SCBC

For the first time since 2005, Selwyn M1 bumped on the first day of Lents.

But it wasn't an easy ride (or a particularly tidy one!).

Monday morning, 05:20AM, and Iain Monro (Str) calls to tell me he's been throwing up. 05:25AM, last proper outing pre-bumps gets cancelled, sleep ensues. 13:13, text goes out to Mr Joseph Callaghan, sub extraordinare, telling him he is required at stroke. As usual, Joe can't resist yet another set of bumps, and we have a new stroke, just like that.

Tuesday morning, a more respectable 06:45AM and we meet for our pre-bumps outing... starts need explaining, and rhythms need settling into... everyone's trying to focus, but it just doesn't seem to click. The starts are okay, but just not great, and the high rate stuff feels all sluggish.

Tuesday afternoon. It's bumps time, and as has been a recurring theme of the past few weeks, it's snowing. What we really need are a couple of nice settled standing starts, but wait, those get cancelled and we get to do rolling ones instead; not quite the same, but they feel good. The boat is nervy, but the sit is as good as our base level.

Spinning on station, Matt decides exactly the line he wants to make the most of the advantage from station 2. The seconds tick down quickly, and before I know it, I'm coming forward and squared up. GUN. Not our neatest start, but it gets us moving, and we're straight onto first post corner. It seems not long at all before the first whistle comes for FAT II, but some truly shocking balance sees the boat wobbling all over the place. Robinson seem to leap up every time the balance goes, until they're within a canvas, and closing. As a crew, we drive them back, breaking their push and spurring us on into FAT II. Robinson drive again, and again we hold it, but only at the last minute - they had a couple of inches of overlap here. Matt takes a beautiful line around Ditton and we relax into a rhythm and start to row better, eating into FAT II with every stroke. Robinson's line sees them fall back, and a shout of 1 metre from Andy in our Bank Party sees us all give that last push into FAT II. We bumped them not far into the reach, in a result that brought a lot of relief in our crew, and spawned some much needed self-belief. We've had our iffy first race, now we can get serious and get on with the much more difficult task at hand tomorrow, but at least we'll have the crew we're used to.

Thank you Joe for your unwavering commitment to SCBC.