L - R: Lottie Burgess, Rachel Willis, Nikki Bartlett, Georgie Hazell, Erica Bodman, Lucinda Gooderham, Helen Wood, Monica Relph, Rhiannon Jones
We started off as the second boat, of 300 crews. The boat that went off first was Leander, a full current GB senior squad, so we knew they would pull away from us from the start. The boats starting third and fourth we thought we would pull away from, and duly did so, leaving us in a bit of a vacuum. With some incredible coxing from Rhiannon, we executed our race plan as intended, pushed hard throughout the race and had some great motivation within the boat the whole way down the course.
My personal favourite was a call for Nikki, to 'be the ironman'. Nikki is an outstanding athlete and lightweight rower and she won't mind me saying that she is completely mad! Alongside our intensive rowing training Nikki also finds the time to do ironman competitions, marathons and half marathons! Yesterday we did the eights head, and today on our day off Nikki ran the Reading half marathon. And not just jogged round the thirteen miles, she raced it to a finish time of 1hr24! This was Nikki's first official half marathon, and she finished 19th woman, 298th overall out of 18,000+, YES eighteen thousand, entrants! Oh yes, and she runs about once a week! This girl is incredible and certainly one to watch out for.
So, back to the rowing race! A little background information; the starting order is determined by last year's results. We came third last year, with Anna Watkins, Helen Glover and Heather stanning in the boat. These three girls would go on to win gold and two silver medals respectively at the World Rowing Championships in New Zealand in November 2010. Composite boats typically start near the back of the list, in the 200's because they are classified as a new entry unless they have exactly the same clubs in the boat as the year before. Therefore, the GB composite boat started 214th. Then, boats enter a category depending on the number of 'points' they have in the boat. If you win a regatta race, or represent your country internationally, you get a point/s on your rowing racing licence. We entered the Intermediate 1 category (IM1), which is preceded by Elite and Senior, and followed by IM2, IM3 and Novice. There are a few other categories for masters and juniors.
Head races must be the most frustrating things in the world. We raced at 15.30, time trial style so we had no idea of how well, or badly, we had gotten on. Finally at about 20.30 the provisional results are posted online. We came third, out of 300 odd boats, and won our category, IM1, in a new course record time! We were beaten by the Leander crew, who won by a large margin, and in second place was the GB composite crew with current and ex GB senior squad members. Both boats had brilliant coxes and athletes, including Olympians. We were only 13 seconds behind the composite crew, a huge achievement for a club crew with three lightweight rowers and not a huge amount of sweep experience in the boat! There were only three boats on the river that posted times under 19minutes, and we came through in 18m53. To get a new record too was the icing on the cake. A brilliant day's racing :) Results HERE
I must also make mention of our coach, Eira Parry, as she gave our crew the most inspiring and electrifying pre race chat imagineable! We are so glad to have done her proud!
The other Reading University crews were very successful too. RUBC B were 24th, after finishing 48th last year and RUBC C were 66th as a new entry!
In other news: next Saturday is my 2k ergo test for April trials, and on the Sunday I am racing my single at Caversham lake over 2 x 1500m's.
That's all for now folks :)
