WeHORR

[By Alison]

The Women’s Head of the River Race is, for many of us, the highlight of the rowing year. Although less immediately dramatic than the Bumps, it offers a much greater challenge: 20+ minutes of full-on racing on the Thames, against opposition from all corners of the UK and beyond. Just knowing that you’re taking part in a race alongside Olympians and along the same stretch of river as the Boat Race is pretty exciting!

This year, despite a terrible forecast, we were blessed with ideal conditions: no rain and best of all little wind. The crew were well-prepared, having made the best of limited water time together by committing to a programme of long and gruelling ergs which really paid off in terms of fitness over the long course.

We boated from Putney, right on the finish, which meant a good warm-up along the full length of the course and a chance to spot the landmarks that we would use later on to break the race into chunks. There followed about an hour of marshalling, tapping the boat in pairs to keep in position before we finally edged towards the start and spun. The race was on!

It was my first time coxing on the Thames, and although I’d watched the helpful ‘Coxing the Tideway’ video (on youtube) several times, coxing on such a wide river with such a strong stream has to be experienced before you can really understand how different it is from the humble Cam. We got off to a good start, with our stroke Lorraine establishing a great rhythm and the rest of the crew backing her up and really committing to every stroke.

Not such a great start for me, however, as I found myself too far over to the Middlesex side with an unexpected buoy looming and a marshal looking the other way from his boat just in front of it! Fortunately he saw us just in time and moved out of the way, although I had no choice but to go the wrong side of the buoy.

After that I found the stream again, and remembered the most important piece of advice from the video: the fastest stream is usually in the middle of the river, so there’s no point trying to cut the corners. Maybe I’m not the only cox used to the twisty Cam who found it hard to resist the impulse to take the inside of every bend!

Anyway, as we approached Hammersmith we really settled into our stride, and found ourselves bearing down on a Caius College crew. The overtake was really satisfying, with us shooting out of Hammersmith ahead of them with clear water between us, and with our supporters really lifting us with their shouts from the bridge.

The crew really had to dig deep during the last third of the race, with each landmark seeming to take ages to come. But here the long ergs paid off, giving us confidence that we had the strength and stamina to stay strong to the end. In our crew chat before the race Anne had urged everyone to give everything, so that no one got to the end thinking they could have worked a bit harder. I think I can safely say that that finish line didn’t come a moment too soon for any of us. We were so glad that we only had a short distance to row to get back to our landing point.

We came 247th out of 303 with a time of 22:20, a really satisfying result given that our previous placing was 272nd, and that we were within a minute of some very much more experienced Cambridge crews.

Crew:

8: Lorraine 7: Joss 6: Anne 5: Jo 4: Annie 3: Juliet 2: Meg 1: Alex

Cox: Alison

Many thanks also to our brilliant supporters and bank party: Emily, Janice, Mel, Simon, Dave, Abby, Nick and Freya.

Dropping the outside shoulder at the catch?

Part I in a series of, quite likely, one, posts about rowing technique. This particular one is a bit of a theme of mine. I sometimes wonder if people know what I'm talking about. The answer, or perhaps more accurately the question, is something like this:

That's Caius M1 from Grassy, Thursday Lents 2013. What you see is bowside (they've sensibly bow-rigged the boat, so bowside is stroke's side, so to speak) lunging out of the boat at you. You might possibly argue that they are doing this to excess, and indeed the comment on that pic is "oh god we're all so not in our range". However, they're racing to defend their headship. And as I was taught ages ago when I used to play Go: "anything you can see the best doing, you're allowed to do yourself, even if it looks like poor style". The unspoken caveat of course was "as long as you understand what's going on".

In a way this one:

is more interesting, because Kings have bumped and are just cruising home.

Before we go on, pause to notice the nice compression: vertical shins, chests touching the knee. And of course the separation (note that separation, at the catch, means the way the two sides of the boat part (as viewed from the coxes seat) leaving a lane between their heads (here is an excellent pic of Downing that shows this well); this is completely different to separation, at the finish, which means separating out and doing in sequence hands-then-body-then-slide).

