Only two of the mens masters group from my club were interested in competing at this event, so double scull it is.
We managed 3 practice sessions together on Thursday evenings outside of our weekend masters outings in bigger boats.
My doubles partner – Jonathan, is relatively new to rowing, having only started about a year or two ago at Burway Rowing Club (next club down the river from Staines), but joined Staines along with a few others when they left Burway for a variety of reasons.
The practice sessions mainly worked on balance and sorting out fixable technique issues, such as evening out oar pressures so I can stand a chance at steering, levelling out the boat and sorting oar depths, but most of all reminding him to ‘relax’!
At the end of our final practice session, I was finally happy with us winding the rate up to see if we could keep the boat level at pace.
Saturday morning, I go out with the Masters men’s crew in an 8, then await Jonathan to load the trailer, only to find a text from him to say that he has been struck down with a fever, is awaiting a Covid test but he will not be down to help load the boat.
I load the boat on my own (not that heavy with the riggers removed) and speak to another colleague as a potential substitute, just in case.
That evening Jonathan has tested negative for Covid and is feeling much better, all good for racing.
Come race day and as usual I was awake from some silly hour (04:00), Jonathan picked me up at 06:30 for our journey up to Bedford.
We arrived at 07:30, way too early for our 10:45 start, the trailer had not even arrived yet, but this gave us plenty of time to walk the 2,000m course, study all of the bridges and bends and see where the distance markers were posted.
08:45 and the trailer turns up with one of the masters ladies quad crews, the other masters ladies quad crew arrives a few minutes later.
Unload the trailer and re-rig the boats ready for racing.
10:15 and we are heading down to the water to row up to the start.
We have a GoPro 360 Max on either end of the boat, full race footage below:
Just as I get into the boat I catch my hand on something and slice the tip of my left middle finger, I only notice this after spotting blood on the loom of the oar and seeing more blood on the back of my right hand.
We row the 2,300m up to the start of the race at a rate of 22 holding a comfortable pace of around 2:30/500m, boat is sitting nice and level, conditions are almost perfect.
Fortunately my finger has finally stopped bleeding and I clean the blood off my hands with some nice clean river water (definitely not getting infected from that).
A little wait in the marshalling area (1) allowing everyone in the division to arrive before the 10:45 start time, we spin and head off, straight into the bank after about 5 strokes!
After extracting ourselves from the bank we set off again, lining up on the railway bridges for the Start (2) that is about 50m after them.
Wind up the stroke rate to around 30spm and we are off, just as we are passing the Garibaldi Pedestrian Bridge (3)
we are informed that the boat ahead of us has capsided 2 bridges up.
We acknowledge this and carry on through Hitchin Railway Bridge (4)
and then hear someone yelling at us to ‘take this span’ of the County Bridge! (5).
I can’t tell who is shouting at us, but see the rescue launch in the middle of the centre span
So opt for the right span, which is an allowed option at this bridge, I have no idea if this is the correct move or not, but I have committed to it, so can’t change now.
This is the capsised double in the middle of the river.
Shortly after this the side of the river juts out slightly more and I still haven’t finished correcting after our swerve to the right and we are in danger of crashing into the side of the river.
I slam my right oar in as a brake and try to get my partner to stop, he swears but carries on rowing.
I manage to correct our line and we carry on up the river, past Star Rowing Club (6)
round the bend to the Pedestrian Bridge (7)
and then the Town Bridge (8)
I opt to take the smaller of the middle arches as it has a better line to the finish.
Passing Bedford Rowing Club (9)
and we are half way and still going strong. About 700m to the next bridge.
We can see the pair that set off after us slowly catching up, despite their complete inability to steer a straight line.
We watch as they plough into the bank on the right hand side of the river only to extract themselves and start bearing down on us once again.
As they head across to us, they start yelling at us to move out of the way
I will admit that they have right of way as the overtaking boat, but they still can’t steer for toffee and force us to take quite evasive action to move out of their way taking us dangerously close to the left bank before we are able to straighten up once again.
Through the Suspension Bridge (10)
about 450m to go, nice straight line to the finish, I can actually concentrate on power and not worry too much about steering.
Past Bedford Schools boathouse (11)
and through the Buttterfly Bridge (12)
100m to go, I shout ‘empty the tank’ and we ramp it up to 34spm and drive for the Finish line (13).
Below is the GPS data from the race showing the various steering adjustments.
Our official time was 8:18, we came third out of 3, but the other crews both posted 7:3x times, so we never really stood a chance.
If we hadn’t had all of the ‘issues’ we would have been closer to 8 minutes, but still nowhere near the other two crews.
Back off the river, de-rig the boat and put it back on the trailer and some team photos before we head off home.
The ladies came third and fourth in their Women’s masters EF Quad race.
Everyone had a great time and we can’t wait for the next event.
Overall we finished 108= out of a total of 299 crews.
Next Saturday is Weybridge Silver Sculls, where I will be racing Masters D/E 2x with a different partner (we are E: 55-59), he will be steering and I will be supplying the power this time.