Peterborough

We took a ladies (novice) IV and a mens (masters B) pair to Peterborough on Sunday 27th May; for the usual convoluted reasons we couldn't get more than that. The full results are here. To spare you the suspense: the ladies got through their heat, and then came third in the final. They were 15 secs off the leaders, but only 6 secs off second, so it was exciting. Here they are in the final.

Mel, get your head up. Though who am I to say such a thing, since I stare at my hands all the time - well, if you don't stare at your hands, how do you know whether they are the right height above the saxboard, or rising up to the catch nicely?

Anyway, enough of them, "what about the men?", I hear you cry. I thought you'd never ask.

Inevitably, I'm going to write about the mens pair because, well, I was in it. It was quite fun to go "alone" in that this was the first off-cam race we'd entered (well, actually, it was about our 6th outing in the pair together, and the first race we'd ever done, but hopefully you see what I mean) just-by-ourselves, without someone in the club organising it for us. We were on a City trailer, and carefully loaded up on Thursday night, because it was going up on Friday afternoon. However, on Saturday, we realised we hadn't been quite as careful as we'd thought - we'd left the seats in. Oh-err. But an email to City brought back the reassuring news that the seats were still attached, so all was well. Or so we thought. But when we got there on Sunday... err, oh dear, only one seat was there. I suppose we were lucky even one stayed on. So the intended we're-there-well-in-time-and-can-relax-and-spectate turned into a rather frantic scrabble to find a spare seat. Luckily Peterborough could lend us one. So we had our practice outing on the Neme, which turns out to be even wigglier than the Cam, and got back in time to see the ladies final.

Then it was our turn. Backing down onto the start boat turned out to be possible. This was a masters B/C race, and we were the B, whilst our opponents were C - that meant they got a 5 seconds head start. Boo hiss. This was because while I'm nearly old enough to be your grandfather be masters D, Will is so insanely youthful (though dissipated, of course) that he only just scrapes into masters A; and we average to B. So, the other boats start, and we're counted down the 5 seconds to our start. And, regrettably, we stayed at the back the whole way. Steering proved to be quite a challenge. Clonking our first lane-buoy woke me up with a bit of a start, and I paid more attention after that; but we spent some time not hitting the buoys only because we were so close that the oars went over the top. However, we were 16 secs (=11, remember) off the lead and 7 (=2, oh so close) off number 2; so I don't think we can blame our loss on the steering. Here we are, just crossing the finish line:

We look OK, I think, though just possibly I may be biased. Will isn't looking at his hands, but then again no-one is perfect. There is another one of us here and again Simon has contrived to take just the stroke when we went in perfectly together. And here we are looking Manly afterwards:

[Photo credit: Simon Emmings. Note that via some miracle of tech these pictures went from gmail via gplus to blogger without touching my harddisk, or at least I think and hope they have.]

ps: the new seat was £120 with VAT and carriage, and Andy Nicol kindly cut it down to size, and made me a cup of tea too (well actually Elspeth did). Anyway, the point is, don't leave your seats on during transit, bozo.

pps: oh yes, the other point: so, our recorded time was 4.04.5, but remember that has 5 secs added, so really 3:59.5, so we made it in under 4 mins, oh good. But then we looked at the results and realised that had we entered IM3 2-, we'd have been second, and only 2 secs behind the winners - that would have been a really exciting race to be in.

Your ergmeister shrieks

Here it is at last, the updated 30 minute ergo table. Feast your eyes.

Person          Raw  Weight Factor Adjusted

Steven A        8358 93     0.984  8,222.727
James H         8144 83     1.004  8,178.879
Chris F         8300 95     0.980  8,133.892
William C       7862 72     1.030  8,096.343
Chris W         7908 80     1.011  7,994.207
Dave R          7568 68     1.040  7,870.948
Simon E         7489 64     1.051  7,869.722
Will W          7650 80     1.011  7,733.395
Paul H          7531 74     1.025  7,718.501
Andy S          7606 90     0.990  7,527.776
Anne R          7076 65     1.048  7,416.197
William D       7534 94     0.982  7,397.566
Gary D          7250 83     1.004  7,281.050
Dave B          7099 78     1.015  7,208.679
Lorraine        6782 64     1.051  7,126.780

