|
After some navigational shenanigans (Victor's satnav took an interesting route, and the trailer ended up the wrong side of a brick wall) Kingston arrived en masse at Bristol's Floating Harbour. The Harbour follows the original meandering course of the River Avon (which was diverted into the adjacent cut), thus ensuring that, despite Brunel's engineering influence, there are no straight lines at all. Not one. This, and the lack of lane buoys, can make helming difficult: the temptation to follow the natural curve of the bank must be avoided. The line of buoys on the outside of the course offer some help, but for an added twist this year these “kinked” near the end to make the finish line narrower than any other part of the course. In the day's 34 races, only three had incidents where helms disagreed on their racing lines, and each of these also had Kingston crews getting a first hand view. In the 200m races, the Royals went first, dispatching Cool Runnings and Wraysbury in the first round. In the Pretenders' race, Thames Raging Dragons and Typhoon Tigers decided to demonstrate to the world the harmony that exists in the Docklands and go down the course literally hand in hand. This allowed the Ps to sneak past and win the heat from Amathus Bees by six one hundreds of a second – which put the Ps in the same semi final as the Rs. Even better, the semi also featured Thames Taniwhas and Henley: people who we seemed to race all the time in 2006 and 2007 but who we're seeing less of at the moment. After a joint warm up, the Ps' plan was to try and feed off the Rs as they had done so well in Exeter and use the boost of familiarity with the opposition to try and leapfrog up the rankings. Unfortunately it's didn't quite work – although less than 1.5 seconds behind Henley is not to be sniffed at – and the crew closed their 200m account with a 12th place, finishing third of the standard league crews. Colenorton won both standard league distances, and it's going to be a very interesting league table once we get to the other end of the season... The Rs went on to the Cup final, where Amathus, Batchworth and Thames Raging Dragons awaited. Raging Dragons had had possibly the longest pre-race chat that I have ever witnessed (seriously, it looked like they were going to get the Powerpoint slides going at one point) so were clearly up for it. It was a tight little race, and got tighter as Batchworth and Amathus both decided to aim for the same square inch of finish line. The inevitable clash occurred on the line, and Batchworth's boat lost her head. I'm not quite sure what happened, but have managed to get an artist's impression on youtube. Click here to watch - Amathus and Batchworth appear from about 10 seconds to 20 seconds in. We stayed out of it, and came in third. Off the water, not much happened. Between races and loo stops we were so quiet that Rich suggested forming a book club. Laura even managed to do some work. A friend who came down to say hello to Jo was overheard saying that we looked “very professional” (thanks!) and that it was a “massive event” (not quite so sure about that one). Lunch was entirely uneventful. In the 500m races, the Rs started off against Amathus Bees and Henley, and progressed to the semi-finals. The PS had felt hard done by after only having two 200m races, and so decided to go via the reps: after chasing British Airways Hurricanes, Bristol and Secklow 100 down the course, they faced Worcester, Cool Runnings and Henley in the repechage (it's a French word, by the way, and literally means “fish again”). Only Henley took the bait (see what I did there – talked about fishing and then used a fishing pun. Genius. I mean, really, it's 1 in the morning and I'm writing this stuff and I'm getting puns like that in. Cracking stuff.) leaving the Ps in the Plate semi-finals. Meanwhile. I had spent the near-two hour gap between races mostly eating sugar (and cake – the usual high quality offerings from everyone, but Jules just pushing the bar that little bit higher by making one large banana cake and then bite-size banana cakelets as well. Let me tell you, that's gutsy baking, and it paid off handsomely), and was a bit hyper. If you can imagine a stream of consciousness like the last two sentences of this report being blathered at you throughout your warm up, and maybe scale it up a bit, you'll get a rough idea of what a sugar high sounds like. Late onset diabetes is surely only a matter of time. Typhoon and Colenorton were alongside us as this sugar was burnt off, and we eased into the finals with a performance that had us coming off the water worrying that we had peaked too soon. The Ps had a crunch semi-final: a win or a fast time would put them above a lot of their standard league rivals – but they faced Worcester, Secklow 100 (again) and Wraysbury. New paddler Jimmy later described this as the crew's best race of the day – certainly the most tiring and committed within the boat, and the best looking from outside of the boat. It boiled down to the Ps, Worcester and Secklow being pretty much level at 200m to go – but with the staggered finish line working against the Ps in lane 1, more needed to be done. Griff asked for more, and got it, but in the end third place had to be settled for – just 1.3 seconds from winning the semi, and more impressively some seven seconds faster than their first 500m race. The draw was then cruel, and sent the Ps straight back out for the plate minor final. Energy levels were now low, and spirits not particularly high either, and tough compeition in the shape of Pershore, Exe-Claibre and Wraysbury was not a particualry welcome sight. They dug deep once again, and this time in lane three the stagger was in their favour as they crossed the line in another blanket finish. The win moved the Ps slightly closer to the Exe-men in the league but more importantly was well deserved after their fine efforts through the afternoon. They also took their boat off the water pretty sharply as well, so extra points for that. Major final time for the Rs, and a similar line up to the 200m major final – Batchworth and Amathus trade lanes, and British Airways Hurricanes take lane four. For the last time of the day we lined up next to the start line darlek and prepared to race. During the race it was all good:long committed strokes powering the boat along and slowly moving back on Amathus who had pulled way in the first 100m. And on the finish line was the third clash of the day, with Amathus and Batchworth all over each other. We resisted the temptation to tell them to get a room and paddled our own clean race. The numbers? First, and bearing in mind that we thought we had maxed out in the previous race, we were nine seconds faster than the semi and got a 1:43. Second, we were second, which is still not quite what we're aiming for, but with the beautiful blue glass trophies that Bristol had supplied, would do for us. Ladies race time, and despite our requests for a 500m event, the popular choice with the other crews was 200m... Kingston Ladies were accompanied by Sirens (Henley and Bristol – surely should be “Bristly”?), Thames Amazoons (Thames Amazons and Typhoon...) and the Secksters (work it out yourself). One Amazoon was overheard calling her crew the “London ladies” - which is a bit harsh on us (and indeed Batchworth) as we actually are also in London! Maybe “East London ladies”? With their diet of jellied eels and secret helming call of “Riiiiicccckoi”, the Amazoons won fair and square in another tight race, keeping the women's event more open than we would perhaps like. All in all though, we've had three fairly successful and enjoyable trips along the M4 this summer. A particular well done to everyone for making all the trips so enjoyable – it's worth noting (and maybe obvious) that we've never taken so many people to an event outside of London before today. A big thank you to Griff and Rach for helming; Jules, Cara and Shellie from Amathus for drumming; Steve and Griff for towing; and Bristol Empire Dragons for a far drier event than last year and some very nice trophies. It's becoming clearer than ever that races are not going to be won or loss on the day, but during training back at base. Time for some more hard work. 
|
