St Catharine's College Boat Club

 "It's not supposed to be comfortable, it's supposed to hurt" said Priya, 20 minutes before push-off. Maybe not most encouraging of team talks, but we all agreed that was how it was meant to be. The start though, was strangely confident - we could all feel the effects of the cold after a long wait for marshalling (that's Fairbairns for you) but something clicked as we passed the flagpole, and felt the first icy touches of Chris Q's racing back-splash. The race plan, in all its glorious detail, was executed to perfection, the 6 focusses demolished one after the other, with an unremitting efficiency that belied the weary bodies producing it. All in all, this was by far our best row of the term, and the final surge for the line added a touch of class to a relentless performance. (And yes, it did hurt...).

While we weren't quite good enough to beat the lightweights, we did find to our pleasant surprise that we'd beaten Caius M1, Queens M1 and FaT M1, to come in an excellent 7th place. It was particularly nice to note that the cluster of colleges which finished seconds ahead of us at Winter Head were now several seconds behind (the inches we need...). M1 can be incredibly proud of themselves this term - a huge investment of effort definitely paid off, and I look forward to seeing more of the same next term.