Town Bumps 2014 - Tuesday (Day 1)

July 23, 2014 by Ian Foster

A glorious day of bumping action, with ups and downs and a fine start in glorious weather to the pinnacle of the rowing calendar.

In brief: we're up one overall over the day, In more detail:

W3 - outside Combined Boathouse, after bumping 99's W6.

W3 (up): a nice row from just before the motorway bridge closing all the way and a good clean bump at First Post.
- Video
- Some pictures, courtesy of Meg

M3 (down): Unfortunate winners of the closely-fought "least number of strokes in the bumps" prize, going down the the City Presidents VIII. There have been some slightly odd-shall-we-say decisions about the order of the crews.
- Video
W2 (down): a long row from the lock with all the crews ahead of them bumped out, holding off the crew behind until after First Post; they then got a bit tired and the crew behind closed them down at Grassy. They get to be sandwich boat today, if they can row over as head of W3 ahead of Rad 2.
- Video
M2 (up): Managed to catch Cantabs M7, after only 35 strokes, I'm told, which sounds like the sort of bump you want. And good prospects for tonight as the crew now ahead of them rowed over.
- No known pix or videos so far...
W1 (row over): Chased St-Neots all the way to the finish, apparently closing the gap down to maybe a length on the Reach, and nearly a canvas before the finish.
- Video 1
- Video 2 (from Ditton Corner)

M1 (up): We had Press behind us, who beat us by 3 feet in Nines regatta, and by 5 seconds in the timed race. And ahead of us, Champs 1, who no-one had seen. That turned out to be because they hadn't been out much; they looked a bit rough rowing up, and proved quite catchable: we had overlap not far past First Post, rowed in massively choppy water apparently hitting them several times, before they finally conceded just before Grassy. Which lead to some chaos trying to clear; there was some suggestion Press might have conceeded to the crew behind, but no. Ahead of us City 2 (hello Tom) caught Tabs 2 (hello Petr) so we're chasing Tabs 2 tonight.
- Video from our stroke "RiggerCam"
- And Amy on First Post Corner

- William Connolley

Peterborough Spring Regatta

June 23, 2014 by Ian Foster

We went to Peterborough Spring Regatta. You may talk of your "Met" or your "Henley" but for us, Peterborough is the Big Time. Adding spice to the mix this year, our ladies were an VIII on the first day and a IV on the second, whilst we men had an VIII in the second day and two renegades rowing with City on the Saturday.

The Women

They put a spirited performance on the Saturday, winning their heat (beating Nines, City and U Coll London) but coming second to Warwick U in the final.

More excitingly, on the Sunday they won their heat easily, and put in clearly the fastest time; the final was no different and they won by 8 seconds over their nearest rivals, Nines. Since it was a large field, they even got two points apiece for this feat and the long dearth of points in the ladies club is now over. The only rather minor irritation was that, had they entered the Saturday VIII, they'd have likely won that too.

Its a hard life at regattas: 5% wild excitement mixed with 95% relaxation. Fortunately the weather was kind.

The Men

Well, we were heroic, obviously. On Saturday Paul Holland and I (responding to an anguished mid-week email from Tom) joined the Nahorski City boyz for an IM3 VIII. We got there bright and early - 8 - towing our trailer and ready for a paddle on the Nene to settle us into the crew. Which was just as well; they're big and powerful but perhaps a fraction rougher, or perhaps just different, to our style; and anyway its ages since I've not stroked a boat; so we settled.

For the race, we came second in our heat our heat in 3:13.4, a fairly comfortable 3 seconds ahead of number 3, one of the Putney eights. The semi, alas, did not go so well: we dropped down to 3:16 and came third to Broxbourne (3:05, the winners) and Warwick U (3:12). And we'd have come fifth in the final, had we got into it.

Sunday

Started well: we beat De Monfort, Champs and a Putney crew to win our heat in 3:15, thus avoiding the Rep, and giving us nothing to do except lounge around in the sunshine all day, which was not burdensome, and watching the ladies, which was fun.

