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Women's 1st VIII Fairbairns 2009-10 , Fairbairn Cup
Women's Senior VIII's
6
16:23.63 (3rd College)

W1 had high hopes leading up to our final race, having had an incredibly strong term so far, with great results, our hearts were always going to be set on the top end of the table. Our last outing before the Friday had left us confident, with the boat having a really strong sense of ratio and pick up, and with the balance that had been letting us down through term starting to come more consistently. That said, we were well aware of the strength of our competitors, and FaT were always on our mind as the crew to beat.

We started strongly with some great drawstrokes, but we rapidly lost composure, and the wind was scrappy and splashy. A great call from Kat and Scott under the road bridge for a reset through the sugar change helped us to finally settle into a strong rhythm, and we sat on 32 fairly consistently from then on. We had a strong push under Chesterton, and started to move up on Queen's, who we were chasing. However, as the course wound on, it was clear that FaT were steadily making up ground on us, which was disheartening. For whatever reason we never really managed to transfer this threat into the extra push to move us away from them and onto Queen's, and as we crossed the finish line we knew that we'd definitely been beaten by them, and it remained to be seen by who else. Many congratulations to FaT for what was a fantastic row from them, and to Downing too.

However, third is still a great achievement, and I am very proud of W1 this term - a great way to start my captaincy, may successes continue next term!

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Women's 1st VIII Fairbairns 2009-10 , Winter Head
Women's Student Seniors 8+
1
10.10

The week of training before this race had been a disrupted one, with heavy winds meaning that we lost water time, frustratingly. We were also short of a cox, so managed to get George to sub in for us (after having rowed twice already!). This lead to a fairly stressful start of the day, as W1 were left waiting at the boathouse minus cox whilst M1 finished racing, not managing to push off until ten minutes after our marshalling time. Nonetheless, as is apparently typical for Winter Head, they were running about half an hour behind schedule by that point, so no one noticed as we shiftily joined the back of the queue to row down to the start.

We stuck to a fairly simple start, which worked out well for us, and we settled into a rhythm quite soon off the start. A slightly dodgy cox box told us that we were either rating 19 or 8, which would have achieved our aim of getting ratio! We'd thought going into the race that the toughest point would have been the reach, and luckily we had a bit of help here. Having realised by the Plough that we were only two lengths off the City crew that were ahead of us, we were motivated to overtake, and managed to do so by Morley's Holt. A focus like this was really useful, helping us to remain strong at the point when we were most tired. Our finish was strong, if a little scrappy as fatigue and wondering-where-the-line-is set in, but still a fantastic time - joint fastest female crew on the course! A great achievement, but there is no room for complacency between now and the end of term, with a FaT crew just 2 seconds slower than us, and Clare/Emma/Downing not far behind them, Fairbairns is going to be a hard race...

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Women's 1st VIII Fairbairns 2009-10 , Winter Head
Women's Student Seniors 8+
8
10.44

As the closest possible practice for Fairbairns, W1 have a tradition of racing the Winter Head twice over, one that was continued this year. After our first attempt we pulled in at Stourbridge Common, got the boat out, had a quick refuel, then swiftly put the boat back in again. In the row back down to the start the tiredness of the crew could be felt, but we pushed on, and loosened up, ready to try and achieve as good a time as possible for the second race. Having gone into the first race with the aim of not holding anything back, and treating that as our only attempt, this was never going to be a simple task. This was not helped by having an extremely long wait for the division to start, in the increasingly cold breeze. Nevertheless, we eventually set off, and again settled on to a steady feeling rate fairly quickly. Considering the cold and tiredness, the commitment of the crew to the calls made was fantastic, and this was most obvious when a call for a 'mental reset' was asked for coming around Ditton. Again we were in the handy position of having a crew to chase down on the reach, Trinity College, Oxford, and we were spurred on, lifting the boat as if we hadn't already raced once before! Again we ground them down over the course of the reach, overtaking them under the railway bridge, and steadily moving through them to finish in 8th, with a respectable time for our second leg.

All in all, a great day of exhausting racing (my core muscles are still aching!), but lessons still to be taken from it. Overtaking crews is not generally an option in Fairbairns, so we'll have to ensure that we can really motivate ourselves to keep sending it on for the whole course.

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Women's 1st VIII Fairbairns 2009-10 , Autumn Head
Women's Senior VIII's
9
10.47 (fastest college W1 crew)

A slightly wobbly practice start on the reach on the row down was followed by some comfortable paddling, leaving us prepared for our first race of term. It being the first race, we weren’t sure quite what to expect from other crews, so just aimed to go out and have a ‘chunky’ row, achieving the ratio that we’d been working on in training, at high rate. We set off with possibly the splashiest start in history, and settled down to rate 31/32, which was held consistently for the course. A really strong rhythm in the Gut was cemented by a push for 10, leading us around Grassy. Power and balance were lost slightly in Plough reach, but as we rounded Ditton our place in the draw really started to help. We were chasing Emma W1, and had Clare W1 to push off. Emma had been out of sight until we got onto the reach, and some great motivational calls from Scott focused us on the task of grinding them down. Some strong pushes helped us to achieve this, however, tiredness kicked in just after the P and E, with the balance really suffering. Nevertheless we managed to finish well, practically having overlap on Emma (having, according to our awesome bank party, taken about 8 lengths out of them) and comfortably ahead of Clare. Although we weren’t category winners, due to CUW’s many crews, it’s still a fantastic start to the terms racing, and testament to the hard work put in during training.

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