video their bank party was being extremely optimistic with their whistles - at times I thought they were a lot closer than they were, but top job for absorbing their pushes and stepping away. The best part for me was the first 2/3 of the reach where we pushed up the boat speed and hit a sweet rhythm, their whistles stopped and you guys were flying - that was what got me so excited. Today - very simple objective: give Champs spoons! For the past three days there have been crews above us that I know we could catch, the only problem was that they weren’t one station ahead - but today they are! Same attack, same control, and same length as yesterday. Don’t wait for the bump to come to you, make it happen."
M1: as always, bumps continues to surprise. Today, for the first time ever in my long and -ahem- illustrious bumps career, I was pretty sure I was going to have an unexciting row over: Tabs 3 would walk away ahead, and behind us City 3 had nothing extra to give. Both of these things happened, but what I failed to foresee was Tabs 3 failing to take Grassy in a blades-on-the-bank-need-a-restart type of way. Which left us suddenly going from 3 lengths off to half a length off. We didn't really know what was going on. I had a brief moment of worrying that we'd get so caught up trying to catch them we'd exhaust ourselves in their wash and get caught by City. But happily after we kept half a length down Plough reach, they pulled away down the reach, and City dropped back before having the decency to be bumped by Nines 2. Another might-have-been: had we pulled out all the stops at that point, we might well have got them. Or we might have fallen apart instead; so probably just as well. And tomorrow? We have someone new behind us. Nines are clearly faster than City; but we'd dropped City by the time Nines got them; so I'm quietly hopeful. Video from the Gut. Video from Jo (3:50 for Tabs crash).
Nothing to do with our club, but I really liked this pair of pix of Robs and Tabs1, from Wednesday:
W3: row over. W2: down. W1: up! M2: down. M1: row over.
W1 rowing proudly back with their willow having bumps COWS.
W3: row over, but looks very promising for tomorrow.
W2: down to Tabs 5, apparently their dev squad. Video.
W1: bumped the once-mighty COWS. Video. Nice line into Grassy and the inevitable bump. Great commentary from Jo. Pix.
M2: down to St Neots 2. A long race, and they were only 400 m from the finish when hit. From the boat: "A very smooth solid start - even stroke was pleased (and he doesn't please easily). We held off a good St Neots 2 boat until the Plough when they started to gain. We think they had a "killer" 20 stroke call that we couldn't respond to. A good performance and once again no disgrace losing to better opposition. In fact maybe St Neots might be a touch embarrassed that they didn't catch us sooner."
M1: row over, but an excellent one. City 3 came up a little, just outside a length at the bridge, but we were back on station by First Post, held them from there to the Plough, and pulled away to a couple of lengths by the finish. Very nice. Riggercam. From the towpath.
Summary: W3: up! W2 and W1: row over. M2 and M1: down.
W3 having bumped Nines 5 celebrate opposite the Plough.
W3: bumped on the exit from Grassy, having got massive overlap. fb video.
W2: ahead of them, Nines 4 bumps Champs 6 (Champs are having a really bad time). Press 2 chose the wrong line, got obstructed, and hence were bumped by our W2. Chesterton W2 went on to overtake Xpress, but the bump was not awarded and instead a row over for the first night (the initial results got this wrong).
W1: a fast Press crew overbumped COWS ahead of them, with City 4 going down to St Neots in between. All to play for tomorrow. Watch the video (thanks Jo)..
M2: no report yet, but they went down :-( [Update: "Had a rocky start and were bumped in the Ditch/start of the Gut by a Rob Roy's 4 junior crew. We had however taken about a length out of the boat in front of us - a novice crew from City, City 8". Watch the video (thanks Jo)]
M1: we got a decent start but didn't quite feel sufficiently measured and together from about halfway from the <s>Railway</s> Motorway bridge to First Post; and somewhere in that section Tabs 3 (the Hills Road Boyz) came on pretty quickly, bumping us in the gut, alas. Tomorrow will be fun: City 3 got Champs 1 quickly, but that's more a measure of Champs than City and I look forward to the morrow with eager anticipation. Video. Jet Photographic.
Other stuff:
* Men's division 1 from Grassy. Listen for the horrible crunch at 0:50 as Nine's get forced into the bank nose first.
We win!
Results available from http://www.crarowing.co.uk/images/TimeRace2015_Results.pdf
M1 won overall, W1 came second of the women. M2 were only one second behind the novice winners; W3 look to be faster than the crews presumed to be around them in bumps.
As last year, I put the GoPro on (though sadly not on a tripod as last time). Here we go:
Whew, its done. Pretty well everything went well and everyone seemed happy. There's an archive of the headofthecam entry page here.
Downing M1, fastest crew of the day; and Downing W1, fastest women's VIII. Fastest women's crew of the day was the CCRC quad. On display is the fine "Head of the Cam" shield dating back to 1962; we're really hoping to get it updated with winners from recent years, this year.
