St Catharine's College Boat Club

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.