Sunday 18 December, the day of the, Remenham Challenge, has arrived.
There were 68 entrants from the the seven clubs that make up the Remenham club, although only 64 raced on the day.
Our crew was entered as Open Masters E (50-55 average age), for which there were 4 entrants and we were drawn to start as boat number 15, ahead of the other 3 crews, I was in the stroke seat.
I travelled to our host club, Vesta Rowing Club, by tube arriving at 08:00 to help with putting the boat back together and re-attaching the riggers, the temperature was a balmy 0 Celcius (28 Farenheit) and a gorgeous sunrise.
(picture is of Putney Railway bridge, taken as I walked across Putney Bridge just beyond the finish line)
Boating along The Embankment is a ‘wet’ affair involving ‘wellies’ (welington boots/rubber boots/gum boots/galoshes/etc) as the river height varies by well over 4.4 meters (14′ 5″) between high and low tides.
The concrete river bank this morning was covered in ice and is set at about a 30 degree angle, so this will make taking the boat down all the more fun.
We had a dedicated cox’n for the day, Lizzie, who is the niece of our #7, she did a wonderful job of keeping us all motivated throughout the warm up and the race itself.
After everyone was in the boat at around 09:30, we headed off to the start with our usual square blade warm up routine and then several 10 stroke pieces at 30spm to get us warm, in total it took us about 30 minutes to reach the marshalling area beyond the start.
The race course was from Chiswick Steps to the flagpole outside Vesta Rowing Club, race start time was 10:30 and everyone gets a ‘flying start’.
With a few minutes to go, we removed whatever layers we deemed suitable and turned the boat into the middle of the river and set off for the start.
We started well at 30spm and around 1:35/500m pace, however this dropped to around 1:45 after about 1-2 minutes which we then managed to maintain at 30spm for the remainder of the course.
The crew from Molesey caught us within about 2 minutes and powered past us – not that surprising as most of the crew were ex International or Oxford/Cambridge blues.
We picked up a head wind from about Hammersmith bridge onwards which again did not exactly help our pace.
The AllMarkOne photographer was taking pictures of all the crews from Hammersmith Bridge, this is the link to the Remenham Challenge photos, this is us:
I don’t currently own a Staines Boat Club unisuit, so instead decided to promote JL Racing by wearing their Adrenaline unisuit.
Next to pass us were Kingston who we had managed to hold off for about 2,500m, but eventually by about 3,000m they overhauled us. Thames never caught us, however they did gain a little.
It started to rain just as we crossed the finish line, then when we arrived back at the landing stage the river height had dropped about 2 meters (6′ 6″) during the hour since we set off.
Unfortunately our boots were nowhere near where we landed and we were being pressured to move, so it was a very wet and cold landing in bare feet straight into the freezing waters of the Thames.
We managed to recover our boots before lifting the boat out of the water as it would have been lethal attempting to cary the boat up the icy slope in bare feet.
After carrying the boat back to the trailer we then sat about de-rigging and splitting the boat to put it back on the trailer – I lost count of how many times I lost feeling in my fingers or toes during this exercise, only to try and warm them up a little once again.
Once all the boats were back on the trailer, I headed back to Vesta Boat Club to warm up and put on some dry clothes before heading back home on the tube.
Our official time was 13:58.0 for the 4000ish meters (with the outgoing tide), completed in 435 strokes, which placed us 53rd out of the 64 starting crews, 3:03.66 behind the winners from Molesey (open championship) who completed the course in 10:54.34.
However we are not competing directly with most of these crews, so after handicap adjustments, we moved up to 44th place overall with an adjusted time of 13:06.00 and now only 2:11.7 behind Molesey.
The time adjusted results for our division (Open Masters E) were 1st place Molesey in 11:57.61, 2nd place Kingston in 12:12.03, 3rd place Thames in 12:52.17 and 4th Staines in 13:06.00, so unfortunately we came last in our category.
We were 1:40.0 behind the Staines Senior men, reduced to 0:48.0 after handicaps, 0:03.3 ahead of the Staines Senior women, increasing to 0:55.0 after handicaps and 1:07.0 ahead of the Staines Masters E women, reduced to 1:04.0 after handicaps.
My biggest peeve regarding the race was the almost continuous drop to stroke side during the recovery which caused me, and most of stroke side, to clip the water on about half of the strokes costing us pace every time, not the best when you are setting the stroke rate and struggling to clear the water even with the oar practically on the saxboards.
I also believe that dropping our rating to 28spm, instead of insisting on 30spm would have netted us a better time as in practice we had shown good speed at 28 and yet when we upped the rating to 30, the pace dropped as the crew were expending more effort on the slide than on the oar.
With better technique and a more balanced boat, we would have beaten Thames, It would have required this plus better average fitness from our crew to have held off Kingston, the Molesey crew were just in a totally different league.