St Catharine's College Boat Club

16/35 - 2nd in Other Mays - 9:42

It was a beautifully sunny day for the first race of the season, the Head of the Cam race run by Chesterton Rowing Club. Using Emma as our substitute cox, we sat in a massive queue of boats waiting to get up to the start, which didn't help our attempts at getting into a good rhythm. After a bit of sunbathing whilst marshalling at Baitsbite, we were finally ready to start.

The race plan had always been to row at whatever rate came naturally whilst keeping the strokes long, which had been our downfall in Lents. The start pace was 29, and Will held it there for the duration of the race, aside from a couple of moments in which the crew lost concentration and it came down to 26/27. The race itself was uneventful, with pushes in all the usual places with a particularly pleasing one out of Ditton, under the encouragement on John and his grandson! However, the difference between this term's crew and last is that the cover and run stayed  for the whole race, even when we started to tire under the railway bridge.

The final time of 9:42 was under the 10 minute target time, albeit with very favourable conditions. The result also put us ahead of all the crews around us in bumps, even if only by a small amount. All in all, a very pleasing start to term as we know that we can definitely push harder, and more practice will allow us to bring the rate up to that required for a full bumps piece.