Source data is here. Only this season's scores are included. Before we get on to the 2k table, let me try to interest you in the running-the-head-course table, which so far has two entries:

Steven A     10:36   http://connect.garmin.com/activity/179505539
William C    11:26   http://connect.garmin.com/activity/178872251

The course end points are

• The Motorway (A14) bridge, upstream (town) side. Start line is where the concrete of the bridge turns into towpath grit.
• In Ferry Lane, about opposite the Green Dragon, metal lamppost with a "4" on it.

You can run it either way. At the corner near the beer tree where the path bifurcates, you have to take the (ever so slightly longer) path that stays nearer the river.

For comparison, the club record in an VIII is 9:30 I think.

And now for the 2k table.

Person          Raw   Weight Factor Adjusted

Steven A        6.648 95     0.980  6:47.05
James H         6.832 82     1.006  6:47.27
Chris F         6.800 95     0.980  6:56.33
William C       7.213 72     1.030  7:00.27
Will W          7.130 79     1.013  7:02.24
Dave R          7.350 68     1.040  7:04.03
Simon E         7.525 64     1.051  7:09.66
Paul H          7.427 72     1.030  7:12.70
Luca            7.657 75     1.022  7:29.30
Andy S          7.545 90     0.990  7:37.40
Rasmus          8.040 68     1.040  7:43.83
Anne R          8.152 65     1.048  7:46.66
Simon G         7.667 95     0.980  7:49.39
Harish          8.663 80     1.011  8:34.19

Some familiar faces there. Don't see yourself? Well send me a time / distance them. Note that the raw times are in decimal not mm:ss, sorry. And now for the "misc" table:

Person          Raw   Weight Factor Adjusted

Giulio          18:38 79     1.013  18:23

Refs

• Your HOTTmeister speaks
• Erging theory

Head of the Cam - results and round-up

The original Head of the Cam post got treated as a live document and updated as we went along. So this is a new post for the wrap-up.

Thanks to all our competitors, support, marshalls and umpires for making it a successful and fun day. We had a total of 860 rowing seats in 136 crews. The fastest crew was...

...yes, you guessed it, Caius. Congratulations. Fastest womens crew was, rather less expectedly, also Caius. They beat Downing by 14 seconds.

Full results are available from here (a number of people were kind enough to thank us for the speed of the results; its all thanks to googly docs). Video of the event is just going up as I speak at spannerspotter though it will be a while before its all up. For those of you who prefer the security and solidity of a PDF, this is the final results, sorted into time order.

Oh, and someone lost a pair of glasses in a kangol case on the towpath. If they are yours, do let me know [now reunited with their owner].

Issues

We didn't really have any serious issues - at least, we thought not. Hopefully you agree. Even the weather, whilst grey and occasionally a bit damp, spared us from downpours.

Turning boats back

We had to turn one, or perhaps two, boats back who were late for their division. Sorry about that, we don't do it lightly, and where possible we'll give you a chance to race in a later division. In at least one of the cases the boat was late because it had failed safety inspection: the heel restraints weren't in place and had to be put in place. Moral: check your boat is all in order in good time.

The Cow that could Swim

Half way through the race we were informed of a prodigy - a cow that could swim, on Stourbridge Common. We thought it best not to trouble you with that.

Improvements

We hope to make things even better next year - please feel free to email (headofthecam@gmail.com) with any suggestions. One thing I do want to do is to seed the draw better, probably by asking people to submit a recent head course time, or their own best guess.

Timing

Everything went well with the timing except the problem with boats 117 and 118, which was only resolved right at the end. Unfortunately it turned out to matter for the prizes for the W2 Mays. So let me bore you with the tedious details. Before I do that, the timesheets are available for div 1, div 2, div 3 and div 4. Feel free to look, but you won't learn much.

