We raced Friday midday against Henley RC - our plan had been to spend as little energy at the start but to keep our high strokes clean and crisp enough to hang with them. We had a good feeling that Henley would try and blast us immediately and we didn't want to fall into that trap (we simply don't start that well!) Coming out of the island we were very much in the game and were about 3/4 of a length down. I felt really good physically and the boat felt similarly stable to the platform we had when we started to walk back through Marlow RC on Thursday. However, I'm not sure if it was crosswind or a little dip one way or another but we ended up hitting the port side booms at the barrier and Henley walked away. It's an incredibly shocking feeling because you're moving quite rapidly, trying to think calmly, and you're in a great physical rhythm when you have to stop...something like pulling back in a golf swing, or checking your swing in baseball...it just feels wrong.
Either way, Henley moved out to a 4-5 length lead as we extracted ourselves from the booms and we raced hard to get back into it. The verdict was "easily" and supposedly that was a gift from the umpire who could have given us a "not rowed out" verdict but we raced hard enough to get back into it that we deserved a "racing decision".
Our coxswain, Dorothy, was pretty cut up about it but many of us were philosophical about the entire experience. Here are a few of my observations:
1. It's amazing that we could pull the trip off with people getting time off from work, leaving family behind, and training.
2. The amount of rapid progress was really exciting. A comment from another rower who helped us out during our training in the US was "the guys in the boat really knew what they wanted to feel and how to articulate it".
3. Being okay with trial and error...there were things that we tried initially that felt right technically but proved to be flat out slow, uncomfortable, or delivered very little speed bang for our effort buck. And yet, the crew was flexible enough to adapt quickly.
4. Rowing in a crew was really really fun and I think I had lost sight of that slightly - the shared sense of purpose, cooperation, and just those few moments when everyone realizes "Damn, that last piece felt really good!" were really special.
Friday evening and Saturday were all about taking in everything the regatta and the town had to offer. It went by very quickly and we saw a lot of courageous racing, proper and improper British behavior, and the continued excitement of the regatta.
Sunday came quickly and I was able to have a short visit with last year's host, Valerie Nicholson, who had some amazing wedding pictures of her daughter Kathryn and her husband Andrew and also watch the Princeton lightweights win the Temple and the Brown varsity win the Ladies Plate. The other two Yale crews saw their amazing runs end in the final when the women lost by 3 lengths to the GB senior team and the 4+ lost to the Isis Boat Club. All in all, I think we represented ourselves very well!
In the picture above are my good friend and former college roommate Steve Cheng who coxed for Cambridge (Goldie 04 hence the special blazer) and then the Canadian National Team, and Yannis Hodges, who is a former Yale assistant coach, coxswain at University of Rochester, and now an epidemiologist completing his PHD at Oxford. Henley was a great time for reunion as well as competition.
I'm going to be compiling a list of "best practices" on how to best run a trip to Henley because I think there are some really good ways to proceed that make the experience less stressful and really enjoyable. More lodgings, to air travel, to equipment procurement, to ground transport, and meals there are ways to bring a college team overseas that can make it excellent. Having great hosts certainly help and this year Minnie and David Wilson and Keith and Lyn Goodwin went above and beyond for us.
Monday was a day to begin catching up on email and laying out the process for the next four weeks. Big events in progress or coming up...
1. Signing a contract on a house in Hartford today.
2. My brother gets married this Saturday in Worcester, MA.
3. Bulldog Rowing Camp begins next Monday.
4. Recruiting, recruiting, and recruiting the Class of 2014.