But I'll spare you the Great White Whale. Alas, the final was not to be ours: indeed, we came last in 3:17. Such is life. We consoled ourselves with the thought that we'd get better and come back for the Summer Regatta.

Oh, and who were we? Me / Ian / Andy S / Chris W / Paul H / Dave R / Will W / Dave I; ably coxed by Mr Tidy.

Head of the Cam 2014 - Results & Wash-Up

May 19, 2014 by William Connolley

The HoC 2014 page is still up, though it got a somewhat retouched as the event progressed. So, this is the wash-up.

Results

Firstly, the results. These are available form http://tinyurl.com/headofthecam2014
Congratulations to Caius men (8:49), who have now won for five years in a row; and to Downing women (10:59).

And congratulations to all other winners; if you weren't around for the prizegiving (shame!) please contact me to arrange collection.

We apologise for not having the HoC shield available on the day; this was due to a foul-up. In compensation, we / the CRA will be arranging to get the recent winners added to the engraving.

Other Thanks

I should also extend my thanks to various other folk, apart from the competitors, without whom the regatta could not have been held:

Our Umpires, Bill Keys, Eric Smith and Jess Upton,
All the fine Marshals, start and finish timers from our club,
and the backroom staff.

The regatta was inspected by Andrew Tayler from the Eastern Region Umpiring Committee (ERUC) to check that all was running well. This was pleasingly unbureaucratic, and Andrew was very happy with the running of the regatta.

Controversies

This year, we did not neglect the fine tradition of having at least one mismatch between the crews that started, and the ones that finished. This year, it was Darwin M2 / Robinson M2: according to our sheets, Robinson had finished but not started, whereas Darwin had started but not finished (you wouldn't believe how long it took to link those two). Then we realised that they have similarish blades, if you squint, and finally we realised that Robinson M2 hadn't rowed; so that all fitted.

A new "dispute" arose, but quietly, of the issue of whether some college M/W2 crews were really M/W1, or at least had some rowers from their higher crews; especially when the higher crew wasn't rowing, or had scratched late. As a townie - and more especially as a townie running the race from Queens' boathouse where I don't see any of the crews - I really can't tell. We rely on an honour system for people entering the right category. I did - afterwards - wonder if I should enforce a "bumping up" rule: if your first crew doesn't enter, then your second crew gets to be your first crew. it would happen in bumps. But I don't really think this would be fair either. The issue gets discussed on the Cambridge rowing messageboards.

Bill Keys inspected some of the crews for safety: items such as heel restraints. most were fine; some were not. Please make sure your heel restraints are in order! If you won't do it for the life-saving effects in the unlikely event of a capsize, do it to save yourself trouble during regattas.

Entries

I haven't actually looked carefully, but entries were down on last year. Total rowing seats was 709, compared to 830 last year. I think we had more from the Town, but many fewer from Gown - I suspect the timing interacted even more badly with the Easter holidays than it usually does. Anyone with any brilliant ideas on how to fix this (other than moving the event, which is not in my gift) do please let me know. My feeling is that mailing out to the colleges at the end of Lents is mostly a waste of time - no-one is organised enough at that point to think of their entries for next term, understandably.

Start order

Just for once, no-one really complained about the start order. But I have to admit that the system of asking for predicted times is not workable. Some people manage to submit beliveable times, but far too many don't. What I ended up doing was to award M1's 1 point; M2's 4 points; M3 and belows 7 points. And then good-quality town clubs got 2 points, and I could also adjust colleges for good/bad. And then I added the women at a suitable delta from the men. This worked pretty well, and I think would be more workable as a guess-your-class type system.

Chesterton Women’s Winter 2014 Round-Up

March 18, 2014 by Ian Foster

We had two goals for Winter training; The Winter League (three head races held on the Cam in January, February and March) and WEHoRR.

