Susana Hancock reflects on the Lightweight Women’s race at Henley Boat races:

Two nights before the Boat Race, I had a dream. I don’t recall much of the dream, but I remember the feelings of my muscles during the warm-up, the smell of the river, how we nudged up to the stake boat—and once secured, how I made a mental trip through my body relaxing each muscle, how I checked my gate and my footplate (again and again), how the nerves and the excitement merged as the umpire called “Attention!”. And I remember the finish—we won, comfortably ahead of Cambridge, but this part of the dream was flat. I recall being incredibly happy, crying a bit, possibly even regretting downing one more pre-race Jaffa cake, but then I was met with an uncomfortable abyss and an alarm clock. Once awake, it dawned on me that I hadn’t practiced winning the Boat Race—I had only practiced channelling my focus and energy into attacking the race to give it my best shot. By this point, I was fully confident in my ability to perform my best when it counted, I knew how to respond to mid-race situations, I knew the relative speed of our boat, I knew we could win, but I had yet to allow myself to believe that we really would have the perfect run down the Henley reach and that we would win.

But perfect sums up the Boat Race from the morning paddle and weigh-in to the race itself and the celebratory dinner afterward. Following the weigh-in at Remenham Club and a pre-race food binge (finally reunited with one of life’s great joys, granola, something I had to abandon in the weeks leading up to the race), we arrived at Upper Thames Rowing Club, prepped to race. After a group warm-up, a pee, a final pee, a final final pee and, yes, a final final final pee, we carried the boat to the river and pushed away from the raft to an enthusiastic Oxford cheer. I struggled to believe that I was about to race the event that was the culmination of the past seven months—everything I had eaten, the thousands of kilometres rowed, the hundreds of tonnes lifted in the gym, the countless essays edited by flashlight driving to Wallingford at 5.30am. Every massage, every physiotherapy appointment, every erg test—everything came down to the next six-plus minutes of my life. No pressure!

The next few minutes were taken directly from my dream, just as we had practiced tens of times. After we nestled up to the stake boat, I felt the familiar chill dart through my body, and I closed my eyes and made a mental account of each muscle. The umpire, Sir Matthew Pinsent, called “Attention!”, we sat up, blades buried. “Ready!” we were ready. This was our moment. We could do this, we would do this. “Go!” Draw! Draw! Autopilot. I don’t remember much of the start other than it was clean and fast, rating several pips higher than we had in practice. About the time I expected to start to feel the burn in my legs I noticed that we had already jumped three-quarters of a length on Cambridge. Adrenaline. I remember responding to a push from Cambridge just before the crescendo of the Oxford crowd at Upper Thames. We can do this! I remember pre-empting a second push from Cambridge as we neared their turf at Remenham Farm. We are doing this! I remember my eyesight growing dim, the burn in my quads becoming icy, the calls to lift the rate. Cambridge had fallen back, and I could see their light blue blades on either side of our stern. They can’t catch us now; we are winning The Boat Race!

And suddenly it was over. The flag dropped. We had led Cambridge from start to finish, we had raced our race, we had won The 2012 Boat Race. Overall, it was an incredible experience; it was the dream ending to the last seven months of training.

We spun around Temple Island and followed Cambridge back up the reach and paddled home to Upper Thames. We were met on the raft by our families, friends, teammates, coaches and other people we met mid-hug. After watching the openweight women and the lightweight men race (and maybe enjoying just a little bit of chocolate consumption?) we headed off to Remenham Farm for the awards ceremony. After receiving our trophy and medals, we lined up for photographs. While some of the pictures were serious, others left us as a pile of panther-faced grins. Looking around I realised that we weren’t just the winning Boat Race crew, we had morphed a sisterhood of athletes, friends, competitors. I look forward to see the damage that this sisterhood can cause in the months to come as we prepare for upcoming events, including the British University Championships, Henley and the National Championships.

Two days later we learned that, based on the results of our race, we had all been awarded discretionary Full Blues. So many people helped this day become the day that it was. Thank you to everyone; it’s been a wild ride and an incredible journey.

‘The strong, the mighty! The forces of evil can never destroy,The powers of the Wonderman,And though the most formidable journey lies ahead,Only one will prevail.’ Those lyrics started off every of our ergo tests this season. It is one of the two songs that have accompanied us throughout the 2011-12 Boat Race campaign.

When we all first met at the beginning of September, we were not quite sure what a formidable journey it would be. We have suffered together (thank you Goose!), laughed together (and at each other), celebrated the New Year together (on our first training camp in Portugal (thank you Luis for helping us to spend an awesome ten days!), and we have become one strong unit.

Personally, it has been a challenging year due to a long injury – and I have to admit that, although watching an ergo test has proved to be almost equal in pain, I have been privileged to be there and watch a formidable squad develop as a whole. What has made this journey so enjoyable was that there were all those wonderful people on it with us, our coaches (Chris, Rachael, Bibi, Chrisy), our alumnae and Senior Members (Nanda, Linda, Lynch, Aimee), our families and friends who have put up with the odd diets, training times and exhaustion and have never stopped supporting us; those who work behind the scenes, making sure the Club runs so smoothly that no one realises how big a job they were doing (Sina, Bibi, Max, Rachel, Susana, Jude, and our Steering Committee), those who helped us to man up (Goose) and trim down (Sarah) and all the others countless friends, supporters and sponsors (The Oxford Blue Cheese Company and KPMG) of the Club who have cooked, baked, e-mailed, helped us to raise money and made sure that we can focus on that one day in March. Thank you for all your help, love and support – today, there will be nine girls in the boat, but really there will be a whole armada of all those who make up OUWLRC racing down the Henley course together.

