Michaelmas Term 2004
Below is a round up of the important events of Michaelmas term. At a later date, there might well be race reports to accompany some event summaries.- CULRC Trial VIIIs
- Fairbairns
- Clare Novice Regatta
- Winter Head
- 4s Head
- University 4's
- Autumn Head
- New Website
CULRC Trial VIIIs
6/12/04
Andy Twigg of KCBC is trialling for CULRC this year. Below is his race report for trial VIIIs.Monday 6th December 2004 was CULRC trial VIIIs at Henley. After some work over the weekend two crews were picked and seats swapped to make them as even as possible. The two boats were 'It's not Big' and 'It's not Clever' which were shortened to 'Big' and 'Clever' for the sake of confusion. I ended up in the 7 seat of Big after enjoying the calmness of its bow seat for most of the weekend (although this meant I could backsplash Eton Boy at 5). The crews seemed pretty even, although on paper Clever had the better erg scores but we seemed to have a better cruising speed at 26.
We finally boated just after 1pm and went for a paddle down the course. Neither crew had done starts before so we agreed on a start and practiced it once. After that we did a race warm up back to the start of the race where the launches were waiting. In addition to the coaches and other crew members not racing several local residents and Oxford spies were watching. The race was almost an anticlimax to the day. Our plan was to just keep a constant output through the race and not to rely on any pushes (since we hadn't practised any). After a toss we got the Berkshire side, and both crews had strong starts but after about 10 strokes they were perhaps a quarter of a length up. We settled quickly to a comfortable cruising pace at 34 or so and just rowed our piece. I didn't pay much attention to the other crew but after 3 minutes we were a length up and the next half a length came quickly. With two minutes left they started a big push but we just kept our length and it went unnoticed. We took it up a gear for the last minute to consolidate our victory. In all, a comfortable row and big won out over clever. Afterwards, we were told that we should have done it rating 32 but I don't think we had the nerve to do that.
There is still a lot to do, but first we have to survive 4 weeks of hard training camps over the holidays
Fairbairn Races
2/12/04-3/12/04
The traditional highlight of Michaelmas terms racing saw a good number of King's crews take to the water to battle it out for college pride. Many of the novices had not had experience of long race pace pieces before, but all crews aquitted themselves admirably. The full results are here but a brief summary is as follows:Men's Novices: 27th and 43rd
The top crew were unlucky in some crabbing that occured around Chesterton as otherwise a storming start had taken them to within a couple of lengths of the Trinity Hall boat they were chasing. After the crabbing they lost their rhythm somewhat and couldn't quite capitalise on their early advantage.
Women's Novices: 30th
Men's Seniors: 1st VIII 10th College, 1st IV 14th College
A good row for the 1st VIII, which was slightly dampened by the result, especially being beaten by Magdalene and Wolfon, who we were hoping to be better than. A big thank you to Sam Farmer of Homerton who stepped in to rescue us from our coxing shortage
Women's Seniors: 1st VIII 10th College
Clare Novice Regatta
27/11/04
The Women's 1st Novice boat entered the Clare Novice regatta, but were unlucky to be eliminated in their first race. Despite a promising start, they were beaten by a strong Magdalene crew, who rowed through them to take the lead, crashed into the bank, and then rowed through again. A good effort by the King's girls none the less, and useful practice for Fairbains.Winter Head
13/11/04
The Men's 1st VIII took part in the Cantabs "organised" Winter Head race on the River Cam today (13/11/04). After waiting about half an hour in the cold for the start whilst being told to move up and down the river seemingly at random, the crew had a reasonable row, but felt the effect of the long waiting time considerably, with cold hands slipping off blades at a number of points. The results are here and show that we came a not unrespectable 11th in our catagory. We do however have a good deal of improvement to make before Fairbairns and especially bumps next term.As well as the first men, CUWBC had boats entered in the Winter Head, including Trish Barker, one of two CUWBC triallists from King's this year. Her race report is below.
Nice row down. Reasonable practice start. Loooooong wait at the start but we were parked in the sun and feeling quite excited so all was good. The atmosphere was great on the river too, with lots of visiting crews having come to race. We went off chasing the lwt Cam VIII (just the two CUW crews were entered as the others did IV's head last weekend) and managed to close down on them quite substantially over the course. The boat flew along - in probably the nicest bit of rowing I'd ever done - and by some miracle I held the rating at 31 1/2, even shifting it up a bit when called - yaay!! Stroke seat rocks.
Well, sometimes.
Race two. Oh yes, we have learnt to expect to be entered to do everything twice now. Refuelled on jelly babies (it's all jelly babies these days, not chocolate... I could turn into a convert though.. you can eat jelly babies actually in the boat!) and one crew member switched, we set off again for marshalling. Got a lot of practice at backing down trying to sit still in a queue before Chesterton, reminiscent of a race last lents except minus the extreme current of that occasion! Eventually got to the start. Whether it was the fact we'd raced once already, or the slightly stressful marshalling, or just that the timing within the crew wasn't as perfect as earlier, unlike the happy flying feeling of race one, by about stroke 20 everything hurt. Lots. Undeterred by pain however, we motored along, and seemed to be going well although this time being chased and threatened by a speedy men's IV.
Almost too good to be true...
I can't help feeling the King's girls of last year's lents boat will be glad to know this: even Cambridge crews can crab on race day. Especially, it seems, if that Cam crew contains a King's girl!!! Ooops.
It wasn't major crabbing. John's crab-drills have taught me well! I can crab much more spectacularly than that if trying hard ;) I rescued it and was back into a solid rate 31 1/2 rhythm within a few strokes.
But still, blue blades, the stroke seat, the CUW captain watching (having missed the fab first race) along with a huddle of coaches and I crabbed it. Gutting.
However, also in true Lents-04-style, the men's IV who were chasing us and probably thought they had us at this point, were not to get the better of us. Once back into the rhythm, with fierce determination I dragged the crew back into race pace and we held them off, overtook another crew and generally had a strong second half of the race - apparently looking better from the bank than race one (though feeling distinctly otherwise!)
* Hwt VIII won s4 w8+ in 9.23 (first row) * Hwt won student w8+ in 9.30 (second row)
* lwt viii won s2 w8+ in 9.37 (first row) * lwts student time: 9.38 (second row)
4's Head
6/11/04
As one of our two CUWBC traillists this year Francesca Sanjana was selected to row for the university in 4's head in London. Below is a report that she wrote on the race.....once we got on the water (still an hour before the race started, and we were number 472) we did some practice starts, crossed over the river and then sat for about 2 hours watching other boats row past and counting how many were left til number 300 which was when we were opening the jelly babies...
the race itself was great: our start was one of the best we'd done and we started overtaking things within the first couple of minutes. Not sure exactly which boats we overtook but Bristol uni, Birmingham uni and some college boats (Tit Hall and Newnham) were amongst them. the first 10 minutes were great as we'd been doing lots of practice head pieces at Ely that were about 10-11 minutes. the rest of the race was pure pain though... think personally I pushed too hard in the first half and died a bit later on.... but it held together well technically all the way through. in the last couple of minutes our cox shouted "I can see oxford!" (either their 5th or 6th boat, which had started either 13 or 12 places in front of us). we didn't have much left to give but the boat picked up a little bit then ;-) and apparently we were gaining on them, though looking at the results below, it can't have been by that much.
OUWBC WS2+ 21.35 (but full of non-triallists apparently) CUWBC WS2+ 21.53 (but with one non-triallist sub) OUWBC WS3- 22.09 (but note coxless IV!) - these were their LWTs OUWBC WS3+ 22.11 (their first full boat of triallists) CUWBC WS3+ 22.22 (all triallists) CUWBC WS3+ 22.23 (our LWTs) CUWBC WS3+ 22.37 (us!) OUWBC WS3+ 22.43 OUWBC WS3+ 22.44 OUWBC WS3+ 22.48
A bit difficult to compare, given use of non-triallists and coxless IVs and such - our president person reckons we're about the same or slightly ahead of them on balance at this stage. (don't know how she worked that out but...........) Strictly speaking we were the only Cam boat to beat our Oxford counterparts though.
University 4s
1/11/04-4/11/04
A coxed four made up of members of the men's senior squad took part in the annual University 4's regatta. Having recieved a bye through the first round, the crew turned up to race Trinity Hall in round 2 on tuesday afternoon. After sitting about for five minutes in the marshalling area it became apparent that Tit Hall had scratched and therefore the semi final had been reached without a stroke having to be rowed. In the semi final the crew faced a strong 4 from Downing. The race was quite even for the first half of the course, but Ditton corner proved disasterous for King's as the crews cornering ability left them completely, leading to a terrible corner and total loss of rhythm and compusure fr much of the rest of the race. The final result was a win for Downing by 9 seconds.Autumn Head
23/10/04
The Men's 1st VIII, in a scratch crew combination won the Rob Roy organised Autumn Head race on the River Cam. This puts the club in the unusual position of having a 100% record for the season. hopefully this will continue into the rest of the races this term. A race report will hopefully follow when Mark has written it. The full results can be found on the Rob Roy website.While a couple of the other college boats beat us, we would expect that when rowing in a crew that has trained together and in our fastest boat (rather than the second mens shell) that this gap would decrease somewhat.
The trophies for the day were the rather nice pots shown below.
These pots are remarkable if for nothing else then for the comedy (mis)spelling of the work "autumn"