Our land training had consisted of weekly strength sessions at Core Cambridge, a usually gruesome Erg plus a water session often coached by Andrea Bosnyak. We’d been blessed with a mild winter so few outings had been cancelled and unlike the rest of the country not too much in the way of flooding.

Winter League

After the first leg of the Winter League we were in joint first place in our Novice Women’s Eight category so we were game on! After the second leg we pulled away from the nearest opposition by 10 seconds so just had to keep it together for the third leg. Luckily we were placed just behind the Champs Vet Men who we were able to hunt down in the second and third races and they really helped give us something to aim for which helped our times. The second and third legs were slower on paper due to strong stream and head winds but overall we progressed up the field going from 101^st up to 63^rd and finishing as the ninth fastest women’s eight and Winner’s of the Novice Women’s Eight category.

WEHoRR

With heavy persistent rain over most of the south part of the country all Winter there was a question mark over whether the race would go ahead or not. The Port of London issued a river flag system and this was Red (meaning no rowing on the Thames) due to the strong flow in the weeks leading up to WEHoRR. A week or so before this the flag changed to yellow but there was still uncertainty as to whether Novice crews would be able to enter. A final decision was made two days before the race, Novice crews could enter but had to prove there suitability and that their cox had Tideway experience. Our lovely cox Alison although incredibly experienced had only coxed Tideway once and not being able to assess the conditions herself took advise and made the decision that she didn’t feel she had the experience to cox the race in the unprecedented strong stream. This was a massive blow but fortunately James T the Men’s cox who has coxed Tideway many times before stepped into save the day.

2014 turned out to be an epic race, the fast flow and quick NW wind helped the course records to tumble. We were racing alongside Olympians (Katherine Grainer, Helen Glover, Heather Stanning and Anna Watkins). We boated from beautiful Furnival gardens under the cherry-blossom trees and were blessed with blue skies and calm conditions. We started hard and kept the rate (32/33) and splits (sub 2:00) seemingly consistently throughout the race. Lea overtook us in the first third of the race and there a bit of clashing of blades as we jostled for the steam. As we came under Hammersmith bridge the massive cheer from our bank party spurred us on to overtake the crew in front. The long ergs paid dividends as we slowly took each seat until James was on their bow and we had clear water. The finish didn’t come a moment too soon we’d given it our all.

We came 154^th out of 239 (a reduced entry due to the conditions) and 4^th out of the 13 in the Novice Club category in a time of 21:17.7. Our best result by some margin. Last year we’d finished 247^th in a time of 22:20. Even more satisfying was that we were faster than three of our Cambridge rivals all of whom were IM3 crews.

A fantastic result to the end of a good seasons training.

Winter league, 2014

March 02, 2014 by William Connolley

From the viewpoint of our "M1"ish VIII.

Overall our VIII was 9th, which just happens to be our bumps start position. I'll omit the speculation about bumps that I would have put in here, had I written this post at the time (but I'm actually writing it in November, just for the records).

In 2013 we were 21st; in 2012 we were lower; 2011 & 2010 & 2009 we neglected to enter; anyway, you get the idea. Its the best we've done for a while, so Good.

If you want to relive the magic, here's leg 3.

Our results: 09:28 / 09:28 / 10:05. Full results, since the CRA are a bit rubbish about archiving them readably.

Who were those masked men? WL 3, at least, was Me (William Connolley), Ian Foster, Paul Holland, Chris Wood, Simon Green, Dave Byrne. Dave Richards, Andy Southgate. But not in that order. And cox James Tidy.

Head of the Cam: Saturday 26th April 2014

January 13, 2014 by William Connolley

The Head of the Cam Race is to be held on SATURDAY 26th APRIL 2014

On the Day

Live results: http://tinyurl.com/headofthecam2014

Entrants

Course of 2,600m upstream on the river Cam. 4 divisions, VIII's, IV's, smaller boats. BR, CRA, College classes.

NOTE: The "works" on the bank by the finish are over, and we are planning to run the race over the full course.