So, the sequence began with boat 115, Xpress MasB IV, which broke their rudder (they eventually and boldly started, and here is a nice pic of them trying to take Grassy with an improvised rudder, but they had to retire in the end). Their dropping out caused a hole in the start order, which got filled by Kings W1 (118) going off out of order ahead of Cantabs W IM3 (117). Not in itself a problem, but the start times and finish times as we got them looked like:

114 CCRC, CRA MasD 0:24:53 0:34:51 0:09:58
117 Cantabs, W2 IM3 0:23:31 0:37:57 0:14:26
118 Kings, W1       0:26:02 0:36:39 0:10:37
120 Cantabs, Mas E  0:26:54 0:38:38 0:11:44

You see the problem. Kings (it became clear) had started before Cantabs, indeed just before Cantabs, so 23:31 isn't a believeable start time; and Cantabs total time is implausibly slow. Eventually, after a considerable amount of indecision and hearing from both crews, we decided to go with Least Modification, and resolved the conflict by assuming the Cantabs 23 was really a 26. That fits with what the timings Kings coach gave us; and it also fits some times we got belatedly from video on Grassy: Kings had gained 18 secs on Cantabs by then. ps: Champs head vindicates us. Kings W1 did well there, too.

Refs

2011

The DIWLF boat does Oxford

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

To Ely and back

We were going to enter Boston - indeed, we did enter. But come the draw and we still hadn't found a trailer, and the reason became clear: there were no other crews going from Cambridge (other than Katherine and Anna-Rosa, who won their class; but they were in a double, and didn't need a trailer). It rather looks like the organisers hadn't publicised the change-of-date widely, and only had 1/3 the normal number of entries.

And so we thought: rather than all the faff of trailering there, why not "just" row to Ely and back, which is about the same distance (actually 51.5 km, starting from Queens's boathouse, over Boston's 50). And so we did:



That is our route, annotated, from the GPS trace. You'll see we stopped a bit: Baits Bite (5k) and Bottisham (10k) locks were necessary, as was the pint at the Cutter Inn at Ely. Upware (5 miles from anywhere pub; 15 k) was a lovely sprawled-in-the-grass-with-drinks stop on the way back, and I think we happened to stop to adjust footplates there on the way up. And then the formerly-Fish-n-Duck at the junction of the Old West river was another landmark, 20 k. Note that at some points where we had long stops (Ely, Upware on the way back) I stopped the watch, so you don't see the full gap.



Our proof that we really did get to Ely :-). and if that isn't proof enough, here is more:

My hands - taped to match my nail varnish. When oh when oh when will I learn to tape up my hands properly before getting blisters?	Paul's hands - worse than it looks from a distance. And he was taped up like an extra from The Mummy.	James Howard's mighty Blister of Doom. I added the arrow in case you missed it.

There is no picture of Will's hands - apparently, as a result of some odd formative experiences at Eton, he doesn't get blisters ;-).

John-from-Pippin was kind enough to let us through Bottisham lock both ways (side note: if you had no friend but you had the key, you could probably do it by letting the cox out at the landing stage, though the Cambridge side is awkward. It almost looked possible to get out on the bank before the stage, which (if possible) would be much quicker than waiting for the lock gates to move). And on the way back, he even more kindly lifted over a few cans of Old Speckled Hen in a net, and then mugs of tea for James and Will (not in a net).



Here we are in the lock, on the way up. James H has a somewhat worried expression, because I've insisted that James T stand up to take the picture, and (as you can see) we don't really have our blades out very far. I've cropped the picture to spare you the worst of my pallid chest - I rowed up Topless, though actually it wasn't warm despite the blazing sunshine, so I rowed back Topped.

The very last adventure of the day was discovering, half way down the reach, that we'd lost our rudder. Watching James's face was quite funny, as it slowly dawned on him that pulling the strings was doing nothing. But he then did an excellent job of coxing us back just with extra pulls from either side as required.



