Women’s Eights Head of the River Race
W1 went to WEHoRR with the aims of enjoying the experience and taking a little bit of pink to the tideway. We had a number of changes in crew order in the run up to the race and ended up with yet another different crew order on the day of the race. Never the less, we set out to give the race our all and make sure that we did ourselves proud. We warmed up by doing the Hokey Cokey as loudly as possible to intimidate crews around us. Once we had got through the chaos to get the boat on the water we focused in to make the most of the long warm up on the way down to the start. The weather was a bit of a mixed bag. The wind conditions were pretty much as good as we could hope for, meaning the water wasn’t too choppy. However, as we de-kitted and spun to the start, there was a heavy hail storm… With thoughts of getting warm and out of the hail as quickly as possible to spur us on we put in a powerful rolling start and settled to a strong race pace. We over took the boat ahead of us, Oundle Town, very quickly after the start and from then kept focusing on the crew ahead and catching them as fast as we possibly could. Overtaking 5 crews in all over the course kept us pushing and striving to make the race as good as we could. The crowds on Hammersmith Bridge spurred us on further as we overtook HSBC. In the final stretch we made the most of some side-by-side competition with the last of the 5 boats we over took to push us all the way to the finish and empty the tanks. We got off the water happy with the race we had rowed and knowing that whatever the result we had given it our all. The results speak for themselves. Shocked silence followed by cheering and shouting was the response when we found out we had come 79th overall and 2nd fastest Cambridge college, behind only the headship crew, Jesus – with only 18 seconds in it! All things considered, we couldn’t have asked for a better ending to the day and headed to spoons for celebrations and more importantly hot food…. A big thank you needs to be said to Hannah Jongsma from Darwin College for subbing for us and to Chris Burfiend for coming down to support us. WEHoRR was a fantastic experience, made even better by sharing it with such an awesome group of people. I think this photo sums the day, and this crew, up pretty well:
Head of the River Race
