St Catharine's College Boat Club

Once you've gone down one, you may as well go down two. All of us were fairly glad to see the end of this set of bumps. In the end we weren't quite fast enough to hold off some relatively fast crews moving through the field. There's no point crying over spilt milk, we didn't quite get the result we wanted but we did some good racing, especially the row over on day two.

This morning we were back in the Empacher, putting in the first of several 20km+ outings over the next couple of weeks to set us up for HoRR on March 25th. In other news, the M1 a cappella group is also coming along nicely.

On Saturday, W2 arrived at the boathouse with nerves running high - today we were chasing blades. After three very quick bumps earlier in the week, today would certainly pose a greater challenge as we were chaing Jesus W3, who we knew would catch Medwards W2 ahead of them within about 3 minutes, and were the strongest crew we had been behind all week. After a rousing team talk from Matt, we went into the race ready to go for everything off the blocks, aiming to catch Jesus before they could bump. It began well, with our usual strong start and a delayed stride putting us in a good position closing them down. Medwards evidently had a weak start, as Jesus gained the first whistle, but ours didn't take much longer and there followed a cacophony of whistles that told us it was extremely close within the three-boat sandwich. With both gaps at 1/4 of a length, Catz were closing faster and we were going in for the kill. But as we rounded our first corner of the entire bumps campaign, disaster struck. We took it wider than planned to avoid Queens' on the inside, and managed to crash spectacularly into Eddy's, who had pulled up on the outside bank having been bumped (apologies to them for nearly decapitating half their crew). We quickly reset, now back to a length on Jesus. We continued to close them down but the damage was done as we couldn't quite catch them before Medwards took a bad line into grassy and the bump was gone.

Jesus were slow clearing the river and we had to hold it up to let them move out of the way, but this wouldn't stop us from going for plan B: the overbump on FaT W2. New race, go. Thanks to the repeated stopping and starting, we had about 8 lengths to make up if we wanted to catch them. Everyone knew what was needed and we dug deep with one aim for the remainder of the race: no regrets. Maintaining a high rate for the rest of the piece (about 36spm on the reach) every member of the crew pushed for the girl behind and the girl in front and we gradually wore away at the gap between us - 8 lengths, 7, 6, 5... by halfway down the reach, we had narrowed it to 4 lengths. We continued to press and by the end of the race had reduced the defecit to 2 or 3 lengths. But, despite an almighty effort, we could not catch them in time and and a heroic row over was to be our final result of bumps.

It was a fantastic effort by the whole crew and I couldn't have asked for more. We have produced some brilliant results from this bumps campaign and everyone should be incredibly proud of what we've achieved: as every man and his dog has said to us since, "good crews go up three, lucky crews go up four". Saturday's result has given us the motivation to aim higher and train harder, and there's no doubt W2 will come back fighting next term.

Bumps can suck sometimes. Time-wise the crew this year could have bumped the crew that went up-two last year. Likewise when you row over for two days in a row, you'd hope a spooning crew would come down to you at least as quickly as a blading crew was coming up. As we all know, however, that isn't how this works.

We held Clare off the start, winding to 44 and striding to 38 which we held into first post. Here Clare put in a solid push, our response again seeing the rate rise into the 40s to escape the bump. However, many of this Clare boat were in the crew that went to Henley last year, after blading to fourth on the river in Mays. Unfortunately, the bump was fairly inevitable coming out of Grassy.

We could all give a dozen reasons why we weren't quite fast enough, we could have pushed earlier or had cleaner finishes, but in the end we just weren't strong enough. Not all of our goals this term have been based on immediate results, so with the power in the crew and the aerobic base we have the potential to cause some serious damage next term. For now though, it sucks to be bumped and we've got to accept the shortfalls of this training cycle.

After a rest day on Thursday (following the well-taken opportunity on Wednesday evening for some mid-bumps celebrations of our success so far) W2 took back to the water on Friday ready to tighten the screw on the Lent bumps campaign. Today's target would be Darwin W2, who had been bumped the previous two days so we knew we could catch them. After two very speedy bumps earlier in the week, we knew that we needed to work on implementing the stride more effectively, as there was a risk of failing to develop the sustainable pace that might be needed later in the week (in case - shock horror - we might have to row for more than two minutes). However we were perhaps a bit too calm on the row to the start, as Matt was unimpressed by our "pedestrian" practice starts which needed "a bit more zip". Despite my negligent failure to provide sweets today, we were very relaxed as we awaited the one-minute cannon; a sign of the rapidly increasing amount of bumps experience within the crew. Bank partied by two of our trusty LBCs, Liv and Izzy, and boyfriend/flatmate/glory-hunter James, we put on our game faces and pushed off.

With suitable zip in the start, we already had one whistle coming out of the railway bridge, followed swiftly by a second and then a third. But Darwin were not to be taken down so easily and put on a spurt, keeping us at three whistles for about 30 seconds. We had a second stride and continued to grind them down. We once again upped the pressure and, despite physical contact that could be heard and felt by all in the boat, put in another few stokes before their cox eventually conceded.

So another quick bump to make it 3 from 3; all eyes turn to tomorrow, which is set to be our most challenging day yet as we chase a strong-looking Jesus W3, who are themselves chasing a Medwards W2 crew on track for spoons. It certainly won't be easy but there's everything to play for.