At the end, we could still smile (L to R: Paul Holland; William Connolley; James Howard; Will Wykeham. Front: James Tidy). Because we knew we were headed for the Fort. But how was it, overall? Fun, yes. An interesting excursion and definitely something different and something to remember. Hard work - we didn't just pootle along, or even back (the GPS says avg ~13 km/h on the way out, which is 2:18. And a bit lower on the way back - perhaps 12.5, which is 2:24. Tiredness, or difference in rover flow? Those GPS splits are about 5 pips worse than the impeller splits we were getting at the time). Would it have made a decent time if we'd been doing Boston? Hard to know - we wouldn't have got all the rests, so the split would probably have sagged somewhat from what we have here. We'll find out next time!

[Update: oh, and I forgot to mention: we got off to an appallingly bad start: as we passed under the Fort footbridge, having taken about 20 strokes, James H said "are we nearly there yet?" in a perfectly deadpan voice; I could hardly row for laughing for a minute.]

Refs

* GPS track

Winter league, leg 3

Quite a lot like the Winter league, leg 2 but in March. And rainier.

Not to keep you in suspense, the results were...

Div Crew            Class   #       Leg 1 Leg 2 Leg 3 Total Place
301 Cantabs M1      IM1     1301    08:58 08:59 09:05 27:02 1
401 Cantabs M2      IM1     1401    09:19 09:25 09:39 28:23 2
403 Cantabs Hills R IM2     1402    09:23 09:26 09:43 28:32 3
302 IofEly/Robs     IM1 4X  1305    09:34 09:31 09:29 28:34 4
404 Cambridge '99   IM3     1403    09:49 09:34 09:40 29:03 5
101 City            IM3     1201    09:36 10:00 09:39 29:15 6

...at the top: no change there. Coming down to us lot:

406 City            Nov     1408    10:28 10:22 10:19 31:09 16
207 X-Press Legends Nov     1215    10:14 10:42 10:23 31:19 18
104 St Radegund     Nov     1156    10:20 10:47 10:20 31:27 19
105 Chesterton      Nov     1106    10:27 11:04 10:44 32:15 28

So our third leg was better than our second, but not up to our first. Overall, 4th. Not a bad result by any means, though a touch disappointing after our good start. I think the one big lesson I'd draw from this is that just churning up and down the river once or twice a week in the darkness isn't enough to improve. What we really lacked were daytime outings, coached, to keep our edge. And, furthermore, that when we are in the dark alone we all need to keep thinking, and doing our best to refine our own technique. That is a lesson for next year, but also for the coming season. Let's not forget it!

Continuing, the Ladies VIII and IV, and me bringing up the rear in Joy:

342 Chesterton      WNov    1323    12:41 13:48 13:02 39:31
149 Chesterton      WNov 4+ 1123    12:52 13:46 13:14 39:52
251 Chesterton      Nov 1X  1244    13:52 13:54 14:02 41:48

The VIII in div 3 got the rainy end of the stick by quite a long way (apparently div 4 was worse, with snow). Here they are on the reach:



I was the last of the novice scullers... though I did beat one IM3 sculler (called, by curious coincidence, Connolly (no relation)). Dave R commented that I needed to be able to up the rating, and this sounds like good advice.

Lastly but not leastly, here are the ladies IV:

Head of the Trent

This year, we went to the Head of the Trent (Sunday 26th February). It was great, we should do it more often - like the Head of the River, only more convenient to get to and less hassle all round. But still a big river where the stream matters, and hundreds of crews [*]. It is nominally a 6k course, but actually 5.5 in distance, and effectively less than that due to the stream. In practice, it is pretty well the same duration as Tideway, probably not accidentally.

Most of us went up the night before and Paul organised us a dorm at The Igloo which was great for our purposes, and only slightly less great for the one other guy in the room who had to cope with us all getting up at 6:45 and trooping around in exaggerated quiet, then back in a bit later to collect our bags. The giants amongst us got to sleep on the floor, since the beds weren't huge, but I was happy. The Italian was good, too, even though they forgot to keep the table we'd booked. So I won't tell you their name, and anyway I've forgotten it.

As I say, we crept out early and drove down to the Brian Clough Stadium and met up with James and James, who had brought the boat (no obvious secure parkage for overnighting it). Since we were early, we had the car park nearly to ourselves, and I forgot the Golden Rule, which is make sure your exit route is (un)covered - there are multiple divisions, and we were in the first, so getting out when we were done was a bit tricky.