I’d like to close with the second song that has always been there with us this year; it’s been a hell of a ride this year, and I was proud to be part of it. ‘A shadow in the night. Changes we’re making for the better, we’re going through together. There’s nowhere you can hide.’
Katarzyna Bera – President 2011-12

One week – it is all getting very real.

All girls are moving to Henley House on Tuesday after the challenge at the River and Rowing Museum, if you want to send them good luck cards, please use this address: The Mill House, Mill Road, Nettlebed, Oxfordshire, RG9 5AU  

The HBR spectators guide can be found here.

As a side note, we will have the first ever OUWL spare four (“Tethys”) race on Friday at 3.30pm at the Henley stretch. Hopefully this will be a regular event in the future…!

2012 Blue Boat (left) – Aislinn Brown (cox, Magdalen), Sarah Roe (Keble), Eleanor Law (New), Jill Betts (Wolfson), Jenni Butler (Somerville), Susana Hancock (Kellogg), Steph Peate (Somerville), Brooke Stevens (St Anne’s) and Aurelie Cuenod (Wolfson)….and our alumni (right) – Tom Baker (cox), Sarah Cornick, Georgie Baines, Aimee Campbell, Simone Paulson, Anna Robotham (2012 Spare), Sophie Knight, Alison Salvesen and Rachel York

with Chris, Nanda and Caris overseen the racing from the launch.

 Aislinn Brown, Magdalen College

Sarah Roe, Keble College

Eleanor Law, New College

Jill Betts, Wolfson College

Jennifer Butler, Somerville College

Susana Hancock, Kellogg College

Stephanie Peate, Somerville College

Brooke Stevens, St Anne’s College

Aurelie Cuenod, Wolfson College

]]> http://www.ouwlrc.org.uk/2012/03/the-2012-blue-boat/feed/ 0 http://www.ouwlrc.org.uk/2012/02/training-camp-in-portugal/ http://www.ouwlrc.org.uk/2012/02/training-camp-in-portugal/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:50:41 +0000 Katarzyna Bera http://www.ouwlrc.org.uk/?p=1011

The 2011-12 season brought a new adventure for OUWLRC, as we headed for the first time to Coimbra, Portugal, for our January training camp. Upon arrival at the rowing club on the Rio Mondego, we realised that we had struck gold; a wide, flat, empty river twinkling in the sunshine and crying out to be explored. So with only the threat of the weekly (at best) pleasure cruiser, and with the ancient Coimbra University buildings watching over us from the hillside, we obliged, and boated for our first outing of many.

The week was spent hard at work on the water, and we all took great delight in topping up those fading unisuit tan lines from days of sunshine past. We soon got to grips with the local customs; how to order a coffee (don’t ask for ‘coffee’), which is the best steak (‘Miranda’, hands down) and how to tackle the local drivers when navigating the city roads (hang on for dear life). New Year’s Eve saw us bringing in 2012 in style, whether it was watching the fireworks from our hillside bungalows, or dancing with the locals, for whom skirts made out of seatbelts seemed to be the norm.

However, at no point did we take our water time for granted, and towards the end of the week we moved to Montemor-o-Velho rowing lake, the site of the 2010 European Rowing Championships. Here the weather was a little less kind; upon our arrival on the second day, we were greeted by fog so thick that we couldn’t see where the rafts ended and the water began. However, with a little bit of patience (assisted by a lovely coffee from a local cafe owner), we waited for the conditions to clear, and finally found ourselves once again in glorious sunshine. Needless to say, it was a little different from the cold days at Dorney, and provided perfect conditions for the obligatory seat racing. With two days left to go, we returned to the river in Coimbra and enjoyed a last few solid outings in the sun before packing up the trailer ready for the road.

The squad thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and though exhausted, were sad to leave Coimbra behind. Our thanks extend to all those at the Centro Náutico do Parque Verde.

-Jill Betts (OUWLRC BB 2011)

Winning novice 2x

Jenni Butler reports…The morning of the 19th of November saw a group of excited but sleepy rowers gathering outside Go Outdoors, ready for the trip to Kingston for our second heads regatta of the season. Spirits were high despite the early hour and we reached our destination in good time. Sadly, the organisers of the event seemed not to have banked on the large numbers of big trailers full of boats arriving on their doorstep, and our trailer ended up stuck in traffic a couple of streets away! Along with the lightweight men, however, we managed to get most of the boats and equipment off the trailer while it was still stuck, and carried them back to the river ready to rig! We had almost every boat class covered- from singles up to coxed fours, but everyone was rigged and ready in good time, the result of efficient teamwork and hundreds of rigger jiggers. The first division was, in a word, long! 4800m on an unfamiliar river is no easy task (especially when you’re steering for the first time!) but we all got on with it and produced some great results, with our 4+ (although sadly unopposed in their IM2 category) posting the fastest women’s time of the day and one of our novice doubles winning their category by 2 minutes. Doing it all again seemed quite a daunting task, but after some lunch and a few substitutions for injured squad members, we were ready to go again! The sun came out and again everyone put in a good performance, showing great consistency and commitment, with our two 4+s coming first and second in the IM3 division. After the excitement (?) of once again loading up the trailer in the middle of the street, we were all exhausted, but pleased with a very successful day’s racing, and ready to keep pushing through to even better results and stronger wins in the future. Needless to say, everyone fell asleep in the minibus on the way home!