After a scrappy week of training, we approached this race aiming to get the basics right, and set ourselves up well for racing the course twice. Despite a start that was far better than anything we had achieved in training, we were never able to find a solid rhythm, and we rowed scrappily for most of the course. After a quick chat at the finish line, we resolved to find better consistency and discipline in our second race.
Winter Head 2009-10
21st November 2009
Men's 1st VIII Fairbairns 2009-10
,
Race 2
Women's 1st VIII Fairbairns 2009-10
Women's 1st VIII Fairbairns 2009-10
Women's 3rd IV+ Fairbairns 2009-10
Event:
Winter Head The Winter Head, a 2500m race from the A14 by-pass to the former Penny Ferry pub, takes place this Saturday. Christ's will be represented in the race by our M1, W1, M2 & W2 crews. Also competing under the Champion of the Thames banner is the Fellows & Grads VIII. The racing goes on all day with different crews racing at different times. All support from the bank would be most welcome.
Student Senior 8+
15
9:14
Despite having raced once already, we still felt strong coming in to this race, on the back of some solid fitness work this term. Once again we started well, and found a slightly better rhythm, although this was disrupted by some worse rowing through the corners. The Jesus College crew behind us closed quickly, and by Ditton corner were about one length behind. However, through the second half of the race the crew responded admirably, holding off the bigger and stronger Jesus crew right up to the finish, conceding only 3/4 of a length in the second half of the race.
Overall, whilst not overly optimistic about our placing in relation to other colleges, we were happy to beat our first time in the second race, indicating that the core fitness work this term is paying off. We now have just a couple of weeks until Fairbairns to iron out a few details that will hopefully bring us crucial seconds in this term's big event.
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...
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.
Women's Students Novice 4+
2
12:26
After a week of bad winds that saw all our water outings replaced by erg sessions, there were some pre-race nerves in the boat as we rowed down to Chesterton. Fortunately, we soon got back into the swing of things and our rowing became much better on the way to the start of the course. Our practice starts felt good and we were excited as we waited to go.
Our start was a little scrappy and lead to us veering rather close to the river bank initially! Fortunately some good calls from our cox and a mighty effort from bow side got us straightened out and settling into our rhythm fairly quickly. We kept the focus on technical aspects of our rowing, concentrating on keeping our strokes long in the occasional strong gusts of wind.
We could feel ourselves beginning to tire as we came on to the reach, but a call for a new race mindset and some good pushes for ten kept our speed up and as we came under the railway bridge we had the motivation of Clare College's first eight chasing us to keep us pushing hard. We managed to hold them off until we were just over the line, something we were quite proud of!
All in all, a good improvement from the Autumn Head just a few weeks ago - when we were still rowing trailing blades! - and we're extremely keen to do well in Fairbairn's in a couple of weeks.