If you look very closely at the previous pic you can see... two bikes on our trailer (which is the far one). Here is a close up. And the reason is: when we came to put the boat on Queens's trailer on Saturday, we found that someone (or rather, sometwo) had decided to use the trailer as a convenient cycle rack. Rather than break the locks we took the wheels off and slung the bikes into the trailer. My how we laughed.

So far, it was a beautiful dawn and morning, and the weather stayed gorgeous all day. Which was a contrast to the last time we weren't here, when we wimped out at the last moment because the almost-forecast was for the race to be cancelled due to bad weather. We boated early and missed all the rush, and got out onto the millpond-smooth water with plenty of time for a quiet warm-up rowing up the course.

James T took us up beyond the start, and on any other day we'd have been too early, but the weather was so good it was fine to just sit and wait for the other crews to come up. James found us a good place to tuck in, Simon who was bank-partying came down and said hello, I wee'd out of the side of the boat but others failed to follow my fine example and a pee bottle made its way down.

And so at last crews started arriving, we made our way to the correct place in the queue. One of the Mighty City VIII's was ahead of us somewhere, and a somewhat less mighty City boat of unknown quality was just behind us in the start order. Which conveniently leads me into a tale. Like all good tales this has two sides; I'll tell ours, you can ask City for theirs.



So, the start, and off we head, leaving a nice gap between us and the crew ahead as is only polite. City, oddly, are following quite close on our tail, and it soon becomes clear that they are going to play silly games, crossing the start line about - well, I forget. Perhaps a length, perhaps only half a length, behind us. Their game plan, presumably, is to row right though us in the first 500 m or so and leave us in their wake. But, it doesn't work, because they aren't fast enough. They are faster than us, but not by enough, and Tidy is not a man to be forced from his line except under extreme duress. Their cox does some dodgy steering, I think I recall, cutting off corners, which doesn't work - you need to be in the stream, just like Tideway.

The pic above is, as you see, of us being chaste (picture credit: Simon). Lets pause for a moment and examine the in-lined one of just us. One could pick out various faults, if being churlish; or note certain stylish elements like the delicately bent elbow at 2; but overall the impression is of a crew working well together.

A little way further down the course - oh, hold on, you're going to want to be vaguely familiar with the course map - things had got even more amusing with a third VIII (St Peters School) coming into play. They had put in a mighty spurt to catch City, and ended up clashing blades with them somewhere around the first big bend, so both crews had fallen back. By the time of this picture we were going round "the steps" as I thought of them, but really called Victoria Embankment I think. We were cutting the inside of teh curve, to give the St Peters boyz the line to come past, which they were doing, veery slowly; and City were still - as you see - on our tail. Had they been faster than us at this point I don't know what would have happened, but they weren't, so round we all went.



We all rowed off into the distance. Up ahead you see the Trent bridge, which is perhaps 3/5 of the way down the course. We made it though first, but after that both St Peters and City came past us. It all became something of a blur, to be honest, even at the time and certainly fairly soon afterwards, let alone two weeks later which is now when I'm writing this (whatever the date on the post may say). The finish line is below the boating point, so when we started passing finished crews heading back up we knew the end must be nigh, and so it was.

I don't seem to have a crew photo of us all, so for reference we were: James Tidy, cox. Steven Andrews, stroke; James Howard, 7; William Dulyea, 6; Chris Woods, 5; William Wykeham, 4; Chris Flowers, 3; William Connolley, 2 (and your author for this post); Paul Holland, bow. With Simon Emmings as bank party.

General venue notes: there was food n stuff, but it didn't wind up early, so was thin before the first division. Plenty of stuff afterwards though. The lane by the river got crowded; it was how we drove in and was fine then, but a better way to leave was out of the back away from the river.

What of the results I hear you cry? We came 34th, in 19:04.4. City beat us by 11 secs, and St Peters were another 35 secs ahead of them. We were pleased with our row; good for this stage of the year, with a promise of more to come.

Refs

* [*] But arranged in 3 divisions, so not so many all at once.
* Our GPS track