Dropping the outside shoulder

However, that wasn't what I actually wanted to talk about. What I wanted to say followed from a perspicacious comment by Simon E when I praised the first photo. He asked "Interesting that everyone's outside shoulders are dropped, I always thought it should be the other way around?" And now he says that, indeed, yes that is what everyone is always taught, though I can't say I like doing it myself: the "Caius way" comes more naturally; and if you look, only about half of Kings are doing the "right thing", even though I'm sure that nice Mr Smith has been coaching them well.

And the "right thing" is? Well, the "right thing" as taught is to keep the shoulders roughly parallel to the blade, which implies the outer shoulder is higher than the inner. I can't find much detail about this online; this little thread about summarises it: the argument against dropping the shoulder is given as "With high school kids (ie, often with less experience than college rowers), those who drop the outside shoulder tend to also press down on the oar handle before the catch, and sky their oar, leading to a lousy catch." That would apply to our novices too, of course. Holding the blade to stiffly, and leaning at the catch, can easily lead to dropping the hands and skying the blade too.

In which case, its an answer you can discard, as long as you know the reasons for it (which is to say, teach people not to "drop their hands into the shell and sky the blade"; don't teach them "don't drop the outside shoulder"). I think I have no problem, in my own rowing, with simultaneously dropping the outside shoulder and raising my hands into the catch (what I find very hard to do is to do this whilst staring forwards, as Caius are doing so nicely; I far prefer to look at my hands, which really annoys coaches).

Another possible downside is that it can lead to over-extension and weakness at the catch: if you've leant too far out your back will be weak; this can either damage you or weaken your stroke; but again, this is a matter of care rather than prohibition.

Comments on this, particularly by people who know better than me, are welcome.

Other pic

* Boat race crew, training.
* Kiwi Pair (e.g. 4:49)

Winter league 2013, legs 2 and 3.

See-also leg 1.

Somehow, I didn't get round to writing up leg 2, and no-one beat me to it. Press have the results for all three legs up.

How did we do, overall? (And at this point, "we" = the crews I was in. Someone else can write up the other crews :-). As an IM3 crew, poorly; as a novice crew, excellently. So, that's our problems solved then: we drop Dr Southgate. Or we drag our other points back in (paging Dr Howard...). We were nearly a minute (overall) faster than the best Nov 8 (and still 30 secs faster on the first leg, when we didn't have Dr S).

Oh, and did I mention that the third leg was an exceptionally wet row? Outstandingly so, despite being clearly our fastest.

But we were about a minute (overall) slower than the next 3 IM3's, and 2 minutes behind Champs M1/M2 squad composite - but then again, we know both their M1 and M2 are "about as fast" as our M1, and we're not yet close to our M1.

And me, as a single sculler: I got faster by ~30 secs each leg, but it was mostly a reminder to me that I need to get some more practice in and up my technique.

Refs

* Squamata WL3 courtesy of Simon E. * Squamata WL2 ditto.

Winter league 2013, leg 1

This year we have two men's VIIIs, a ladies VIII, and a lone scull (your humble author). See-also 2012.

Of the men (for I am a man, and can only really speak of manly matters) the one in division 1 was entered as Nov and was intended for the novices and newer folk. The one in division 3 was entered as IM3, but as it happened this leg it was full of pointless people. Also, due to shortages, several people rowed twice, and may have been a bit tired for the second race, despite a hearty breakfast in the Tivoli in between. Of the sculling, well, I haven't been practicing recently and got stuffed by Morley - say no more.

Weather: cold and grey, thin broken ice on the flooded fields by the start. Just to rub it in, the sun came out when it was all over. So we went for another coffee.

Full results are available from the CRA, or perhaps more conveniently via google docs here.

401 Cantabs Men     IM1 8             09:18 1
101 City Men        IM1 8  Dolman     09:33 2
404 99RC Men        IM3 8  Rolin      09:43 3
402 X-Press Men     IM2 8  fastx      09:57 4
...
308 ChestertonMen   IM3 8  Squamata   11:08 22
...
118 ChestertonMen   Nov 8  Crocodilia 12:09 56=
...
440 Cantabs         Nov 1X Morley     13:21 134=
...
124 ChestertonWomen Nov 8  Richards   13:02 122=
...
138 ChestertonMen   MasC1X Connolley  14:36 174=

Oh - what was the rowing like, and who did it?