Deadline for entries

: Tuesday, April the 22nd. This is now in the past, and therefore entries are CLOSED unless you're desperate.

The FINAL draw is now available. Please address questions or comments to the usual email. Note that most of the VIII's need to be grouped together.

Prizes of tastefully engraved shot glasses for category winners. Winners will be announced and prizes handed out at 4 pm at Queens' Boathouse.

Enquiries and entries

Please contact the Race Secretary, William Connolley, at headofthecam@gmail.com / 07985 935400.

For entries, please state your crew details:

Club, boat type (VIII, 4+, 4-, 4x, 2, 2x, 1x, etc),
Crew status (CRA / BR / College 1st Mays, 2nd, etc.),
Preferred division,
Any constraints with crews in other divisions.

Divisions, times

Division 1: 0900

Division 2: 1040

Division 3: 1220

Division 4: 1400

It would be greatly appreciated if you would provide an estimate of your expected time, to be used for seeding purposes. If you don't provide one, I'll guess. Please attempt to be accurate rather than optimistic or pessimistic. An accurate estimate is most important for crews hoping to race without overtaking or being overtaking, either of which can slow you down. If you've got no idea of your time (new crew, visiting crew, whatever) then don't worry.

Divisions tend to fill up for the VIII's, for which we have a rough limit of 25 per division. But (within reason) we can accommodate as many sculls and small boats as you like.

Entry: £7.00 per rowing seat. Cheques, payable to CRA, should be sent to W M Connolley, 28 Silverdale Avenue, Coton, CB23 7PP (or direct transfer, details on request). Put your crew name(s) clearly on the back or on an enclosure.

Useful notes

Race control is at Queens boathouse, upstairs. We're open from 7:45 for numbers.
To help marshalling and ensure a prompt start, it will help if the VIII's can make some attempt to come up the reach in reverse order.
The overtaking rule is, as is previous years, "cede the racing line to the faster crew".
The start marshall will endeavour to be flexible about the start order, particularly at the tail of the divisions, either at crews requests or as seems suitable to them.

Entry deadline: everyone wants to know what the entry deadline is, so that they can submit their entry 5 minutes before it, or more likely a day afterwards. Don't make me come and kill you. The deadline is the Tuesday before the race, or thereabouts, but I'll do my best to fit you in.

The course is 2,600 m. Click on the map for a larger version, or explore via

Google maps

Visiting crews

boating facilities are available at various places along the Cam; you may be able to make arrangements with local clubs. Failing that, facilities are available from Combined Boathouse, by prior agreement. Please get in touch with me by email.

Documents

Christmas Head

December 22, 2013 by William Connolley

Um well there you go. Superheroes all. My vote for best fancy dress went to Dr Manhattan, who bent over to show us that he'd drawn a tiny arsehole in the right place. The giant cock he'd drawn on the front was easy to see. However the true winner - as decided by official judge Luca - was Jon for his hand-stitched Superman costume.

Vet Fours Head: 1st December

December 13, 2013 by William Connolley

We weren't leet enough to get into the real Fours Head (you need 8 points in the boat, imagine!) but the Vet Fours on the Sunday was an acceptable substitute. The women, as I understand it, had a rigourous process of crew seleection and training; we menfolk had a somewhat more haphazard "OK, who's available then?" approach. But we were in tip-top condition after Ely.

Simon the E was kind enough to trailer, so he got the leaving-at-6am-short-straw; I got to luxuriate in leaving-at-7. Bring back Ely! We all met up at Tideway Scullers (last there for Hammersmith Head in March 2010?). All the rigging stuff as ever, then we trundle off down the course - TSS is near the finish, which is good.

