The final installment from our bow seat correspondent...
Day 4 (Bump Down)
We’ve not made life easy for ourselves.
A realisation that the months of prep, the icy winter outings, the endless hours of erging, the strict protein diets really are worth implementing next year.
We desire to be winners… to experience again the unbridled joy of grinding out a bump.
Today “Automaton”, the rising Champs 9 boat, are our relentless assailant from behind. This will be tough!
Our W2 crew thrash past looking good for their bruising week & it later transpires they went all the way with a gutsy row-over ensuring they missed the spoons. Inspired, we line up still at the head of Division 4, ready for the race of our lives…
At the gun it’s like an out of body experience… smooth & firm we power away, not a lobster pot in sight.…& so it continues… the settled tones of Chris; “rhythm & power, rhythm & power” are punctuated with astonished snippets of praise.
Hey… we’re really moving!
There was no inevitability about the end this time & we ground it out all the way to Ditton Corner or thereabouts (my awareness tunnelled into the boat by this point). They were ultimately too strong for us & deserved their ‘blades’ but we gave them their hardest contest.
…& so we were denied our final row in Division 3 but finished knowing we had improved, rowed our socks off & had acquitted ourselves well with by far our best row of the week.
Next year… stronger, leaner, fitter, slicker, BETTER. We, or a new incarnation of us will be there!
M3 - Town Bumps 2012… The pictures speak for themselves!
DC
Bow Seat Correspondent, M3
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