Nov (Div 1): C - JT; S - Dave B; Will W; John H; Ian F; Paul B; Luca; John R; Simon E.
IM3 (Div3): C - JT; S - William C; Will W; Luca; Dave R; Dave B; Chris W; Simon E; Simon G.
W Nov 8+ (div1): C - Dave R; S - Lorraine; Joss; Sarah CH; Anne; Bev; Jo; Sarah D; Meg.

Apparently the "novice" mens crew was quite decent and rowable. The "IM3" one was surprisingly so (am I sounding patronising? I hope not, I don't mean to be), and was enjoyable at 30.

Head of the Cam: Saturday 27th April 2013

[Hi folks! Anyone coming here interested in the HoC 2014: Welcome. Please go to: here for the 2014 event.]

The Head of the Cam Race is to be held on SATURDAY 27th APRIL 2013
Last-minute notes and updates, and results in due course, are available from the race results page.

Entrants

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

Deadline for entries: Tuesday, April the 23rd.
Prizes of tastefully engraved shot glasses for category winners.
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, and any constraints with crews in other divisions.

4 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.
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: £6.50 per rowing seat. Cheques payable to CRA, 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.

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.


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

Documents

• Risk assessment
• Safety Plan
• General info and marshalling instructions

Previous years

2011 2012

Winter ergo league, phase 2

The pre-Christmas leg of the Total Distance League was won by David Byrne with an impressive total of 319244. The "top 5" (I had to go to 5 to include me) were:

1. Dave B       319244
2. Simon E      116138
3. Anne R       102089
4. Chris W       82929
5. William C     82856

Now its time to change the rules to stop Dave winning again. So the post-Christmas league (not sure when it will end; we might perhaps have a monthly winner) will allow you to add distances for

• erging
• rowing
• running
• cycling

Cycling is easier, per km, than rowing or running. So cycling distances count as 1/3 of erging. Erging, rowing and running are counted at parity (I'm not sure that's entirely fair, but its close enough).

There is a spreadsheet to track this. Its here. Viewing is public, editing is by-invite-from-me; just ask (actually I think those I've invited can also add others, via the "share" button. Please do). I've pre-invited some usual suspects, my apologies to anyone I've missed who I should have asked.

Instructions

Its a google doc, so you just fill it in online. Its a spreadsheet, so you follow the usual spreadsheet rules. Fill it in per-week. The current week should be nicely colourised in green. There is no "save" button, it just auto-saves. Don't worry about fouling it up, it also keeps history.

The total is auto-generated. If you do something (rowing, say) more than once (say, 10km and then 12 km) you have two choices:

• add the distances yourself (careful!) and enter them in the column
• in the column, write "=10+12" and it will work out 22 for you

OK, that seems pretty damm obvious to me, but people find creative ways to screw up even the obvious so do feel free to email me questions. Since we're aiming for total distance, I can't see any point in filling in ergs to the nearest meter. I'd go for 10ths of km at most, though its up to you.

Not the PB sheet

This isn't the mechanism for recording notable 2k or 30min ergo times - for those, email me as ever. Don't bother tell me about every erg you do, I don't care - only good ones, as in best-of-the-year or new PBs or suchlike.

CRA AGM and other useful stuff

The CRA AGM was on Wednesday the 5th December at the Boathouse pub. It was a cold night and attendance was a bit sparse. Nothing exciting occurred - which was all to the good. If you're interested in the agenda - and lets face it, who isn't - you'll find it here (rather than, say, on the CRA website, where no-one would look for information updated in a timely manner). The 2011 mins are also available.

This list of events on the Cam in 2013 might be of interest:

• WL1: Sun 13 January 2013
• WL2: Sun 17 February 2013
• WL3: Sun 3 March 2013
• Head of the Cam: Saturday 27th April 2013
• Bumps: Tuesday 16th - Friday 19th July 2013

This may be a handy place for me to list old dox that people have sent me:

• Chesterton constitution, as of September 2011.
• Chesterton constitution, sent to me in January 2012.
• CRA delegates meeting minutes, July 2012