Henley Women's Regatta

This weekend saw rowers from around the world flock to Henley-on-Thames for the prestigious Henley Women’s Regatta.  I raced alongside Reading University RC member Lucinda Gooderham in the Elite 2- for the Redgrave Trophy. 

Newcastle University RC was the first challenge on the Saturday to get through to the semi-final on the Sunday.  We managed to stamp our authority on the 2- from early on in the race and by the end of Temple Island we pulled away to clear water and comfortably lead the race managing to cruse down the course at 22 stokes per minute.  Also through to face us in the semi-final was Vesta B while on the other side of the draw Vetsa A would battle it out with Barnes Bridge Ladies for a spot in the final showdown of the Elite 2-. 

The first race down the track on Sunday morning was the semi-final between Vesta A and Barnes Bridge ladies.  This saw a tight battle between the 2 crews with Vesta A edging infront to a 1 length win.  We then followed down the course and again made light work of the opposition with again a comfortable lead from early on in the race.  We got to watch plenty of racing before our final at 15.05 although the weather wasn’t the kindest an was quite wet with intermittent blue skys.

The challenge was on could we go out for our 3^rd verdict of easily.  Sat on the start line Vesta A alongside we waited for the flag.  It had got a lot choppier than our earlier race and Vesta used to the tideway managed to hold on longer that we would have liked but we stayed with our plan and pulled away from them for yes you’ve guessed it our 3^rd easily verdict.

I just hope this bodes well for European selection later on in July.

Catch up time

Well it’s been a long time since I’ve but anything up it’s been rather busy of late.  I’ve been training as part of the development squad for team GB with the aim of going to the European Championships in September. 

The squad of 12 have been training for 8 seats at the European Championships and have had some good races so far.  The first races we did was some speed orders firstly against the women’s squad 8+ at Dorney Lake the Olympic rowing venue where we were placed just 9 seconds down on the squad boat.  We then went to Caversham the home of GB Rowing and did a speed order against the under 23 crew.  Despite being down at the start we showed our dominance and powered through the U23’s and finished with a comfortable lead.  This was after just a week of training in the 8+ with much more training and boat speed to come. 

Since then we have been training in the 8+ and also in two 4- which we raced at Metropolitan Amateur Regatta last weekend.  First up for the weekend was the 8+ and we aimed to dominate the race from early on.  As planned we got out of the blocks first closely followed by the U23 crew.  We knew we could totally overpower the other crews and by the 500m mark had a 3 second lead on the next crew to finish 12 seconds ahead of the U23 crew which came in second.

Then came time for the inter-crew battle between the 4-‘s with 6 of the 7 boats racing coming from international selection processes.  Leading the way down the course was our 2 4-‘s and in the first 500m we could see we were up although there was only 1 second in it.  We knew the other 4- wouldn’t take this race lying down and we would have to work to keep that lead.  We powered down to the halfway mark and managed to gain a further second on them.  We set to go again over the last 1000m and pulled away further to finish 5 seconds up on our other boat.  In 3^rd and 4^th with only 2 second dividing them was the U23 boats with the junior boat some way behind in 6^th and 7^th.

The Sunday 8+ race planned out much the same as the Saturday although we didn’t have such a good race we still dominated the field with a comfortable 8 second lead.  The NRC high performance squad also had wins for the IM1 2x and the Elite 4x.

For Henley Women’s Regatta I will be racing in both a 2- and the 8+.  In preparation for this we decided to enter the 2- at Reading Amateur Regatta since we have not raced in this boat.  The event for the Elite 2- was larger than we expected and we were set to meet most of our opposition for HWR.  We won all 3 of our races with a comfortable lead which looks good for HWR but a lot can happen in a week.

Fingers crossed