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It's 2017! In hindsight we were about as well-prepared for today's race as Donald Trump is to be President. Stuart kindly switched sides and Wagstaff subbed back into the five seat to fill Jon's still-over-100kg shoes. The term so far started with a training camp in Cambridge, complete with ergs, small boats (apologies to Lawrence whose capsize was almost certainly my fault), circuits, weights, socials and of course, outings. This week achieved two things; getting Basile involved in a return trip to Kuda, and setting the crews for the term.

Following on from training camp, M1 have been again emphasizing the steady state to set a platform before we hit the high-rate work closer to bumps. Rolling into the first leg of H2H we therefore had not much idea of what to expect, and unsurprisingly span the wheels off the start, rowing about as gracefully as a herd of elephants marauding down the 2k course.  Bow-side's finishes were somewhere between the bottom of the shell and the river bed, and our much loved pause at the finish had somehow migrated to the front-stops region. Despite a shaky reach, we found some rhythm through the corners and finished off with a push to 34.

During the interval, a few decisions were made. Firstly we decided to rate-cap the next piece to try and find some efficiency, length and rhythm, and secondly we decided we were all a bit cold (somewhat unsurprisingly, given that our Friday outing was called off due to a frozen river). Doing our best to ignore the latter point, we lined up for the return leg. Despite holding a rate that was 2-3 pips lower that the downstream piece, we finished in a comparable time.

Overall we finished 9th out of the college boats, not breaking any records but definitely still in the pack. The next race is Pembroke Regatta in three weeks after a solid training block. Congratulations to W1 on a strong performance.