And here we are during the race: me, Ian, Will, Paul, and that nice Mr Tidy. Photo credit Steven Andrews, who shouted what I assume was encouragement from Hammersmith Bridge. Notice decent separation at the catch. I don't recall all that much about the race: we went off at about 30 and stayed there; we went past 2 crews and one came past us - oh yes, with a little blade clash along the way, James doing an admirable job of shouting at the overtaking crew to get out of our way, with the confident tone with which he very nearly got away with "Caius! Which side of the river do you think you're on!" when he was on like totally the wrong side himself.

And here are the ladies: Anne, Meg, Lorraine, Juliet, ably coxed by Robert:

Afterwards, it was time for a trip to the Ship on the far bank for a pint or two and sos-and-mashed-pots, where we met up with SA and Sarah, and rather noticeably didn't meet up with Katherine. Ahem. And here we all are with TSS and Chiswick bridge in the background.

There are zillions of other photos on the facebook page. Should I link to them? Oh go on then, for posterity: ladies men men.

Oh, results. You wanted results? Well. We fine manly chaps came 2nd of 4 in our class: 19:53.2, only 8 seconds behind York, who won. Hey ho, so it goes, though it would have been lovely to win on the Tideway. The ladies were 7th of 11 in their category in 23:35.4 .

Isle of Ely small boats head

November 10, 2013 by William Connolley

'twas a gloriously sunny early winter's day, and we headed off to Ely for the Small Boats Head, which for us meant IVs. It was wonderful to be able to get up at a civilised hour - we met at Queens at 9:30, having de-rigged yesterday - and set off for Ely with Quadcoque and Spare Rib on Queens' trailer, accompanied by some quite interesting fungus.

Our division was 12, but the start was at the end of a 5 km course, plus 1.5 km to the finish line, so we were supposed to be ready to boat by 11. Which proved to be no great trouble.

We can't quite remember why we've never done this race before. Perhaps its new.

I recall the Ely rigging-grounds from the Great Ouse Half Marathon, its a somewhat bizarre place: "Death Race 2000 meets Wind in the Willows" as a certain Mr P. Holland put it. Here he is supervising the riggers as they get down to work.

Ely only has a couple of landing stages, and only one for IVs really, so there's a bit of a queue, but they do try to manage your boating times. From there its 6.5 km downstream (but today, against the wind) to the start at Littleport. And its nearly but not quite dead straight. We mostly just "settled", not having rowed in this crew for a while, but threw in a couple of tolerable bursts of high rating - it takes us a while to stabalise. James pointed out a few landmarks along the way, but really the only one is the Lark at 2 km into the race. But, as it turned out, they also provided km signs (and somewhat unhelpfully a marshall at about 700 m from the finish who shouted "you've got a km to go").

At Littleport we sat around waiting for the start, and failed to pull into the landing stages, so I couldn't turn my GoPro on (motto: turn the thing on before you push off; still, one of the reasons for bringing it was to learn lessons like that). Some crews had clearly failed to boat on time, and the division was about 15 mins late.

We were a little nervous over the start line, and thinking it was at the bridge when actually it was someone earlier didn't help; but pretty soon we settled down and things were going well. With a tailwind we were hovering a little over 2:00 splits, but pleasingly they were stable, as was the rating at ~29. It felt a a bit fragile: hovering on the verge of not being sat enough to row well, needing attention from most of us to keep it stable, not leaving us quite enough free to really put oomph down. And it stayed like that for 5 km, which is quite good really. Through the race I was watching the sculler behind us: he gained on us off the start, then we held place, then he slowly slipped back after 3 km. In the end, we beat him by a second. But for a scull, it was impressive.

The full results are available from IOERC: we got 20:40, third in our division and eighth overall (my PB running time for 5 km is 20:38). The ladies came 42nd in 23:45.

Here we all are, afterwards, in the Ely club car park:

[Ian Foster, James Tidy, William Connolley, Dave Richards (Paul Holland underneath), Annie West, Meg Richards, Simon Emmings, Bailee Stratton and Anne Roberts.]

There was tea and there was cakes. And then we trundled back to Cambridge, for a drink in the last of the sunshine outside the Fort.

Update: us on the course: