 |
made with EASE© - for Easy Accurate Speedy Entries |
|
|||||||
|
Results available here
CREW : Bow: L D Squire, T R Johnson, B J Stockley, S D Horner, T Quayle, C O'Brien,
Saturday 26th February
JMB started his short stint of coaching the VIII, standing in for GPR for a few days. We spent a lot of time on hand heights and turn around at the finish. After the hand heights exercises the tempo was raised and the crew had a go at the traditional head race course. The upstream time was 7.07, downstream 6.34, making an average of 6.47 which was not bad for a first attempt, and was about the same as that done by the 2003 VIII of their first attempt.
Tuesday 28 Feb
Despite the hand heights exercise the balance remained depressingly down on bowside with bow, three and five having a particularly bad time of it. Meanwhile strokeside were reasonably comfortable. JMB explained over and over again that the boat was built level and that hand heights were crucial in getting the balance as it should be. The crew probably got a bit fed up with the repeated comments from the coach, and meanwhile the coach felt that he should not have to keep saying the same thing over and over again, so morale as we well as balance of the boat remained unstable.
Wednesday 1st March
The crew met for a short outing after CCF and the sole aim was to do the head race course again. There was a muddle over the meeting point, with one member of the crew running to the river, while the rest waited in the Wicks Room, so the crew chat before the race took place at the boathouse in the cold, surrounded by hoards of lively juniors. This did not help to start the session properly. The average time was 6:42. (Up 7.09.4, down 6.18.6) It was a plucky effort.
Brian Mawer was on the bank and GPR watched from the launch. JMB was quite impressed by the overall performance of the crew but GPR was less happy about it and said so after the crew came off the water. We all went away from the river in somewhat depressed mood, and clearly the crew had reached an important decision moment. Three of the crew met JMB later that evening and discussed the situation; meanwhile two others met with GPR. As a result of this, and by a direct request from some of the crew a meeting was called for lunch time the following day.
Thursday
The meeting took place over lunch and the air was cleared before the outing.
Lionel and Dorata Girard came to the river for the launching of two restored double sculls which which we bought from Nantes University two years ago. Mike and Carl have done a grand job on them and they will come in useful for training in the future. Lionel was here for only a very short time, on his way to a meeting at Eton, having driven down from Nottingham in the morning.
Once again, JMB asked crew to trust him when he explained balance yet again. The outing started with everybody making an effort to do what they were told, to help each other out, and to concentrate for rather longer than usual. It was obvious from the bank within a few strokes that this was going to be a better outing, and indeed it was for the short final preparation for the Saturday head race. The coach was joined on the launch by Phillip Counsell, (Captain of Boats in 1975). He hadn't been on the water for some time, but said that the river as much as he remembered it. GPR came in the launch for the second half of the outing and was much more impressed by what the crew were doing. We all felt that a corner had been turned, thanks to efforts by everybody, and loading was done in a happier mood than could have ever been expected the day before.
Philip‘s wife had made a cake which he brought with him, so it seemed a good idea to have crew tea. This was a good occasion.
Saturday : Head of the Taff
What a day. We were all on the quad in good time at 0700 but there was no sign of the bus. We hung around for 20 minutes and then it turned up. The driver said that he had been on Clank for about 25 minutes, and had got stuck because two minibuses were parked in the turning spot. He had to back all the way down Clank to get out again. Luckily he was good-humoured about it and we all set off at about 0725. We went armed with rudimentary sandwiches because the kitchens have not had time to make a full batch. It was a very sunny early-morning.
The next excitement was that the boat trailer was pulled aside by what Mike called "the fuzz" just before they reach the motorway to be weighed and measured and generally checked over. The trailer was held up for about 15 to 20 minutes and they passed the test, coming away with a certificate saying how much weight was on each axle.
When the boats arrived everyone got on the job of rigging them and we were ready in good time to the race.
That's not quite true, because when the 1st VIII boat had been put together we discovered that a stretcher had fallen out on the motorway, so on the face of it we couldn't race. JMB fixed with the girls coach that the crew could use their boat in the afternoon division, but meanwhile ever resourceful Mike hunted around and found a stretcher which was lent to us by Monmouth Comprehensive School, so we in fact boated on time. The launching arrangements were somewhat crowded, with crews having to walk their boats along a floating deck to a small raft.
The river was wide, the water calm, and there was plenty of room to get to the start without difficulty. The crew paddled lightly and were fairly well balanced and comfortable during this phase of the preparation.
They reached the start just in time for the race. The crews lined up facing upstream then turned around a buoy and went straight off with only a very short wind up. They went off at about 35 and the report afterwards was that they felt that it was a bit rushed and didn't settle quickly enough. However, JMB said that it was better to start a little bit too high even if it was uncomfortable because if you start at your racing pace you will tend to drop lower than you intend to when settling finally comes. So advice for the Schools Head is to go off slightly uncomfortably high and settle to racing pace naturally over the first minute or two.
There are several bridges on the course, and the first special 'Ten' took place after the first bridge. It was somewhat more effective than similar efforts a fewe days earlier. Unfortunately the crew was in a vacuum for all the race so didn't benefit from the company of other crews around them. This will have slowed them down a little bit. However it was obvious from the bank that they were catching up with the crew in front steadily.
Supporters saw the crew only for the last 500m or so. They looked fairly well-balanced as they approached the finish, but there was what looked like an awful shipwreck about 100 m from the line. It turned out that they were upset by the swell in the bay which was deceptively more than it looked from the bridge. The report from the crew was that they felt they were nearly capsizing for a few strokes. At one point the riggers were almost completely covered in water. The Cox was presented with a steering problem the last 500 m, because the course was not at all clearly laid out and on coming through the last bridge she was faced with the open water with hardly a clue about where to go. The instructions given by the marshals before the race were not clear. As the race progressed some crews took a course between two buoys, others veered off to the right. There was one case where a racing crew ran into two crews that had finished and were returning to the launching area on what they assumed was not the course. Monkton did as well as anybody in steering, but the coach made a comment about the lay-out of the course to the organisers which he hopes they will take on baord for the next time.
Some of the photographs taken near the end of the race demonstrate how much work there is to do to get the boat going really well. It is much more comfortable than it was earlier in the term, because the balance is becoming slightly more reliable, but there are still problems with timing, hand heights, power, hand speed, squaring together etc. There is lots of work still to do.
We didn't wait for the afternoon division, but times came out for our division and we were placed second overall behind the Welsh squad coxless quad. Unfortunately we were beaten by two eights in the afternoon division. Cardiff University S3 VIII beat us by 18 seconds; Monmouth Rowing Club S2 VIII beat us by three seconds, so we came fourth overall. We beat several S3 VIIIs including Monmouth School who were 15 seconds slower than us. There is still work to be done, but good progress has been made.
JMB
Coach : G P Reay
a program being developed by Julian Bewick jmb@mupiro.co.uk