Fours Head Domination!!!

On Saturday the 10^th November over 500 crews from around the country gathered on the Thames for the annual Fullers Fours Head.  The race is held over 4.25 miles from Mortlake to Putney and is the reverse of the Oxford Cambridge boat race course.

 

I raced in the same crew as the Diamond Jubilee Rowing Championships with just a small change of the steering foot to bow.  Set of crew number 422 we had a long wait for our race to begin.  For a change boating from the start had its advantage as we took the opportunity not to warm up on the water but instead warm up on the ergo’s and boat in our division.  This meant when the time came to race we were still warm and had not been sat getting cold on the water for over an hour.

 

As we paddle towards the start line crew started to get congested and we could not build into our start as early as we would have liked but when the time came we did our start and got the boat up to speed.  Once we settled onto our rate we started the hunt for the Thames RC crew ahead of us.  We caught up with the congestion not long after the start and Catherine made the decision to stay wide round the corner as we made the move to overtake Thames RC, Vesta RC and the Men’s Elite 4+.  We stayed out of trouble while Thames RC collided with the men’s crew and we pushed ahead.

 

We then had a clear run on the racing line and pushed away from the crews behind us taking Thames RC with us.  They obviously had some rage after their collision.  We had a solid race by no means did it feel our best rowing but as I’ve been told before it’s a good job rowing’s not a dressage sport.  Dez’ words to us when we came in for our recovery food at Putney hard were “you’ve just won the Senior pennant and you all look suicidal”.  Our reply was merely “yes but everything hurts” all four of us raced as hard as we could we committed to each other from the first stroke. 

 

The downside to boating at the start was the long paddle back after racing.  Silence was upon us tears were shed and relieve was found at Chiswick bridge when we could finally see the club and dry land.  The steps at the club felt like climbing Everest but would we do it all over again quite simply yes.  We did the job we went to do and more.  We were successful in winning the Women’s Senior  4- pennant in a time of 20:14.7 breaking the previous record of 21:46.6 set by Reading University BC.  We were also the quickest women’s 4- of the day and beat our Nottingham men’s 4- which is always good for banter.

 

Click to view more Jet Photographic photos of racing

 

A good day was had and as a crew we would just like to thank Dez for all his hard work and making this possible.  We have to attend a prize giving evening to collect our medals and we also get our names on a blade which will be displayed at the club.  I think we’re all slightly more excited by the blade.

 

Next stop GB trials on the 24-25^th November were we will race 2000m on the ergo on Saturday followed by 5000m in 1x on Sunday.