Fastest men's crew of the day was Downing M1 with 9:05, set in division one and not beaten, though Cantabs M1 with 9:10 in division two came close. Fastest women's crew was a City quad in division four, who were careless enough not to give themselves a catchy name.
Thanks to: everyone who made the event a success, by helping or by rowing. Special thanks to Bill, Eric, Hannah and Colm for umpiring.
The results are now up at http://tinyurl.com/headofthecam2015. As in previous years these were live-edited, which worked very well. So well, indeed, that this year race control was paperless - everyone was viewing them online, there was no need to print them out. The results are available in overall time order for all divisons; by category; and by club.
Prizes were awarded to anyone who won a category with at least three entrants, and in some cases to categories with two entrants; and to the fastest women. Not everyone was there on the day; please get in contact (headofthecam@gmail.com) if you are deserving of an uncollected prize.
Everyone likes pictures of themselves. Here are some:
* SpottedRabbitFarm was the "offical photographer" for the day, and has pic of each division.
* Cantabs have div 2 (only, I think) up on facebook.
* Dawn kindly took video of the finishes - here's div 1 for example - which offers you a brief fragment of you going over the line. The video was mostly intended to help resolve any uncertainty over finish ordering; happily, there wasn't any this year.
Well, nothing is ever quite perfect. In rough order:
Div 1 went off late, by about 20 minutes, because of a boat coming from Baits Bite lock and refusing to stop. From the information I've been given it was asked several times and refused; its possible that if we'd had someone at the lock they might have been about to talk more easily; we'll add that to the list of things to do better next time.
Div 4 had a bit of a clash around 418 / 419 / 420 / 421, around about Ditton corner. 420 - a IV - caught up with the slower VIIIs - 418 and 419 - as they were side by side, and was impeded, by perhaps as little as a few seconds; the pair 421 similarly. We need to start the VIIIs off en bloc, mostly, so it will sometimes happen that there are faster small boats behind slower VIIIs; for this reason, I advise people that if they think they need a larger gap, because they are faster than the boat ahead, they should ask for it. The start marshalls will be sympathetic, even in div 4. The race rules are for slower crews to give way to faster, but there are sections of the course where this may not be immeadiately possible; and of course safety is always the overriding priority.
At the prize giving I made the casual assumption that the fastest women's crew of the day was obviously an VIII; but it wasn't; it was a City quad; so well done them. Happily no-one noticed this faux pas at the time.
We won! Not the whole thing, naturally, but our own little section: the IM3 mixed VIII's. It was not a crowded section, there were two boats in it, but nonetheless we felt we'd rowed well, and it was really nice to get a pot for it. Note: this was on Saturday 28 March 2015; I'm behind in my posts.
Originally, we were going to be a MasC mixed VIII, which left us rather stuck with Bailee, who unlike the rest of us is Young. We hadn't quite made the unpalatable choice between kicking her out (nooooo!) or keeping her, and giving back a pot if we won it (nooooo!), when Vesta made it for us, by opening the race to non-Vet crews.
Full results are available at http://d8qhkz6a47cpe.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/FINAL_results.pdf. We got 21:34, beating Bradford by nearly two minutes. But we would have won the MasC category, since our average age was well into the 40's, beating Sons of the Thames / AK by nearly 3 seconds, and two others in that category.
If you care to watch it, there's a GoPro video from the 6 seat, showing mostly Me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJ6amR1hrtI.
Here we all are: James Tidy; Bailee Stratton; Sarah Coates-Holland; William Connolley; Chris Wood; Dave Byrne; Dave Richards; Meg Richards; Anne Roberts.
Afterwards, to the Bull just a few hundred yards away on the river front, and very good it was too. And we talked, of our glorious race, but also of What To Do About Tomorrow: because tomorrow was the HoRR, and the weather forecast was Bad. And we'd been burnt last year. There was a real safety concern (we'd have at least one tideway novice) and a rather less focussed but real concern that turning up, possibly faffing on the river for hours, only to see it cancelled, would be depressing. Opinions varied; in the end, we essentially went for scrubbing it, which I still somewhat regret, because the HoRR did turn out to be on, though conditions were clearly non-optimal. hey ho, so it goes.
Outside the pub, long after the race, the Thames has shrunk to a thread. Deeply symbolic of something, I imagine.
Oh, yes: and I should add: we trailered with Champs (thanks!) to ULBC. Which is even further out than Sons. So, its convenient to get to, and they have a nice big boathouse and serve food and drink. And its easy to park nearby. All big plusses. The big minus is, of course, the row back after the race. As it happened, this one time, we were rowing so well that it really wasn't a problem. However, in a strong wind (like there would have been on the Sunday) or in a crew making heavy going, it would have been hell.
