Fours Head winners 2012!

Well, Leander had a cracking weekend at the Fullers Head of the River Fours race.

Out of near 500 boats racing, Leander had four boats in the top five and five boats in the top ten overall.  We had ten boats racing, with sometimes two or three Leander boats in the same category and so out of a possible six category wins, Leander won five! I think chief coach Mark Banks was pretty happy with that.

Our quad raced in the Elite women's category and we had a solid race.  We were started behind the men's elite coxed fours, so we gave them as big a gap as we could.  It was a good job we did because you don't want to have to start steering around crews straight off the start and we caught up with the crew ahead of us relatively quickly. In fact, our finish time was over a minute quicker than the men's coxed four who started directly ahead of us, and in the end we overtook three men's coxed fours during the race which was a great mid race morale boost! We were the fastest women's boat on the river, winners of Elite W4x pennant and placed 60th overall.

Elite W4x mid race, courtesy of Leander's press officer Robert Treharne Jones
From stroke to bow (left to right) Victoria Thornley, Katie Greves, Erica Bodman, Ro Bradbury

We were pleased to put a good distance between us and the next female crew down the river, who were 27 seconds slower, the winners of the IM1 pennant, Molesey Boat Club. Incidentally they had a brilliant race I think, beating the second place Elite women's 4x, Imperial Boat Club.

I personally had a great time training and racing with this crew. Such a wealth of experience in the boat, they are great girls to learn from.

Now the mild panic sets in as it is less than two weeks till GB Trials in Boston where we do a 2k ergo test on the Saturday (24th) and 5k water time trial on the Sunday (25th). I don't feel ready yet!